In many European countries but also beyond, there has been an ongoing debate with respect to the state of academic freedom today. While there have been many voices to criticize the political suppression and attacks on academics and on universities (Ignatieff 2018, AFI 2022), it has also been pointed out that there is a threat of academic freedom “from within” the university (Furedi 2016). The diagnosis presented in this context is very diverse: Some authors bemoan emotional correctness, the usage of trigger warnings or a growing conformity within academia (Furedi 2017, Williams 2016). Others emphasize more strongly the changing political and economic situation of universities: the imperilment of shared governance due to the growing power of governing boards and university presidents, the increasing privatization, as well as the attack on unions (Reichman 2021). To mention one more interpretation, recent contributions have emphasized how academic freedom is interwoven with discrimination and suppression. Dutt-Ballerstadt et al. (2021) have argued, for example, that the reference to civility has been used to silence and discipline marginalized voices of academia.

A literature review of the past years shows that the debates on academic freedom – the conditions, the state, as well as limiting factoes – are very complex. There are different phenomena and different interpretative approaches in use. Furthermore, the discours on academic freedom is highly controversial. In other words, it is a field of polarizing views in the way that certain agents or views are held responsible for the demise of academic freedom. Williams (2016), e.g. has attributed the demise of academic freedom to critical and post-structural theory. Others have made the progression of academic fields, more conretely: education, psychology, and gender studies, responsible for the antiacademic discourse in the universities (Kaldewey 2017). In order to understand the current situation of academic freedom, it is important to understand how the debate of academic freedom is structured.

In this paper, I will investigate how contributions in this area makes use of particular (educational-)philosophical themes and arguments in order to provide a generalizing frame for the interpretation of academic freedom. Concerning the above-mentioned publication of Williams, it is interesting to reconstruct how the link between critical theory and the loss of academic freedom is made. Similarly, it will be analyzed how other philosophical voices from the liberal tradition are taken up (Mill’s “marketplace of ideas”, Kant’s idea of Enlightenment, or Habermas’ compelling power of the better argument).

After having given an overview of the current academic debate on academic freedom (I.), the paper focuses on the philosophical motives and how they are interwoven in the interpretative scheme concerning the state of academic freedom. Are they used as way out, as cure, as promise or as the source of the problem? (II.) While my intension is to delineate where the educational-philosophical frames fall short in giving a legitimate account of academic freedom, the overall aim is to generally detect the limits that specific philosophical traditions have (III.). In the final part of the paper I will comment on how these detected limits can be productive for Bildung in the university.

The leading methodical approach is conceptual analysis. One of the main methodical strategy is to analyze, how the current discourse on academic freeom is linked to educational-philosophical concepts and motives, e.g. to theories of difference or to discourse ethics. It will be central to provide a text analysis how the implementation of these motives and concepts work in the authors’ interpretative approach on academic freedom. Are philosophical concepts used as corner stones that do not need further legitimation? Are they presented as an aim that lies in the future? More generally: How do these motives and concepts generate a conceptual order in the current description of the university and of academic freedom? Do these concepts performatively construct what is seeemingly deficient in the academic sphere? Following the intuition that different types of educational-philosophical frames will declare different phenomena as relevant or worth mentioning, the focus will also directed to the authors’ epistemic point of view. How do authors’ on academic freedom situate themselves concerning the matter? Which perspectives are mobilized – the perspectives of professors, of ‘outside spectators’, of students, of untenured faculty, of university management? How do epistemic and social situatedness in academia relate to one another?

The aim of this paper is to provide an educational-philosophical analysis of the recent discourse on academic freedom. By clarifying how educational-philosophical frames are implemented in the current diagnoses on academic freedom, we can detect problematic shifts of interpretation, the inadmissible universalization of reasons and conditions. This analysis can have an enlightening effect in that it shows how certain contributions fall short in their account. Overall, the paper aims at demonstrating the potentials and limits of philosophical language games for understanding the situation that universities are in. Can this be made productive for Bildung in the university?

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