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<I>Decisive Treatise</I> for Academic Freedomâ

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<I>Decisive Treatise</I> for Academic Freedomâ applyparastyle “fig//caption/p[1]” parastyle “FigCapt” 2021 1 1 21 2. A Responsibility to Seek the Truth: 40 Revisiting Averroes’s Decisive Treatise © 2021 for Academic Freedom’s Missing Imperative 2021 ALEXIS GIBBS UNIVERSITY OF WINCHESTER Abstract: This article argues that, in contemporary formulations of academic freedom, insufficient attention has been given over to the responsibility to seek the truth, as one which provides a moral precondition for the more common assertion of academic freedom as the right to speak the truth. The article seeks to restore something of this balance by looking at Averroes’s text the Decisive Treatise (c. 1180), an apologia for philosophy in the face of the charge that it constitutes a heretical pursuit. Averroes argues that, because the law compels “reflection upon all existing things,” reflection must include the work and ideas even of those predating the Prophet Muhammad. Indeed, Averroes goes further in suggesting that those who would prevent access to the ancients’ work are themselves barring people from reflection upon knowl- edge of God. Some thoughts on the implications of Averroes’s argument for academic freedom are offered in the conclusion. Keywords: academic freedom, rights, responsibility, truth, Averroes © 2021 Alexis Gibbs - http://doi.org/10.3726/PTIHE012021.0002 - The online edition of this publication is available open access. Except where otherwise noted, content can be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0). For details go to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 22 ALEXIS GIBBS Introduction: Academic Freedom’s Imbalance of Right and Responsibility If we imagine that academic freedom, much like any concept, needs constant revaluation in order to stay relevant to the times in which we find ourselves, perhaps we need to be asking once again whether we know what academic freedom really consists in today? Is it, as Henry Reichmann has argued, “an imperiled gain that must be repeatedly won anew,”1 or do we just expect that, as academics, we are guaranteed a kind of institutional liberty that is protected by law? The question seems pertinent because the combative status of campus discourse today seems largely to rely on a sense that everyone is entitled to their own voice, and therefore that voice is as entitled to assert itself as any other. The consequence of these assertions, unfortunately, risks being that academic freedom comes to be seen as the facilitator of various shouting matches, rather than the conduit and mediator of mutual interest and exchange. Whilst in earlier formulations of the concept, particularly Wilhelm von Humboldt’s mutually complementary motions of lehrfreiheit and lernfreiheit, the freedom to research was as important as the freedom to teach, disputes over academic freedom have become a lot more concerned with the freedom to offend than it has with the freedom to listen and understand. At the same time, students are coming under increasing attack from academics and the media for bringing about the widespread censorship of their own curriculum and learning. It is for this reason that the impasse in modern conceptions of academic freedom may require something of a rethink. Furthermore, if we are to rethink academic freedom along slightly different lines, it may be of use to look outside of the tradition that has cultivated our current (mis-)concep- tions, the attitude toward entitlement. For these purposes, this article turns to a premodern thinker, the Medie- val Arab-Islamic philosopher Averroes (Ibn Rushd), for some inspiration on how an educational ethics that compels us to listen to the thought of others, might be supported—though not presupposed—by a juridical right to do so. Significantly for these purposes, Averroes was writing under conditions under which he had no protection for some of his more polemical claims, and therefore he seeks to ground the right to do so in a preexisting commitment to seek out (God’s) truth, rather than making the former a precondition of 1 Henry Reichman, The Future of Academic Freedom (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 2019). A Responsibility to Seek the Truth 23 the latter. Averroes’s Decisive Treatise is of particular interest here because it both attempts to offer a legal argument for the study of philosophy from within a religion that might view such a discipline as heretic, whilst revealing an attitude toward knowledge that expresses a desire to listen to the thought of others, rather than one which seeks to assert its thoughts over them—or even to deliberately cause harm. This article will explore the notion that any right to research and teach on subjects of an academic’s choosing carries with it a concomitant responsibility to seek out the truth, otherwise entitlement prevails over ethics in the profession’s attitude toward free expression. The