“If you’re the oyster,” said Dr. Healy to a crowd at Hart House last week, “we’re the little bit of grit needed to make a pearl.”
Dr. Healy, of course, is the man embroiled in one of the most important academic freedom cases of the last fifty years after having his job offer rescinded by a U of T hospital. And while his relentless criticisms of the pharmaceutical industry prove he’s certainly got a lot of grit, what makes his metaphor important is neither the grit nor the pearl. It is the word “make.”
Knowledge is made. It’s a point that students often forget. From the experience of being taught in a classroom, we think knowledge is communicated. It is, but it is also created. But like all creations it is a delicate process. Pearls, like research, will be flawed if not made in just the right conditions. Without the condition of academic freedom, that knowledge is not only flawed—it is dangerous. Dangerous because unlike knowledge created elsewhere, knowledge made at a university will be trusted almost unconditionally.
The power of this trust can be seen throughout history in the various people and institutions that have tried to co-opt academia—or, failing that, destroy it. “Do you know of an authoritarian regime that dares to allow widespread artistic and intellectual freedom?” asked professor Eugene Roberts at University of Michigan’s lecture series. “Academic freedom and democracy go together as indispensable partners. The abridgement of academic freedom is an early warning sign when democracy is in peril.”
What’s interesting to note is from where that peril comes. Gone for the most part are the days of rampant government intervention—Nazis shutting down the universities or McCarthy chasing profs on a communist witch-hunt. But when a scientist goes public with concerns about a drug he or she is researching, that drug company—inevitably a major funder—can cause a big fuss.
The U of T experience has made clear the connection between business and the repression of academic freedom. The reports of the U of T Faculty Association show us the vast majority of academic freedom concerns from professors come out of U of T-affiliated hospitals, where research is subsidized largely by corporate donations. And then there’s the fact that U of T attracts most of the business money in this country and also (surprise!) has the most serious academic freedom cases.
But it’s important to realize that only recently has this really gotten out of hand. And so, it is during our time at this university that this matter will be decided—that the flaws will either spread or be stopped. Student pressure just a few years ago helped put in a code that ensured corporate funders couldn’t directly influence curricula. We need to build on those previous student efforts, because it is clear that they were good, but not good enough. What is needed now is not only policies assuring that there is no corporate influence, but also policies to ensure the university goes to the wall for professors threatened by business.
This means ensuring funding to support professors when they are attacked or sued, much stronger contractual protections, and educating the community about the importance of this freedom. We all need to be reminded again and again that, as a U.S. Supreme Court said in a ruling on the matter, “no field of education is so thoroughly comprehended by man that new discoveries cannot yet be made.” And so, no viewpoint can be restricted.
In short, we need to protect academic freedom not only with words and policies but with knowledge—knowledge of how vital academic freedom is to create pearls of insight, and knowledge of what dark roads we walk down when we forget about its importance. A lecture series on academic freedom, as the University of Michigan has done, would be a good start. If nothing else, it would serve to remind us, as Roberts did in his 1998 lecture, that the implications of this freedom go well beyond research and the quality of our education:
“We protect ourselves and our causes when we express ourselves and our convictions,” he said. “Not when we suppress the opinions of others. If others can be suppressed, so in the end may we be suppressed.”
