Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

We consider academic freedom in the context of broader developments in higher education. We suggest that the tenor of contemporary debates on the subject is a manifestation of pervasive forms of authoritarianism that undermine the university as a home of adventure, a place and space that is conducive to the conduct of free inquiry.It is evident that some champions of academic freedom engage in dangerously polarized forms of spectacle, engendered by a management culture that embraces showmanship and routinely favours talking (...) over listening. As such, they represent a force for conformity rather than dissent; division rather than collective action. These forms of spectacle jeopardize rather than promote the principles of academic freedom by polarizing the terms of the debate for maximum ‘impact’. We explore the implications of conceptualizations of academic freedom that focus on the rights of everyone in the university. We also suggest that the notion might usefully be extended to those on precarious contracts, and to students facing normative expectations about what constitutes ‘progress’ in academic practice. Drawing upon Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny. Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century and an essay by Vaclav Havel, we reassess the notion of the ‘pursuit of truth’ that underlies conventional definitions of academic freedom.We conclude with a brief vignette, a rousing endorsement of the ineffable and irreducible qualities of friendship. This entails slaying a fictitious, three-headed dragon and embracing a form of spectacle that transcends attempts to capture why it moves us. We leave the reader with warm-blooded traces of energy, curiosity, liveliness, and quiet determination. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is threefold: to offer a vision of human flourishing in the academy premised upon ‘living in truth’, embracing lived experience and being in relation; to explore counterfactual thinking across the life-course, from the period of compulsory schooling to the end of life, with the emphasis on the latter; and to critique the practice of drawing upon philosophy to provide an interpretative framework through which to address the arts, drawing upon the work of Cora Diamond. The (...) movement towards death is explored through three vignettes, focusing on the lived experience of three ‘characters’ facing the prospect of their imminent demise: the philosopher Richard Rorty, the English television dramatist and screenwriter Dennis Potter and a consultant physician (the father of one of the authors). Drawing upon the work of the historian Timothy Snyder, the relevance of the claim made by Vaclav Havel that ‘essence precedes existence’ is explored in relation to the climate of the contemporary education system. The primacy of essence over existence is also a key feature of the vignettes of the lives of the three players that form the centrepiece of the article. These enable us to ‘think without thinking’, which is perhaps a counterfactual claim par excellence. (shrink)