Fulfilling the Promise of Academic Freedom

Through an extended discussion of the German higher education system in comparison with other European countries and the US, this paper suggests that academic freedom is not simply a consequence of institutional arrangements. It is a consequence of looking at what one is doing, at one's own professional responsibility. Academic freedom must be sustained and protected not only by the state or institutional arrangements of universities, but must also be protected by every academician. If professors do not resist intrusion on their freedom in either collective or individual ways, academic freedom is in danger. If, for example, a faculty of medicine were to allow conflicts of interest to develop between the freedom of research and the commercial interest of cooperating enterprises, if it does not collectively sense that there may be an intrusion on academic freedom resulting from the influence on their research from pharmaceutical corporations, for example, academic freedom will be in endangered from within the university. In a society where professors act this way, simply granting academic freedom may be a fine thing, but it does not really fulfill freedom's promise.