The end of academic freedom: two displacements and new ends for it

Barnett argues that the concept of academic freedom as traditionally conceived 'as an enlightened academy besieged by an incomprehending state' is no longer adequate for the twenty-first century. Partly, this is the result of academic freedom now having to find its place in a much more fluid and interwoven world. But partly, too, as he argues in his conclusion, 'the very idea of academic freedom - if it is to be habitable in and for the twenty-first century - has to undergo not just one but two major displacements; firstly, to recognize that the academy … is itself a space in which academic freedom plays out (or fails to do so), and secondly, to place that new totality (inner and outer worlds of the academy) within the (ecological) space of the whole Earth.' Barnett finishes by coming back to endorse a new sense of the concept when he says that: 'perhaps work might be found for the idea of academic freedom … if … it could serve as a legitimating principle opening to imaginative discernments (plural) as to options for academics in the twenty-first century'.