Comment on Yunus Ballim's "The place of teaching, learning and student development in a framework of academic freedom: Attending to the negative freedoms of our students"

Abstract

In this commentary, we engage with Yunus Ballim's article in this issue that explores how academic freedom can enhance teaching, learning, and institutional culture in South African universities. Ballim uses the concept of negative freedom to show how the institutional culture and everyday practices of universities can play a vital role in shaping students' learning and development. Negative freedom is the degree to which an external power interferes or constrains the choices that people have, limiting the area of action in which they are free to be or do what they want. This creative approach to the issue of academic freedom takes the debate beyond the freedom to choose what is taught or researched at universities and the relationship between universities and the state. We call for further exploration into how student agency is conceptualised from this perspective, questioning how university-society relations intersect with forms of academic freedom.