Academic freedom (3)

Phil Graham (pw.graham who-is-at student.qut.edu.au)
Tue, 10 Aug 1999 08:49:41 +1000

The marketplace of ideas is a market like any other. Thus it tends towards
monopoly under laissez-faire conditions, in capitalist, pre-capitalist, and
non-capitalist societies alike. History is marked by a series of knowledge
monopolies (Innis, H. A. 1950 1951). These have never been really very
useful, free, or emancipating, and our societies bear witness to this.

What does it matter whether the knowledge monopoly is controlled by
priests, kings, business people, academics, or technocrats? How do we guard
against cooption of our knowledge/words by exploitative vested interests?
How do we envisage academic freedom in conditions of social repression?
(Many people seem to think that the US system is "the most free system in
the world" (eg Chomsky 1992), even while they criticise it for being
precisely the opposite).

Freedom and equality, it seems, are mutually exclusive concepts; "pure"
concepts. I must say, I've never seen evidence of their coexistence anywhere.

semi-despondently,
Phil

Phil Graham
p.graham who-is-at qut.edu.au
http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Palms/8314/index.html