Academic Freedom Quotes

• The most important aspect of freedom of speech is freedom to learn. All education is a continuous dialogue - questions and answers that pursue every problem on the horizon. That is the essence of academic freedom.

  William O. Douglas

  Graduation, Essence, Freedom Of Speech

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• By academic freedom I understand the right to search for truth and to publish and teach what one holds to be true. This right implies also a duty: one must not conceal any part of what on has recognized to be true. It is evident that any restriction on academic freedom acts in such a way as to hamper the dissemination of knowledge among the people and thereby impedes national judgment and action.

  Albert Einstein

  Education, Wisdom, Art

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• While the universities are increasingly corporatized and militarized, their governing structures are becoming more authoritarian, faculty are being devalued as public intellectuals, students are viewed as clients, academic fields are treated as economic domains for providing credentials, and work place skills, and academic freedom is under assault.

  Henry Giroux

  Skills, Fields, Becoming

  "Higher Education Under Attack: An Interview With Henry A. Giroux". Interview with C. Cryn Johannsen, www.truth-out.org. April 22, 2011.

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• Academic freedom really means freedom of inquiry. To be able to probe according to one's own interest, knowledge and conscience is the most important freedom the scholar has, and part of that process is to state its results.

  Donald Kennedy

  Mean, Important, President

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• There are, however, many challenges to Asian universities. First, academic freedom, in all senses, is much more critical to the success of a university than how much money is spent on infrastructure or on hiring big names. Faculty need to have the space to pursue the research that they are passionate about and the also need to have the freedom to express their opinions in the university, and in the society as a whole.

  Henry Rosovsky

  Names, Space, Challenges

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• Great research universities must insist on independence from government and on the exercise of academic freedom.

  Alan Dershowitz

  Exercise, Government, Independence

  Alan Dershowitz's speech in Tel Aviv, www.haaretz.com. May 12, 2010.

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• I also believe that academic freedom should protect the right of a professor or student to advocate Marxism, socialism, communism, or any other minority viewpoint - no matter how distasteful to the majority, provided...

  Richard M. Nixon

  Believe, Viewpoints, Matter

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• Can a geology teacher blithely tell his students that the earth is flat, or a European history professor that the Holocaust didn't happen? That's not academic freedom, but dereliction of duty.

  Jerry A. Coyne

  Teacher, Holocaust, Earth

  "More Creationism Sneaks Into Public Schools". Personal blog, whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com. April 29, 2013.

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• Churchmen are quick to defend religious freedom; lawyers were never so universally aroused as by President Roosevelt's Court bill; newspapers are most alert to civil liberties when there is a hint of press censorship in the air. And educators become perturbed at every effort to curb academic freedom. But too seldom do all of these become militant when ostensibly the rights of only one group are threatened. They do not always react to the truism that when the rights of any individual or group are chipped away, the freedom of all erodes.

  Earl Warren

  Religious, Rights, Air

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• The phrase 'academic freedom' is often used carelessly: here is a work that will allow a more careful conversation about those many crucial issues facing the academy, in which a well-worked out understanding of conceptions of academic freedom is, as its authors show, an essential tool.

  Kwame Anthony Appiah

  Issues, Understanding, Essentials

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• In Britain the power of authority was weakened. There was much more individual freedom and there was great academic freedom.

  Michael Craig-Martin

  Individual, Authority, Britain

  Source: www.artzip.org

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• I want you to have all the academic freedom you want as long as you wind up saying the bible account (of creation) is true and all others are not.

  Jerry Falwell

  Wind, Long, Want

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• Much literary criticism comes from people for whom extreme specialization is a cover either for grave cerebral inadequacy or terminal laziness, the latter being a much-cherished aspect of academic freedom.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Freedom, People, Criticism

  "H.L. Mencken: The Baltimore Oracle" by John Kenneth Galbraith, www.washingtonpost.com. September 14, 1980.

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• Many faculty retreated into academic specializations and an arcane language that made them irrelevant to the task of defending the university as a public good, except for in some cases a very small audience. This has become more and more clear in the last few years as academics have become so insular, often unwilling or unable to defend the university as a public good, in spite of the widespread attacks on academic freedom, the role of the university as a democratic public sphere, and the increasing reduction of knowledge to a saleable commodity, and students to customers.

  Henry Giroux

  Years, Lasts, Spheres

  "Higher Education Under Attack: An Interview With Henry A. Giroux". Interview with C. Cryn Johannsen, www.truth-out.org. April 22, 2011.

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• Academic freedom is being lost by a great many people who dare to challenge Darwinism. That's a terrifying situation. That's contrary to the principles of science.

  Ben Stein

  People, Challenges, Principles

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• To the extent that tenure supports academic freedom, I support tenure. I want no person or system to have any power, real or apparent, to chill academic freedom.

  James E. Rogers, Jr.

  Real, Support, Want

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• MIT is governed by a second, even higher rule: the inalienable right of academic freedom.

  Nicholas Negroponte

  Mit, Academic, Higher

  "Being Nicholas". Interview with Thomas A. Bass, www.wired.com. November 1, 1995.

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• When a profession is protected by academic freedom and tenure, it tends to turn inward. To a large extent that's good.

  Martha C. Nussbaum

  Inward, Turns, Profession

  Source: www.neh.gov

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• It's a good thing that we're protected by tenure and academic freedom, but we should realize that it creates a risk of getting cut off. Scholars should write, at least sometimes, for the general public.

  Martha C. Nussbaum

  Writing, Cutting, Risk

  Source: www.neh.gov

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• I think the impacts of 9/11 on academic freedom vary greatly depending on locale and time (softening with the passage of time), and even within the same community, and likely within the same schools. This variability makes it difficult to offer generalized responses without accompanying caveats.

  Richard A. Falk

  School, Thinking, Impact

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• I don't believe in firing professors. They have academic freedom.

  Alan Dershowitz

  Believe, Professors, Firing

  "Scarborough Country" with Joe Scarborough, www.nbcnews.com. March 21, 2006.

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