Introduction: Free Inquiry under Conditions of Duress

James Miller Introduction: Free Inquiry under Conditions of Duress THE THREE PAPERS THAT FOLLOW OFFER A TIMELY REMINDER OF ju st how fragile and jeopardized “free inquiry” actually is—and just how varied are the forms of duress it must face. Ellen W. Schrecker looks back at the impact of McCarthyism on American universities in the 1950s, while Itzhak Galnoor considers current political pressures on scholars in Israel and Craig Calhoun surveys the complexities of the situation in the United States today. Obviously, scholars must sometimes contend with overt political repression, as happened in the United States in the 1950s, when politi­ cians pressured universities to fire suspected Communists. But in some ways it is subtler forms of pressure that may pose an even greater threat to free inquiry. For example, the distribution of government funding can constrain and influence the sorts of inquiry scholars feel they are able to undertake. In some places, including some public schools in the United States, teachers must also contend with the threat of religious censorship, the stipulation o f whole domains of forbidden knowledge (for example, in teaching the theory of evolution). More subtly still, as Akeel Bilgrami has pointed out in his paper for this issue, researchers inevitably face a standing psychological condition of duress—the unre­ lenting and often tacit pressure of peers to conform to currently fash­ ionable methods, orthodoxies, and dogmas. At the same time, it is worth reminding ourselves that the very idea of free inquiry as a core value of higher education is itself a histori­ social research Vol 76 : No 2 : Summer 200 9 511 cal invention—and a fairly recent one. W hen Kant defended the willing­ ness to think for oneselfin the 1790s, and when Humboldt subsequently enshrined critical thinking at the core of the curriculum of the modern research university, they wrote as avatars of Enlightenment, and in a context in which it was assumed that freedom ofthought would unleash all kinds of innovation and creativity that would lead, inevitably, to a growing prosperity, and to great leaps forward in technology and scien­ tific understanding. The advancement of knowledge was both an end in itself and a means to social improvement—by spurring economic growth, for example, or by helping to find cures for diseases. Yet, paradoxically, as the sciences have become ever more special­ ized, the case originally made for the centrality in higher education of critical thinking and the pursuit of knowledge as an end in itself have become harder and harder to maintain, even in the United States. As higher education becomes ever more widely available, there is an expectation that there will be some tangible payoff to what a student learns. As a result, in many countries, including the United States, the liberal arts are increasingly regarded as a kind of luxury good, some­ thing that only a few people will want and be able to pursue. In many jobs, after all, the ability to think for oneself is a liability. Nonconformism can thwart labor discipline, and also complicate the inculcation of shared values. When it is truly unfettered, critical inquiry risks undermining collective confidence in core religious, moral, and political tenets. That is why universities in some countries—China, for example—are trying to find ways to sever the pursuit of socially useful knowledge in economics and natural sciences from a culture of toler­ ance for controversial opinions in the humanities and social sciences. Government censorship thus remains a standing threat—but so does the complacency ofliberals. The Enlightenment conceptions ofinquiry and the models of the research university that have grown out of these concep­ tions face renewed competition from rival accounts of wisdom and knowl­ edge, some of them rooted in religious conviction, others rooted in an equally strong political faith. And under these circumstances, it would be counterproductive to take for granted the value offree inquiry—an ideal in need of defenders as ardent and able as Schrecker, Galnoor, and Calhoun. 512 social research ...