societies Article Examining the Idea of the ‘Vulnerable Student’ to Assess the Implications for Academic Freedom Stuart Waiton School of Business, Law and Social Science, Sociology Division, Abertay University, Dundee DD1 1HG, UK;
[email protected] Abstract: This paper analyses the concept of vulnerability as it is applied to university students, and also staff, to assess the extent to which it has become a new norm that transforms the understanding of the individual—from being more robust, towards a more fragile sense of personhood. We examine the changing use of the term ‘vulnerable’ over time and with reference to the institutionalisation of the ‘vulnerable subject’. The paper relates this to the theoretical discussion about postmodernism and the ‘end of truth’ within academia, with the subsequent emergence of safe spaces as a mechanism for protecting the vulnerable student. Using snowball sampling, a pilot ethnographic study of academics who have experienced, or claim to have experienced, limits on their academic freedom is developed. One conclusion is that limits to academic freedom stem from within the academy itself. This conclusion is related to the growing understanding that student ‘wellbeing’ necessitates the regulation and ‘policing’ of knowledge and ideas that are deemed to be offensive to the vulnerable student. Keywords: vulnerability; academic freedom; freedom of speech; prevent strategy; liberalism; safe space Citation: Waiton, S. Examining the 1. Introduction Idea of the ‘Vulnerable Student’ to The question of academic freedom and the wider issue of freedom of speech and the Assess the Implications for Academic Freedom. Societies 2021, 11, 88. need to limit speech, indeed, at times, to criminalise it, has developed as an area of interest https://doi.org/10.3390/soc11030088 and concern over the last decade both within educational theory and academia more generally [1–3].