Academic Freedom Quotes

“Life is for action, and if we desire to know anything, we must make up our minds to be ignorant about much.”
― Russell Kirk, Academic Freedom: An Essay in Definition

“We ought not to endeavor to revise history according to our latter day notions of what things ought to have been, or upon the theory that the past is simply a reflection of the present”
― Russell Kirk, Academic Freedom: An Essay in Definition

“And, substantially they hope to supplant the “disciplining of the higher faculty of the imagination” by what they call “education for democracy.” ...

The very banality of the expression helps to ensure its triumph. Who could be against education? Who could be against democracy? Yet the phrase begs two questions: What do you mean by “education”? And what do you mean by “democracy”? The school of Dewey has long been fond of capturing words and turning them to their own purposes: they tried hard to capture “humanism”, and even laid siege to “religion” Now I am convinced that if, by “education,” the champions of this slogan mean merely recreation, socialization, and a kind of custodial jurisdiction over young people, then they are deliberately perverting a word with a reasonably distinct historical meaning and making it into what Mr. Richard Weaver, in his book, "Ethics of Rhetoric”, calls a "god-term"—that is, a charismatic expression drained dry of any objective significance, but remaining an empty symbol intended to win unthinking applause”
― Russell Kirk, Academic Freedom: An Essay in Definition

“In the Middle Ages, as in Classical times, the academy possessed freedom unknown to other bodies and persons because the philosopher, the scholar, and the student were looked upon as men consecrated to the service of the Truth; and that Truth was not simply a purposeless groping after miscellaneous information , but a wisdom to be obtained, however imperfectly, from a teleological search.”
― Russell Kirk, Academic Freedom: An Essay in Definition

“When, during and after the Reformation, the universities lost their status as so many autonomous parts of the universal church, they lost their independence correspondingly. In Protestant Europe, they came under the jurisdiction of the national churches and of the rapacious national monarchies; in Catholic Europe --although to a lesser extent--they came under the jurisdiction of the reinvigorated and consolidated Papacy, and of the sovereigns who, as in Spain and France, made royal influence over the church establishment within their realms a condition of their support for the Roman cause. The dissolution of medieval universalism meant that learning, like nearly everything else, was forced to submit to new or more rigid denominations. With the complete or partial secularization of society which followed upon the French Revolutionary era, in nearly every country except Britain, the universities were stripped of what remained of their old rights and became little better than state corporations.”
― Russell Kirk, Academic Freedom: An Essay in Definition

“The first obligation is to Truth, and that a Truth derived from an apprehension of an order more than natural or material. I think that man who will not acknowledge the Author of their being have no sanction for truth Dedication to an abiding Truth and to the spiritual aspirations of humanity excised, the pursuit of power and the gratification of concupiscence are the logical occupations of rational men in a world that is merely human and merely natural.”
― Russell Kirk, Academic Freedom: An Essay in Definition

“In medieval times, the learned man, the teacher was a servant of God wholly, and of God only. His freedom was sanctioned by an authority more than human…The academy was regarded almost as a part of the natural and unalterable order of things. … They were Guardians of the Word, fulfilling a sacred function and so secure in their right. Far from repressing free discussion, this "framework of certain key assumptions of Christian doctrine" encouraged disputation of a heat and intensity almost unknown in universities nowadays. …They were free from external interference and free from a stifling internal conformity because the whole purpose of the universities was the search after an enduring truth, besides which worldly aggrandizement was as nothing. They were free because they agreed on this one thing if, on nothing else, fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.”
― Russell Kirk, Academic Freedom: An Essay in Definition

“These men were not servants, but masters; not the agents of community, but seekers after divine love and wisdom. They undertook their work with high consecration. And the academy or the university was a place consecrated to the apprehension of an order more than human and a duty more than mundane.”
― Russell Kirk, Academic Freedom: An Essay in Definition

“Rights have become what the political sovereign or ephemeral master decides to dispense and whatever gratifies the undisciplined cravings and desires of the individual.”
― Russell Kirk, Academic Freedom: An Essay in Definition

“Richard Weaver in his book, "Ethics of Rhetoric” calls a "god-term": a charismatic expression drained dry of any objective significance, but remaining an empty symbol intended to win unthinking applause”
― Russell Kirk, Academic Freedom: An Essay in Definition