Academic Freedom

To what extent is Academic Freedom?

By definition, Academic Freedom is a moral and legal concept expressing the conviction that the freedom of inquiry of faculty members is essential to the mission of the academy as well as the principles of academia, and that scholars should have freedom to teach or communicate ideas or facts (including those that are inconvenient to external political groups or to authorities) without being targeted for repression, job loss, or imprisonment.

As the definition suggests, Academic Freedom is the liberty to think and inquire freely, of all subjects, ideas or ideologies, to synthesize everything that there is in an organized manner, without being persecuted by the government. Academic pursuit must never be censored by the government, because such free inquiry enhances the role of the university as well as its academia, in order to fully utilize knowledge for the benefit of many, for the general welfare and not just for the establishment or certain political group.

It is incumbent upon Academic Freedom, therefore, to see through what the government is doing, including what it does to the power it merited from the people, and speak about a level of thinking even if that makes the authorities uncomfortable, to criticize it to a certain extent, and voice out what is good in general. This liberal pursuit holds all in power to account for their actions.

Conversely, the academia must present all thoughts in an organized manner, speak about knowledge and the merits and demerits of schools of thought to allow their students to think critically, and logically, and allow themselves to discern what is ought to be done or ought to be believed, in an ultimate pursuit for the truth.

However, it is not in the extent of Academic Freedom to support certain ideologies, employ tactics in stealth just to push for its adoption, or to destroy the systemic pedagogical approach to learning just to meet this end. To think freely is to be critical, but to be critical one must be in the liberty to know everything that affects the level of his thoughts, and he must have the same faculty to correctly reason.

But to do all these, one must have the ability to understand. And if some group destroys this level of understanding by destroying basic linguistic principles, this Academic Freedom can never be truly achieved.

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This Editorial is sponsored by Ayala Malls Trinoma.