Academia in the liberal West is controlled by appeals to ‘agency’, ‘pluralism’, and ‘political relevance’. These are every bit as dogmatic as the ideological demands placed on academia by ‘authoritarian’ societies. ‘Academic freedom’ is the project of imposing them.
The concepts used to control discourse, to ensure its liberal content - that it must make space for agency, pluralism, and political relevance - are also realized within the academy itself, so that the academy is expected to exemplify these concepts, rendering them incontestable.
This is the circularity of ‘academic freedom’. It is defined as the academy exemplifying liberal values, which ultimately amounts to it enforcing liberal ideology on its members. This is no different from the academy enforcing any other ideology, it just has better branding.
This is all completely unavoidable. The academy has to embody some worldview or other and launch its inquiries from that basis and this has to be realized in the structure of the academy itself. It’s the liberal claim to freedom, neutrality, and pluralism that is at fault.
This matters in two ways. One is if you’re a foreigner and told that the liberal academy will allow you to preserve your own heritage within its walls. This is a lie. The other is that it confuses Western dissidents, who think it’d be wrong to impose an alternative worldview.
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