Freedom of speech, freedom to teach, freedom to learn

The crisis of higher education in the post-truth era

Dados Bibliográficos

ID8858656
AutoresAnatoly V Oleksiyenko (0000-0002-1035-9186, University of Hong Kong), Liz Jackson (0000-0003-1255-6228, University of Hong Kong)
Ano2020
Volume53
Fascículo11
Páginas1057-1062
Data de publicação2020-06-04
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoEducational Philosophy and Theory (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0013-1857 • E-ISSN: 1469-5812
EditoraTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00131857.2020.1773800
OpenAlexW3033180556
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas14
Referências citadas10

With increasing influence of illiberalism, freedom should not be considered or interpreted lightly. Post-truth contexts provide grounds for alt-right movements to capture and pervert notions of freedom of speech, making universities battlefields of politicised emotions and expressions (Peters et al., 2019). In societies facing these pressures around the world, academic freedom has never been challenged as much as it is today (Gibbs, 2019). As Peters and colleagues note (2019), conceptualisations of ‘facts’ and ‘evidences’ are politically, socially, and epistemically reconstructed in post-truth contexts. At the same time, with intelligence commodified, reified or marginalised, freedom of speech and of mobility can entail fights for entitlements, or escapes from local responsibilities (Calitz, 2018; Lo, 2019). The decline and corruptions of democratic free speech and academic freedom, or the absence of forces to defend them, are thus serious challenges. These challenges grow as the competition of ideas, sometimes under the rubric of academic freedom, often implies the power struggle and questioning of statuses in the so-called ‘marketplace of ideas’. Competition as a value invoked in some conceptualisations of freedom, becomes more important than human dignity, which was originally supposed to expand and strengthen under democratic conceptions of freedom in higher education (Macfarlane, 2016). What had been happening to freedoms, of speech, teaching, and learning, across different subject positions and cultures of higher education, remains largely underexplored, as alt-right movements, neoliberalism and illiberalism, and post-truthism values and orientations expand

Academic freedom · Commodification · Democracy · Dignity · Economics · Epistemology · Higher education · Marketplace of ideas · Neoliberalism (international relations · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Academic Freedom and Politics · Higher Education Governance and Development · Higher Education Practises and Engagement · Law · Philosophy