Academic Freedom From and Freedom For

In “Two Concepts of Liberty (1958)” the philosopher Isaiah Berlin explores the difference between “negative” and “positive” concepts of liberty or freedom. Negative liberty is freedom from outside interference in the pursuit of one’s goals. Positive liberty is the freedom for self-realization, a freedom that allows “my life and decisions to depend on myself, not on external forces of whatever kind.”

Both concepts of liberty can be applied to academic freedom in today’s America. To take a real world example, some claim that the “positive freedom” of students to realize their “true, God-given human nature” should trump scholars’ “negative freedom” to teach whatever they and their disciplinary community think accords with disciplinary standards. Others claim that a scholar’s “negative” academic freedom should always trump alleged “positive” freedoms, even when the college or university in which the scholar teachers sees itself as an educational arm of a church.

The trade-offs may actually be even more complicated than this either-or  suggests.

Academic freedom — Freedom from or freedom to?

In most of American history academics have defined academic freedom as freedom from outside interference, that is, as a form of “negative freedom.” But in the history of Christianity more emphasis has been placed on freedom to, namely, on the “positive freedom” to realize one’s “better” or “intended” nature.

Inside Higher Ed has new news on this old disagreement. It seems that the Azusa Pacific University is stressing this positive freedom while downplaying the limitations on negative freedom.