phenomenology of responsibility presented here is not one reducible to du- ties and obligations, but rather serves a precondition (imperative) for a com- mitment to something beyond the self. Rights and Responsibilities, Seeking and Speaking In his 1990 work, The Idea of Higher Education, Ronald Barnett observed of academic freedom that it was largely seen “on both sides of the Atlan- tic as a matter of rights which owe to fully paid-up members of the academic community.”2 The three items of emphasis that I wish to draw out from this statement are firstly that academic freedom is understood as a matter of right (and not, say, of a duty to recognize and/or uphold the freedom of others in the community); secondly, that it is a right that is owed (as opposed to one earned); and thirdly, that the persons to whom this right is owed constitute a “fully paid-up” membership. The sum of these parts describes a freedom to which particular individuals are entitled, but this entitlement seemingly carries with it no concomitant sense of duty or obligation on their part. Of course, this much is true of the discourse of freedoms-as-rights more generally, in that freedom does not semantically denote any attendant no- tion of responsibility: by extension, the right to life or freedom of movement do not conventionally carry within them some sense of a reciprocal burden on the part of the bearer. On the other hand, it is important to remember that there is nothing about the word “freedom” that necessarily implies a right—when it comes to academic freedom, we are dealing with a concept as much as a term. So inasmuch as freedoms are often spoken of as (synonymous with) rights, there is no reason to see why the idea of responsibility should not inhere in them also, and as something more than just a set of obligations 2 Ronald Barnett, The Idea of Higher Education (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1990). 24 ALEXIS GIBBS or measure of accountability.3 The trouble with the idea of freedoms concep- tualized exclusively as synonymous with, or analogous to, rights lends itself to a psychology much more concerned with egoism over altruism. This much is evidenced even in Barnett’s elaboration on the situations in which aca- demic freedom comes to be contested, whereby “academics’ public debate over academic freedom is grounded in their wish to defend their rights,” and therefore “issues of academic freedom attract heated public discussion when academic staff see themselves as being prevented from pursuing the research in which they are personally interested.”4 Recent incidences such as the rescission of Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson’s visiting fellowship to Cambridge University backlash from students and staff, and sociologist Noah Carl’s dismissal from Cambridge have served to fan disputes about who gets to say and study what on campus territory. But as the indignation around these events, and Barnett’s phrasing both suggest, there is a possibil- ity of discourse concerning academic practice becoming too oriented to the protection of personal interests, whilst losing sight of what being part of the academic community asks of its members in return. In a previous article, I described a need to distinguish between two mo- tions inherent in a modern conception of academic freedom: on the one hand, academic freedom as a right, and on the other, academic freedom as a responsibility (reference removed for anonymization). I now want to deepen that discussion by looking at two subdivisions of both the rights and the responsibility aspects of academic freedom, which have to do with the uni- versity’s truth-oriented mission, which I will describe as the “seeking” and “speaking” aspects to both right and responsibility. Just as academic freedom awards the academic the right to both speak and seek the truth, it also asks of the academic that they be responsible for seeking and speaking the truth. The role can, therefore, be seen as divided between right and responsibility, but also as further subdivided in both instances into motions of seeking and speaking: Academic Freedom Right Responsibility Seeking Speaking Seeking Speaking 3 For a discussion of responsibility as accountability, see, for example, Robert Berdahl, “Academic Freedom, Autonomy and Accountability in British Universities,” Studies in Higher Education 15, no. 2 (1990): 169–180. A Responsibility to Seek the Truth 25 I want to argue here that all four motions of academic freedom be of equal concern if we are to fulfil our responsibilities to others in the academic com- munity, by being both well informed and unafraid to speak the truth—wheth- er as staff or students. Whilst the actual practice of these four motions may still be internally in evidence, it is apparent that external perception of higher education is more concerned with just one of these four aspects over all oth- ers: the right to speak the truth (which today is confused further by the right to speak “one’s” truth).
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