15th Bacchus reading group
Article: Fuller, S. (2009). The genealogy of judgement: towards a deep history of academic freedom. British Journal of Educational Studies, 57(2), 164-177.
There are protestant roots to the idea of academic freedom and judgment, meanwhile Catholicism much more emphasized conformity and pastoral care of the educator their students
The protestant model build upon a charismatic model, where students where being freed to make up their own choices and find their own voices.
Subsequently, allowing a few to become charismatic leaders in and of themselves and start their new breakaway flock.
Similarly it is noteworthy that academics themselves weren’t seen as good guardians of academic freedom. Yet in Fichtes words he writes about the importance of safeguarding it as a form of world image (weltbild) making which requires time in and of itself
Which means, that the presupposition of academic freedom represent a process of becoming that allows for the articulation and sense making of complex issues.
Another thing that is interesting is the correlation between academic freedom and the idea of judgment, as a sense of an acquired skill a raising of consciousness
This is a connotation that has largely been forgotten over the past century, where the form of decision making has become a mental psychological phenomena on the one hand, and a philosophical assigning of logical deductions to determine a truth value of a proposition on the other.
“Meanwhile what had dropped out from this split concept of judgement was the sense that an autonomous subject had decided to, say, assert a proposition or solve a problem.”
Hence, there is a normative dimension here, that links it to the presupposition of free will not as outcome but rather as a initial condition
So the originally implied sentiment was much more broader, in a sense of what judgment could constitute.
One of the consequences that he points out with that development was:
“Thereafter, the distinction between being 'original' and being 'crackpot' started to acquire a salience within academia that it had previously lacked, as peer-based intellectual conformity came to be seen as a strength rather than a weakness. “ 172
Which suggest that alongside a cognitive shift there has also been a value shift in relation to originality and distinction
Weber-jaspers arguments relate to much broader notions that the formulation of a “life philosophy”, instead under modern understandings of academic freedom these now had to be located within disciplinary boundaries rather than crossing them
This remit of where freedom applies became the de jure understanding of modern views of academic freedom
Whilst there story he traces out is a German history to academic freedom, other countries have their equivalents as well. For example:
“Although hardly a political radical himself, Hutchins (1953) was instrumental in keeping alive the broader 'trans-disciplinary' sense of academic freedom that originally animated Humboldt's vision and continued to inform the self understandings of both American teachers and students well into the late twentieth century, not least in the 1962 Port Huron Statement that marked the founding of Students for a Democratic Society.” 176
