SECTION L.—EDUCATIONAL SCIENCE. 
THE NATURE AND 
CONDITIONS OF ACADEMIC FREEDOM 
IN UNIVERSITIES. 
ADDRESS BY 
PRINCIPAL ERNEST BARKER, M.A., D.Lrrr., LL.D., 
PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION. 
FREEDOM, in that sphere of politics in which we use the word most often, 
may be an attribute either of the individual, in his thought and action 
within the community, or of the community itself, in its relations and stand- 
ing among other communities. It may be a right of the citizen, or it may 
be an attribute of the State. In the intellectual sphere, with which we 
are here concerned, freedom may similarly be an attribute either of the 
individual teacher, in his teaching and speaking and writing, or of the 
whole academic community, in its relation to the general environment 
of political authorities and economic interests in which it isset. These two 
freedoms of the mind are almost correlative. We may almost say that a 
free professoriate means a free academic community ; and, conversely, that 
a free academic community means a free professoriate. But there are quali- 
fications and limitations of this identity. A university which is free from 
‘control by the general social environment may seek to control unduly its 
own professors in the name of its own alleged freedom. We cannot, after 
all, treat academic freedom under a single head ; and in any discussion of 
the subject we must distinguish the freedom of the teacher from that of 
the university. 
The freedom of the teacher, like all freedom that is other than mere 
license and anarchy, must exist within a framework of law, because it 
exists within the framework of an institution, and because, again, any 
institution involves some system of law. The law of an academic institu- 
tion is partly an unwritten code of professional conduct, and partly, it 
may be, a written set of principles and tenets. The unwritten code forbids 
a teacher to use his class-room as a place for the inculcation of partisan 
views. It may be difficult to draw a clear line of division between what 
is partisan and what is impartial; but we should all agree that there is a 
line, and that, in his class-room, a professor is not free to wander on the 
further side of that line. What he may do outside the class-room is another 
matter, which we must consider later. A written set of tenets and prin- 
ciples is comparatively rare ; but it may obviously exist, for example in a 
theological college or a general college founded on a confessional basis. A 
professor who has subscribed to these tenets has voluntarily limited his 
freedom by that subscription. The college to which I belong at one time 
required a written subscription from its teachers to the Thirty-nine Articles. 
