Academic Freedom: A Decade of Challenge and Clarification

Abstract

HERE is, says Sidney Hook, more sloppy rhetoric poured out per page about academic freedom both by those who believe they are supporting, and those intent on criticizing it, than on any other theme with the possible exception of democracy. Another generation has discovered for itself that freedom is not inherited as a youth acquires property rights in a house from his parents. Freedom can only be inherited in the sense that every succeeding generation has the opportunity to hammer out for itself, on the anvil of its own experience, the framework of unavoidably interwoven rights and responsibilities within which freedom in the sense of self-expression and freedom in the sense of self-control