From The Philosopher, vol. 110, no. 4 ("The New Basics: Philosophy").
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The academy is divided up into “disciplines.” What is a discipline and why does it matter? In a college or university, disciplines roughly correspond to departments because departments are constructed to house those working within the same discipline. And yet, some departments are “interdisciplinary,” e.g., classics. Traditionally, classics departments study the Ancient Greek and Roman world using the disciplinary tools of history, literature, philosophy, anthropology, art history, archaeology, and linguistics, and include training in Greek and Latin. Other interdisciplinary research is done in programs or centres, such as a Bioethics Program or a Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program. So how do we capture the idea of a discipline? How do disciplines structure our search for knowledge? Do we need disciplines?
It is helpful to consider a bit of history of the academy, specifically in relation to the need for knowledge in a democratic society. In deciding how to organize our collective life, we should be open to and informed by a wide range of ideas, perspectives, and new information. We should not assume that we already have all the knowledge we need or that a belief is false just because it is unpopular. However, not all ideas are equally sound, and we should aim, together, to weed out confusions and mistakes. Individually, we cannot feasibly consider all the evidence for or against every idea that comes along, so we, collectively, need to develop systematic ways of evaluating beliefs. In his 1996 paper, “Academic Freedom and Law”, Cass Sunstein suggests that we might develop an initial set of conditions for such evaluation by building on the idea that “arguments matter but power and authority do not,” and we should aim for “an absence of strategic manipulation of information, perspective, processes, or outcomes in general; and a broad public orientation towards reaching right answers rather than serving self-interest, narrowly defined”.
We should not assume that we already have all the knowledge we need or that a belief is false just because it is unpopular
This conception of democracy, and the need for dependable sources of knowledge, inspired the American idea of academic freedom. Good collective (and individual) decisions depend on a reliable body of information. Given the complexity of any domain of inquiry, it makes sense to turn to experts. European universities, as early as the ninth century, aimed to provide what historian Thomas Haskell has termed “communities of competent inquirers.” These universities were supported by religious institutions, private donors, and governments; the nature and content of research was correspondingly restricted by those who paid the bills. However, as means of communication increased, the communities of inquiry expanded to include research specialists across institutions and, in time, to form what we now consider disciplines. As Joan Scott has argued, disciplines provide communities of intensely interactive, skilled, critical inquirers who maintain an evolving set of standards for reasonable belief in a domain. Such disciplines (and related interdisciplinary programs) are positioned to contribute to a deliberative democracy, as long as and to the extent that they are not themselves managed by powerful interests and subject to strategic manipulation.
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In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there was concerted effort to ensure that appropriate conditions for public inquiry were met. John Dewey, Arthur Lovejoy, and others established the American Association of University Professors in 1915 with the specific aim of articulating and protecting principles of academic freedom. The issue of freedom arises at two levels: the freedom of disciplines to define for themselves, as a community of peers, the standards for their discipline; and the freedom of individual researchers to explore beyond the limits circumscribed by the discipline. These freedoms are institutionalized in tenure: members of the discipline determine the standards by which a researcher qualifies as a member of the community, and once a member of the community, the researcher is free to explore the ideas they individually consider worthy of their effort. Freedom of individual inquiry within a discipline is necessary so that its standards are exposed to critique and are responsive to new, even revolutionary, ideas. Tenure provides a balance between reliance on established training and methods, and creativity to explore and develop original ideas. With the freedom of a community to shape a discipline, however, also comes the power to exclude some inquirers and their ideas. This can be justified as a necessary part of distinguishing better and worse belief-forming mechanisms, but it is also always a legitimate site of contestation.
Strategic economic and military interests have had a huge impact on the content of research and have shaped the standards of the disciplines
This description of academic freedom is how the institution is supposed to work, in principle. We are all aware that in practice, things don’t live up to the principle. Social power and authority have shaped disciplines explicitly or implicitly by excluding women, persons of colour, the disabled, members of certain religious groups, and all but the wealthy. And strategic economic and military interests have had a huge impact on the content of research and have shaped the standards of the disciplines: what counts as an interesting question, what counts as evidence, what methods are considered reliable, what outcomes are envisioned. Because marginalized researchers have succeeded in breaking through the tenure barrier, standards are changing; interdisciplinary programs often provide intellectual communities for such innovation. Such inclusive research is better suited, also, to provide the basis for public deliberation.
