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Yahoo
30-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The End of the Enlightenment?
Today the concept of academic freedom may seem obvious to Americans. But the roots of academic freedom, which can be traced back to medieval European universities, were never certain. Back then, when scholars demanded autonomy from Church and state, they were often rebuked—or worse. What began as a slow-burning fuse eventually led to the concept of the modern research university a few centuries later, found in the writing of the English philosopher Francis Bacon and his 1627 novel, New Atlantis. There, Bacon envisioned a college called Salomon's House, in which scientists and others worked in an atmosphere of generosity and freethinking. This college came to be known as 'the noblest foundation (as we think) that ever was upon the earth; and the lantern of this kingdom,' as the Governor of Bacon's fictional utopia put it. 'It is dedicated to the study of the works and creatures of God.' Twelve of the resident fellows, called 'merchants of light,' sailed to foreign countries to bring back books and knowledge from other lands. Several devised experiments in both the 'mechanical arts' and the 'liberal sciences,' eventually creating such technologies as microscopes and hearing aids. Invention flourished in an ethos of imagination and unfettered investigation. Bacon was a forerunner of the Enlightenment. After centuries of intellectual progress, Americans must face a terrible question: Are we now descending from light into dark? Since April 22, more than 500 leaders of America's colleges, universities, and scholarly societies have signed a statement protesting the unprecedented interference of the Trump administration into higher education, interference that included external oversight of admissions criteria, faculty hiring, accreditation, ideological capture, and, in some cases, curriculum. As the statement says, higher education in America is open to constructive reform. However, 'we must oppose undue government intrusion in the lives of those who learn, live, and work on our campuses.' Especially targeted by the administration have been international students. At my university, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, at least nine members of our community—students, recent graduates, and postdocs—have had their visas and immigration status unexpectedly revoked. MIT's president, Sally Kornbluth, recently sent a letter to our community, part of which read: 'To live up to our great mission, MIT is driven to pursue the highest standards of intellectual and creative excellence. That means we are, and must be, in the business of attracting and supporting exceptionally talented people, the kind of people with the drive, skill and daring to see, discover and invent things no one else can. To find those rare people, we open ourselves to talent from every corner of the United States and from around the globe.' In the past, MIT and the many other institutions of higher learning in America have been Bacon's 'merchants of light.' Both tangible and intangible benefits flow from academic freedom. First, the tangible. The business world should be alarmed by the proposed jamming of the greatest engine of invention, innovation, and economic prosperity in our nation. To name just a few examples: The internet, in the form of the ARPANET, was developed by researchers at UCLA, Stanford, and MIT under the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in the late 1960s and '70s. Key concepts and materials for lithium-ion batteries were developed at the University of Texas and the University of Oxford. The first artificial heart was developed by Robert Jarvik and colleagues at the University of Utah. Google originated as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford. Natural-language processing, neural networks, and deep learning—all fundamental parts of AI—came out of research at MIT, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, and the University of Toronto. Pivotal work in CRISPR gene editing was done by Jennifer Doudna at UC Berkeley. (She received the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this work.) Many other technological inventions, although not directly produced in our universities, were nurtured by the training and knowledge gained in them: computers, vaccines, smartphones, social-media platforms, Global Positioning System (GPS), insulin synthesis, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), lasers. Of course, the intellectual and creative freedom in America has enabled great productivity far beyond the precincts of science and technology. Exemplars include William James in philosophy and psychology, Toni Morrison in literature, Noam Chomsky in linguistics and cognitive science, Hannah Arendt in political theory, Martha Nussbaum in law and ethics, Margaret Mead in anthropology, W. E. B. Du Bois in sociology, John Rawls in political philosophy, Susan Sontag in cultural criticism, John Dewey in philosophy and education, and many, many more. Our country, a relatively young country but a country weaned on freedom dating back to the American Revolution of 1775, has helped build the modern world, has helped human beings reach their fullest capacity and creativity. Academic freedom is what has made America great. By contrast, invention has been suffocated in authoritarian countries with choke holds on academic freedom. In China, despite major investments in research and higher