scholarly journals What Kind of Freedom is Academic Freedom?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joan W. Scott

Abstract In this essay, I argue for a definition of academic freedom that does not confuse it with what is considered to be a human right—the individual right to free speech. This is a freedom granted in principle by the state to scholars (usually within educational institutions: schools, colleges, and universities) because their critical activity has been considered vital to the public good, and because it is a self-regulated activity committed to processes of relentless questioning that require disciplined forms of reading and reasoning. Neoliberal practices have undermined the basis for this classic definition of academic freedom. The essay explores the alternatives to state-ensured academic freedom that have emerged both within and outside the university, focusing particular attention on Turkey’s Solidarity Academies. It concludes by insisting that the critical function of producing knowledge for the common good must be protected by non-state actors if the state has broken the covenant upon which academic freedom once rested.

Author(s):  
Daniel J. Hemel

This chapter suggests a human rights–based justification for national basic income schemes, contrasting it with justifications based on welfarist principles or notions of entitlement to a share of the global commons. Starting from the premise that a state is a collective enterprise that generates a surplus, it contends that any human being who is an “obedient” member of that state has a right to some share of the surplus. That right—which arises from the relationship between the individual and the state, and is independent of need—could justify the entitlement to a basic income. Such income should be provided in cash, not in kind, because the latter risks depriving the individual of the enjoyment of his share of the surplus—in effect, forcing him to forfeit or transfer it to others if he does not use the public goods or services provided by the state.


Author(s):  
Yulia Malykhina ◽  

The article covers ideas of public life in ancient Greek philosophy having given rise to discussion on the necessity of separation and rapprochement of public and private spheres. This study rests upon the analysis of ‘publicness’ and ‘privacy’ in the philosophical conceptions of such authors as J. Habermas who deems ‘publicness’ as communication, and H. Arendt who refers to ‘publicness’ as the polis-based worldview. Plato’s dialogue ‘The State’, which can be deemed as the first-ever example of a utopian text, provides us with the most detailed and consistent instance of criticism of the private sphere, the necessity to merge it into public life to create society. Only in this way could society become a model of an ideal polis leading to the common good. The utopism of Plato’s pattern determines characteristics of the entire utopian genre arising from the idea of the individual merging with the state, and the private sphere merging into the public sphere. Plato’s ideal polis is contrasted with the concepts of the state formed by Modern Age liberal thought, which have largely determined modern views on the division of these spheres, leading to a revision of the utopian projects and a change in the relationship between the private and the public therein. A comparison of various utopian texts results in finding out that the utopian idea of the refusal of the private sphere of life in favour of serving the common good contradicts the modern ideal of freedom, which is the reason for its criticism and for the increasing number of texts with an anti-utopian character.


Author(s):  
O.S. Shevchenko

The article is devoted to the study of the role and significance of guarantees of individual rights and freedoms in Ukraine. The author defines that they are important factors in the economic, political, legal, cultural and other spheres of society that create conditions for the real possibility of exercising the rights and freedoms of the individual. The concept of solidarity excludes the idea of class struggle, the revolutionary path of development of society. According to this concept, the focus is on the social nature of the state: socio-economic, cultural, environmental rights of citizens are ensured with the participation of the state, which pursues an active socio-economic policy aimed at redistribution of funds for the most vulnerable, employment, social insurance, development affordable education, health care, etc. Guarantees for the realization of human and civil rights, freedoms and responsibilities can be described as a system of conditions and means that together ensure the exercise of constitutional human and civil rights, freedoms and responsibilities. The effectiveness of this system depends on various factors, but the main among them is the presence of certain elements in the system of government. These include: a) the existence of the Basic Law, the effect of which cannot be terminated arbitrarily; b) the definition of state power derived from the power of the people and the Constitution; c) consolidation at the constitutional level of fundamental rights, freedoms and responsibilities of man and citizen and the means and conditions of their exercise; d) the existence of an independent judiciary; e) the opportunity to protect their rights with the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine and in international human rights organizations. It is also proposed to solve certain issues of realization of human rights and freedoms in Ukraine through the implementation of the concept of solidarity - the principle of building a social system in which its members (citizens, families, ethnic groups, religious denominations, social groups, political parties, business corporations, etc.) have a real legal and socio-political subjectivity , on the basis of which their rights, opportunities and interests can be consolidated and solidified in order to achieve consensus goals (common good) in social frameworks of different scales (local, national, global).


Public Voices ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharon Mastracci

In this paper, the author examines public service as depicted in the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (BtVS). First, she shows how slaying meets the economist’s definition of a public good, using the BtVS episode “Flooded” (6.04). Second, she discusses public service motivation (PSM) to determine whether or not Buffy, a public servant, operates from a public service ethic. Relying on established measures and evidence from shooting scripts and episode transcripts, the author concludes Buffy is a public servant motivated by a public service ethic. In this way, BtVS informs scholarship on public service by broadening the concept of PSM beyond the public sector; prompting one to wonder whether it is located in a sector, an occupation, or in the individual. These conclusions allow the author to situate Buffy alongside other idealized public servants in American popular culture.