However, interdisciplinary programs or departments face special challenges in the academy because, by their very nature, they don’t have a well-defined community or a single set of standards. Members of such programs have been trained in different disciplines. Instead of being unified by a set of questions and a method for answering them, they are, instead, unified by a complex subject matter that is best understood using multiple methods. For example, when the interdisciplinary area of women’s studies was first developed in the 1970s-80s, the idea was to focus inquiry on women, using methods from multiple disciplines, e.g., from history, literature, biology, sociology, medicine, art history, philosophy, law, and others. The goal was to develop new ways of studying women – ways that would address the gaps and misrepresentations of traditional disciplinary methods – and to do so in a way that was informed by similar efforts in many disciplines. As new questions and methods emerged, these could inform and improve the more traditional disciplines that had initially trained the feminist researchers. As time went on and it became clear the apt target phenomenon includes both sex and gender, the relation between men and women, and the organization of sexuality, programs began to modify their names to reflect this, e.g., many are now called “Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.” This offers a perfect example of how the job security offered by tenure could transform inquiry and support the production of new knowledge.
Academic freedom and the right to freedom of speech or expression are related, but distinct
On this account, academic freedom is a freedom one has as a member of a discipline at an institution of higher education. Academic freedom and the right to freedom of speech or expression are related, but distinct. The legal right to freedom of speech in the United States only limits the state (originally only Congress) from preventing speech, and the protection only goes so far. It doesn’t protect libel, solicitation, bribery, perjury, and so on. And there are restrictions on time, place, and manner. It does not allow an individual to barge into the Supreme Court to make their own argument concerning a case or to show disrespect for a judge presiding in court. It allows private institutions to restrict speech even as a condition of employment, e.g., a company can fire someone for disparaging its products or revealing a trade secret, even if the employee’s claims are true. As Ronald Dworkin notes, “Free speech, at its core, is the right not to be altogether prevented from saying something, not the right to continue to be supported and aided while saying it by those who think it is false or undesirable.” However, it is part of the mission of universities to support those who have expertise in a discipline as they try out new ideas and explore new domains of inquiry.
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I have suggested that a crucial function of academic research is to produce knowledge that informs our collective decisions in a democracy. The creation of disciplines is a way to organize inquiry to yield creative expertise. However, there is a temptation to think that there are no experts on normative matters, and so no experts when it comes to political speech. But this is simply wrong. First, normative inquiry, i.e., inquiry into what we ought to do and what is valuable, relies on empirical knowledge of the domain in which action is being considered. Warranted intervention in the social domain depends on social scientific inquiry and engagement with populations not well-represented in the academy. Second, normative inquiry is disciplined. In deliberation and debate, we should give reasons for moral and political claims; as in the scientific domain, some forms of reasoning in the normative domain are more warranted than others. That said, however, the discipline of moral philosophy does not yield a single set of absolute moral truths, but instead a set of concepts and distinctions that contribute to richer, deeper, and clearer deliberation. The long history of the discipline has, of course, included exclusions and distortions, but there is no question that there are better and worse ways to engage in moral deliberation.
There is a temptation to think that there are no experts on normative matters, and so no experts when it comes to political speech
One of the insights of democratic theory is that any member of the general public ought to be free to share their ideas about how we, as a people, ought to be governed. Competing points of view should be carefully listened to and considered, and freedom of speech should be protected. But it doesn’t follow from this that all points of view are equally sound; we need experts to develop standards to evaluate competing claims and to provide specialized knowledge. This is the function of disciplines in the academy. In addition to upholding the value of justice, universities have reason to uphold the value of well-disciplined thought on matters of public concern. Controversial thought is not out of bounds, but arguably, certain kinds of undisciplined thought and speech should not be rewarded or supported. After all, expertise on matters of public concern is what universities stand for.
Sally Haslanger is Ford Professor of Philosophy and Women’s & Gender Studies at MIT. She has published in metaphysics, epistemology, feminist theory, and critical race theory.
Website: sallyhaslanger.weebly.com
From The Philosopher, vol. 110, no. 4 ("The New Basics: Philosophy").
If you enjoyed reading this, please consider becoming a patron or making a small donation.
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