Academics and Academic Freedom

A libertarian view

academics  Most academics live off other people’s ^*taxes (instead of making, net, contributions to tax funds) within a ^*state-imposed, ^*monopoly-system of ^*universities and degrees. Many of them would not be academics, and their academic posts would not even exist, without ^*coercive interference by the state. Hence, they cannot be disinterested in matters of ^*educational or ^*political policy. It is hardly surprising that most of them have a strong bias towards state-control. They tend to exhibit ^*politically-correct (PC) or even ^*woke views to a far higher degree than can be found among most of the tax-paying ^*population. This is particularly so in the humanities and social sciences, where academics are very often ^*ideologues doing little more than pursuing their hobbies and political ^*propaganda at the expense of tax-victims. With some PC or woke ideological academics, a consequence of their courses can be that their students graduate with less ^*knowledge (in the sense of important ^*true theories ^*believed) than is available to ^*common sense. The process of academic peer-review for publications within the very uniform, monopolised system promotes an intellectually unhealthy orthodoxy (or, at least, narrow window of acceptable discourse) that discourages bold conjecture and ^*competition in every subject.

State academics are, by and large, not highly paid. Nevertheless, they are usually overpaid in terms of ^*supply and demand and ^*economic efficiency: for the lack of ^*free-market allocation means that the wrong academics are being paid to teach the wrong subjects to the wrong students. With a free market, academia seems likely to shrink as people reject the plethora of dubious ^*qualifications that the state has tax-subsidised. Should ^*libertarians take academic jobs now anyway? Maybe; see ^*hypocrisy.

academic freedom  The general idea of this is that academics should not be limited in what they can teach, research, or publish with respect to their scholarly pursuits. This seems to be entirely defensible as regards any ^*state intervention into academia, which would not exist at all if ^*liberty were to be respected. However, the private ^*universities themselves might have some relevant and legitimate ^*contractual claims. For instance, a particular university may have some founding mission statement about its purposes (intellectual, undoubtedly, but quite possibly also moral, religious, etc.) that its academic employees have, presumably, bound themselves not to flout. A Catholic university should not have to tolerate anti-Catholic teaching and publications from one of its professors just because he has, say, decided to leave that ^*religion.

(These are entries from A LIBERTARIAN DICTIONARY: Explaining a Philosophical Theory [draft currently being revised]. Asterisks indicate other entries.)