As everyone
knows, the so-called Academic Freedom is a concept that appeals to the right of
the members of an academic institution to develop their scientific and critical
research rationally and freely, in the face of the coercive laws of
institutions external to the academic world. But not originating from the
academic world itself. And precisely here, in our days, lies the Achilles' heel
of this law.
The main enemy
of Academic Freedom is no longer outside the University but within it. The
enemies of the University are inside the University, and they are very
democratic enemies: they are managing it. Undoubtedly, they are the
administrators of its freedom. A freedom that is becoming less scientific and
more bureaucratic every day. And bureaucratic freedom is like religious
freedom: a contradiction in terms. Therefore, it is surprising that democracy
obediently serves this progressive lack of freedom in the democratic exercise
of university activity.
Moreover,
nowadays, there is more freedom outside the University than within it.
Traditionally, things were presented in the opposite way: supported by Academic
Freedom, it was made to believe that there was more freedom, better knowledge
within it than outside, more quality of thought than in the rest of society.
The truth is that there has never been too much freedom for anything within the
University. Never. University freedom is a myth. It always has been. Just as
much a myth is the idea of the University as a place of wisdom and knowledge,
and above all, of criticism. Whoever speaks of the University as an institution
where criticism is exercised has no idea what a University is.
The University is a conservative, protectionist, and endogamous institution — outside of Spain, endogamy is temporal, not spatial — very impermeable to society, cloistered upon itself, and extremely suspicious of any relationship with the outside: it has never, ever been at the forefront, sometimes not even at the rear, of any kind of ...
