Contrary to the attitudes of many of my colleagues in the academy, academic freedom and independence are not rights or entitlements. They result from a political bargain and one that has become more fraught in recent decades.
Essentially, the bargain goes like this: Academics will independently cultivate, curate, expand, and disseminate knowledge from the sciences to poetry, and particularly the “pure” knowledge that often isn’t directly profitable but lays the foundation for personal development, social development, and the development of things like space programs. In return, the public and state acknowledge and support universities with various privileges and delegated independence. When the bargain is working correctly, academics are “on tap,” not “on top.”
And, true enough, modern society really does rely on universities and their massive research and academic infrastructure for its prosperity. Academic independence is a key value that distinguishes academia from market-driven or state-controlled research. In principle, it protects cultural knowledge from corruption by powerful interests and serves as a foundation for a free society. In the big picture, it has worked well, especially in America.
But recent changes in the environment and academia itself have rendered this bargain fraught. For example, in Florida, increased state intervention against DEI and similar initiatives has represented unprecedented state involvement in universities. Similarly, where I live and work in the Netherlands, a recent decision to teach more programs in English to attract more international students has drawn more students from abroad, which is good for department budgets and prestige but has increasingly drawn the ire of the public for nearly a decade until coming to a boil during a housing crisis that had students sleeping in parks.
It was predictable that we’d see political interventions on academic funding and independence in cases such as this because the bargain was broken. The primary breakers of the bargain are academics ourselves, and the way we position ourselves publicly. Increasingly in the past decades, academics are seemingly everywhere and clearly have a plan for you. Many of my fellow academics act as though they possess uncheckable independent authority. We are the experts, you see, on pandemics, (meta)physical reality; foreign policy; domestic policy; your economic interests, which you should learn; (your) children’s gender; and the nature of (your) identity. And you need to trust the experts. But a democracy cannot long abide unaccountable epistemic aristocrats passing out authoritative claims about right belief and action like the ecclesiological authorities of the Medieval Church.
How did it come to pass that academics see themselves as deserving both independence from political meddling and also deserving of deference about what is true? And how did it come to pass that so much of society regards academics as upstart tyrants, asking, essentially, who the hell we academics think we are?
Over the last century, the world became more complex and reliant on specialized bureaucratic and technical knowledge, and so societies increasingly relied on expertise. Academia became an essential public resource, flooding universities with cash and creating indispensable careers in government. But this dependence has made academics more visible and tied to political power — if academics want to influence society, society might just want to influence academics.
The visibility of academics has grown markedly due to media changes, bringing them from living rooms to smartphones. Academics are independent but no longer cloistered — social media quickly revealed this particularly strikingly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Yuval Levin and Hugh Heclo have noted that as Western society has become more individualistic and self-expressive, institutions are seen more as platforms to exploit for personal elevation than as social resources to steward. The effect has been compounded by new scholarly traditions calling for activist change-making research, which is a problem if such research is biased toward one side of the political spectrum.
The demographic shift in academia also affects the political bargain. Selection into academia now reflects class and political lines, with left-wing perspectives dominating, alienating large portions of the public. This creates a significant issue in a democracy, where underrepresented sides of the spectrum may distrust academic independence. Plus, the material interests of academics differ from the public’s. Most nonacademics expect universities to teach well, and parents want their children’s education to be a priority. Engaged vocational instruction helps maintain legitimacy. Yet, academics are incentivized, in labor markets of their own design, to prioritize research over teaching, cutting costs by hiring overworked adjuncts.
So, while we love to talk as though we are under siege from anti-intellectualism or populist politicians, in truth, academics are the biggest direct threat to our own academic freedom and independence. Academics, not understanding the political bargain they were always a part of, mistakenly believe that causing public outrage won’t prompt political action. They assume that either academic freedom is their given right almost by divine authority or that any intervention from the democratic political system into how universities run their own affairs would be worse than the problem.
And it may be. Florida’s measures to regulate universities to put a stop to perceived DEI administrators and left-wing activist curricula run amok may, for example, do nothing but hamper the good work of intellectual inquiry in that state. Government is a clumsy tool for managing academia. But then Floridian and American academics need to take their share of the blame for the mess. If academics themselves are engaged in censoriousness and limiting the value of their independence to the public — if they overstep in ways that the public deems to be transgressive, and if the trust and legitimacy of academia drop sufficiently — it will be a vote-getter for politicians. And that, rather than any rational calculus, is what determines public intervention in a democracy, as opposed to the technocracy run by anointed scholars that more rational policy might require.
Consequently, the long-term strategy for academics should be to manage our legitimacy carefully, as do leaders of independent institutions with wide discretionary authority such as central banks or the Supreme Court. To steward academia responsibly, academics must keep the gates of intervention closed, responding to public pressure respectfully and proactively, as the public are our patrons.
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However, particularly since COVID-19, the public has been treated to a wide range of academics and experts demanding that the public “trust the science,” “educate themselves,” or they are told that they “don’t have the authority to evaluate the value of their work.” In one sense, all these statements have a ring of truth, but they probably don’t reflect the manner in which you would communicate to a patron.
The degree to which academics manage legitimacy is the degree to which we can pursue their research interests freely. Accountability doesn’t mean seeking public approval for all research, particularly on topics seen as pointless. The public typically doesn’t want academics to be “approved” but rather to be useful, interesting, and harmless. “Basketweavers,” as my truck-driving grandfather would say, “are harmless enough.” But it means building and keeping trust with the public, not holding it in outward contempt. When academics are doing something detrimental to academia’s mission in the grand bargain, the public gets perturbed. We must be willing to “give account” and answer questions — preferably with interesting, clear explanations. From my perspective in academia, it often seems we want to enjoy legitimacy without managing it carefully. This can’t last in a democracy. It could all change with one election.
Brandon C. Zicha is a professor of philosophy, politics, and economics at Leiden University College.