Academic freedom. Two big, big words. Noble words. And very difficult to fault.

Who can be against it? Yet somehow, it remains a problem in Malaysia. We saw Azmi Sharom, a UM lecturer being charged with sedition. The charge? For offering a view, for exercising his academic freedom.

Indeed, Azmi was following what the brilliant Africanist scholar has asserted: “Academic freedom is something to exercise, not simply something to claim”. And if we were to trek our history, many a public intellectual including the late Usman Awang and Abdul Samad Ismail, amongst others, had felt the wrath of the colonial authorities and the sharp end of the Sedition Ordinance.

Somehow, history repeats and we are again seeing the increased use of sedition charges against commentators, politicians, journalists and wider members of our society. Sadly, our body politic has not matured enough and we still cling on to this colonial legacy like Linus hanging on to his security blanket. When are we going to be mature enough and practise, as our present prime minister has suggested, the world’s ‘best democracy’?

Our prime minister in the last week has sought to impress upon us to be more educated, more global, more open and yet somehow, his words and pronouncements appeared to be like rain falling onto desert lands - there is a flurry of activities and then, the ‘new normal’ sets in and the landscape becomes barren again.

There are good things associated with academic freedom. Academic freedom allows us to explore ideas and extend them. It stretches our imagination and enables innovation. It asks difficult questions and forces us to address them. In policy terms, it enables us to ‘speak truth to power’.

Indeed, there are those who contend that academic freedom is sacrosanct. They claim it is virtuous and its values, absolute and eternal. It is found in Islam and the Greeks (especially Plato, Aristotle and Socrates) are enamoured with intellectual discourses. One can go even further - that it, shares, to borrow from Wittgenstein, a sense of ‘family semblance’ -  freedom of speech, and that for many is the crux of democracy.

That there is a conflation of the two is clear. What is not apparent is that there are not necessarily one and the same - they may even be in conflict.

Academic freedom typically is about protection from restraints or pressures by managers, the authorities who may inhibit academics from freely studying and investigating whatever they are interested in, and from freely discussing, teaching or publishing whatever opinions that may have been reached. There is, however, a caveat - and that is the academic is obliged to be ‘scientific’.  

Traditional ideas of academic freedom also embrace the principle of individualism and self-government. Herein lies the heroic and sometimes tragic but (individualistic) academic making great discoveries. Academic freedom, asserts its defenders, enables discoveries, protects the integrity of science and scholarship and also enables uninhibited progress of such research.

And yet, there is no one country that enshrines this freedom. Constitutionally, it does not exist. We have to be clear that constitutional freedom and academic freedom are not one and the same. Academic freedom is an ideal, a concept we cherish but it operates in the twilight zone of rights.  

Any absolutist defence of academic freedom therefore cannot be but a distortion of the claim to rights, and can even be dangerous. For example, do we seriously defend racialist and fascistic sentiments and views expressed by some academics? Do we defend the Flat Earth Society? And what about religious scholars and some of their more pugnacious views?

What can academics do?

In considering these questions, what can academics do? Take a position of neutrality? Be a moderate? Be cool, rational and dispassionate? And yet, we know that is not possible for there are objective and philosophical realities impinging upon academics. Thus, would it be a violation of academic freedom to inject human specimens with the ebola virus or cancerous cells? Is the scientist ‘neutral’? , ‘liberated’ from all restraints?

The insistence on neutrality and the absence of restraint is therefore quite literally, madness. Without some form of restraints, we can and have seen ‘nazi science’ and have seen its results. In such a context, reason is eclipsed, cynicism seeps in and takes hold as we creeps slowly down to fascism. Maybe, this is too hyperbolic but history has shown us that can and indeed, had happened.

I think and I believe that if academic freedom is to mean something useful, we need to take a step back. We need to decouple it from freedom of speech and that mother lode, democracy. Sometimes it may not be democratic and correct to come down on certain views but where do we draw the line?

The late Bertrand Russell had something for us to reflect on and work through on this. He dismisses the notion that useful moralising can come from populism or from the generality of religious prescriptions on ways to behave. Instead, he suggested a secular and social perspective, identifying a good person as someone who cares for the happiness of friends and humanity; cares for art and science; shows and embraces excellence in both personal and social pursuits and responding positively to creativity and achievement.

Russell added, “Society ought to allow me freedom to follow my convictions except where there are very powerful reasons for restraining me.” These values are more in line and consistent with academic objectives and values, and clearly also something which we should seek to embed and propagate in our wider society.

In Azmi Sharom's case, clearly the test for sedition is not onerous but in so doing, we do more harm to our society and the values we hold dear. Our freedoms and our rights become more circumscribed, and possibly even more truncated and surely our politicians and attorney-general should let common sense prevail. Enforce it against those spewing racialism and even hatred which undermines our society.

We should not let indiscriminate (ab)use of the Sedition Act to suppress and stifle dissent in a growing and maturing democracy.

For those of us who are and still involved in striving for Merdeka and greater freedoms, we cannot give up but instead need to be more resilient and both claim and exercise more of our rights.