Author(s):  
Andrew M. Yuengert

Although most economists are skeptical of or puzzled by the Catholic concept of the common good, a rejection of the economic approach as inimical to the common good would be hasty and counterproductive. Economic analysis can enrich the common good tradition in four ways. First, economics embodies a deep respect for economic agency and for the effects of policy and institutions on individual agents. Second, economics offers a rich literature on the nature of unplanned order and how it might be shaped by policy. Third, economics offers insight into the public and private provision of various kinds of goods (private, public, common pool resources). Fourth, recent work on the development and logic of institutions and norms emphasizes sustainability rooted in the good of the individual.


Author(s):  
Madeline Baer

Chapter 4 provides an in-depth case study of water policy in Chile from the 1970s to present, including an evaluation of the outcomes of water policy under the privatized system from a human rights perspective. The chapter interrogates Chile’s reputation as a privatization success story, finding that although Chile meets the narrow definition of the human right to water and sanitation in terms of access, quality, and price, it fails to meet the broader definition that includes citizen participation in water management and policy decisions. The chapter argues that Chile’s relative success in delivering water services is attributable to strong state capacity to govern the water sector in the public interest by embedding neoliberal reforms in state interventions. The Chile case shows that privatization is not necessarily antithetical to human rights-consistent outcomes if there is a strong state role in the private sector.


2020 ◽  
Vol 114 ◽  
pp. 193-199
Author(s):  
Sean D. Murphy ◽  
Claudio Grossman

Our conversation might begin by looking backward a bit. The human rights movement from 1945 onward has been one of the signature accomplishments of the field of international law, one that refocused our attention from a largely interstate system to a system where the individual moved in from the periphery to the center. Human rights champions point to numerous landmark treaties, numerous institutions, and the rise of NGOs as a critical vehicle for developing and monitoring human rights rules. Yet others look at the international human right system and still see the state as overly central, tolerating and paying lip service to human rights, but too easily discarding them when they prove to be inconvenient. The persistence of racism comes to mind. As a general matter, how would you assess the strengths and weaknesses of the system that was built essentially during your lifetime?


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-37
Author(s):  
MANISHA SETHI

Abstract A bitter debate broke out in the Digambar Jain community in the middle of the twentieth century following the passage of the Bombay Harijan Temple Entry Act in 1947, which continued until well after the promulgation of the Untouchability (Offences) Act 1955. These laws included Jains in the definition of ‘Hindu’, and thus threw open the doors of Jain temples to formerly Untouchable castes. In the eyes of its Jain opponents, this was a frontal and terrible assault on the integrity and sanctity of the Jain dharma. Those who called themselves reformists, on the other hand, insisted on the closeness between Jainism and Hinduism. Temple entry laws and the public debates over caste became occasions for the Jains not only to examine their distance—or closeness—to Hinduism, but also the relationship between their community and the state, which came to be imagined as predominantly Hindu. This article, by focusing on the Jains and this forgotten episode, hopes to illuminate the civilizational categories underlying state practices and the fraught relationship between nationalism and minorities.


2015 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-41
Author(s):  
William J. Novak ◽  
Stephen W. Sawyer ◽  
James T. Sparrow

Pierre Bourdieu began his posthumously published lectures “On the State” by highlighting the three dominant traditions that have framed most thinking about the state in Western social science and modern social theory. On the one hand, he highlighted what he termed the “initial definition” of the state as a “neutral site” designed to regulate conflict and “serve the common good.” Bourdieu traced this essentially classical liberal conception of the state back to the pioneering political treatises of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke.1 In direct response to this “optimistic functionalism,” Bourdieu noted the rise of a critical and more “pessimistic” alternative—something of a diametric opposite.


2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marina Rúbia Mendonça Lôbo De Carvalho ◽  
Andressa Guimarães Freire

<p>Os atos, condutas e comportamentos do Poder Público gozam de presunção de legitimidade, gerando, em diversas situações, expectativas nos indivíduos. Pode o Estado, no uso de suas prorrogativas, violar aquelas expectativas, causando efeitos negativos à ordem econômica, por despertarem desconfiança e instabilidade nas relações com o Poder Público. Delimitada a ênfase do presente trabalho à função administrativa do Estado, visou-se compreender o princípio da proteção da confiança como instrumento de tutela da expectativa legítima do indivíduo, por impor limites à Administração Pública na anulação de atos administrativos. Nessa situação, viu-se que referido princípio pode conflitar com a legalidade e a autotutela, sendo o caso de se buscar um juízo de ponderação, que resultará na manutenção do ato ou na sua anulação, esta podendo ser com efeitos <em>ex tunc</em>, com efeitos <em>ex nunc</em> ou com a modulação temporal dos efeitos para um determinado momento futuro.</p><p> </p><p>The acts, practices and behaviors of the Public Power in the exercise of legitimation, can generate, in several situations, expectations in individuals. The Estate, in use of its prerogatives, can breach expectations, generating a negative economic response, lack of confidence and instability in its relations. Thus, the principle of protection defends the preservations of these state acts, which effects extend in time, giving the individual an expectation of continuity, even if they are illegal or unconstitutional. Delimiting the emphasis of the present work on the administrative function of the State, it was intended to understand the principle of the protection of trust as an instrument to protect the legitimate expectation of the individual, for imposing limits to the Public Administration in the annulment of administrative acts. In this situation, it was seen that this principle may conflict with legality and self-assessment, being the case of seeking a weighing judgment, which will result in the maintenance of the act or its annulment, this being possible with the temporal modulation of the effects for a certain future moment.</p><p> </p><p> </p>


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