Academic freedom and ethical responsibility

IN 1990 CODESRIA, Africa’s premier social science council, organised a conference in Kampala, Uganda, on academic freedom. The conference was against the backdrop of mounting harassment of academics on the continent. They were subjected to travel restrictions in some countries, arrest, detention, and sometimes even assassination.

The idea of defence of specific rights for academics was not without contention within the council. Why would you argue for an exclusive right to middle-class academics when the basic rights of ordinary citizens are denied every day?

Nonetheless, the idea of a conference and a charter for intellectuals (not just scholars) prevailed. The African scholars at the conference took the 1981 African Charter on Human and People’s Rights, of the then Organisation of African Unity, as its grundnorm, that set the normal standards to guide the exercise of intellectual freedom and remind ourselves of our social responsibility as intellectuals.

Out of the conference, attended by the luminaries of the African social sciences, emerged the Kampala Declaration on Intellectual Freedom and Social Responsibility. It remains Africa’s most definitive statement on academic freedom.

It followed almost two years after the 68th general assembly of the World University Service, held in Lima in 1988, adopted the Lima Declaration on Academic Freedom and Autonomy of Institutions of Higher Education.

The Lima Declaration was driven by the realisation that, whereas there are several global instruments concerning human rights, there was none that specifically protected the freedom of intellectuals.

Both the Lima and the Kampala declarations are emphatic that academic freedom is fundamental to the functioning of the academic community. Its defence is seen as central to the viability and survival of the academy. Scholars must be able to teach, undertake research, report their findings and exchange ideas without fear or hindrance.

Academic freedom cannot be a defence for bad science. This, especially where the “findings” are driven by bigotry and subterfuge rather than science. Don’t shoot the messenger, alright. But it is essential for the integrity of the scholarly community that the messenger is not the message.

Scholars, groups and institutions imperil their collective integrity when they pull up the shield of academic freedom to protect themselves from scrutiny and reckoning for unethical behaviour. Forces external to the academy who engage in similar ventures endanger the genuine defence of academic freedom. They both undermine a critical compact that the academy has with the rest of society.

Often, many in the academy appeal for intervention by external forces (the state or powerful civil society entities) in the affairs of the academy because they feel that academic freedom is being used to shield the privileged.

Such misuse of the defence of academic freedom undermines the social compact within the academy itself. In the long run, such abuse of academic freedom threatens everyone’s academic freedom.

Adesina is a professor and holder of the South African Research Chair in Social Policy, University of South Africa. This article was first published in The Conversation