education, topics such as political reform, Tiananmen, and human rights are taboo. These restrictions have limited open inquiry in the social sciences and humanities. In Iran, restrictions on gender studies, religious critique, and internet freedom have weakened its academic institutions and discouraged global collaboration. In Russia, the crackdown on academic freedom since 2010 has driven out many independent thinkers and scientists, weakening innovation and policy critiques. Talented academics and researchers frequently leave for countries with more freedom, taking their expertise and innovation potential with them, as illustrated recently by the very public departure of the Yale University professor Jason Stanley, who is leaving the U.S. for Canada. Where restrictions have been lifted, flowers bloom. South Korea was a military dictatorship up to the 1980s, and then became a democracy. In the authoritarian era, universities were tightly controlled, with crackdowns on student protests and censorship in curricula. After the removal of these restrictions, South Korea quickly became a global leader in technology and innovation, home to companies including Samsung and LG. Taiwan transitioned from martial law under the Kuomintang to a liberal democracy in the 1990s. The humanities and social sciences, previously constrained by anti-communist ideology, expanded significantly. Taiwan developed a strong knowledge economy, with competitive universities and thriving biotech and electronics industries. In particular, Taiwan is the home of the world's leading semiconductor foundry, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. What exactly is academic freedom? It is the freedom to express and debate ideas without fear of censorship or reprisal. It is the freedom to explore. It is the freedom to let the imagination wander. It is the freedom to exchange knowledge with colleagues and others. It is the freedom to question authority and received wisdom. It is the freedom to test ideas against experiment and to reject those ideas that fail the test. It is the freedom to be honest, even if that honesty challenges prevailing views. It is the freedom to be one's true self. Academic freedom is the oxygen and the light of higher education. Growing things need both. Aren't colleges and universities the nurseries of faculty, students, and their surrounding society? We need air. Instinctively, we seek light, just as some plants will change their pattern of growth in order to receive the sunlight needed for growth. It's called phototropism. The petals of sunflowers actually track the movement of the sun throughout the day, changing their direction to point toward the sun. I have served on the faculties of several universities in America and visited a hundred more. And I have felt intellectually safe in all of them. More than safe, I have felt encouraged to express myself and to listen and debate and question. The ethos of academic freedom is subtle. It is a kind of liberation, a buoyancy of the spirit, a nourishment of the mind. It is a basking in the light. Academic freedom is the greatest lesson we can give to our students. Our young people are shaping the future. Do we want them to be afraid to express their ideas? Do we want them to be afraid to explore, to invent, to challenge the status quo? Do we want them to be afraid of being who they are? We set examples for our young people and students, moral as well as intellectual. Do we want them to see us restrict what we teach because of the rules imposed by some outside authority? Do we want them to see us hide evidence that challenges a prevailing viewpoint? Do we want them to see us deny admission to other qualified students because of quotas or ideological litmus tests or country of origin? Do we want them to see us conform to outside decrees that undermine our values? Do we want them to see us prioritize money above all other things? Do we want them to see us as cowards, lacking the courage to stand behind our values and convictions? The surrender of academic freedom in America and, in fact, freedom of all kinds may happen gradually, little by little. First with the disproportionate power of money and the wealthy who have it, then with attacks on the free press, the control of information, the weakening of checks and balances, the suppression of dissent, the surveillance of the population, and finally the normalization of repression. In George Orwell's novel 1984, a superstate called Oceania is ruled by a dictator called Big Brother, who is supported by his personality cult and the Thought Police. The protagonist of the novel, Winston Smith, works for the state, at the Ministry of Truth, but he secretly hates the ruling regime. He joins what he thinks is a resistance group called the Brotherhood but which turns out to be part of the state apparatus. Smith is then arrested and subjected to months of brainwashing. Eventually, he is released and comes to believe that he loves Big Brother after all. This is what happens when darkness replaces light, when the freedom to think, dream, and invent is squashed. We cannot let that happen to us in America. *Illustration Sources: The Naturalist / Getty; mikroman6 / Getty; Huizeng Hu / Getty. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
30-04-2025
- Politics
- Atlantic
The End of the Enlightenment?
Today the concept of academic freedom may seem obvious to Americans. But the roots of academic freedom, which can be traced back to medieval European universities, were never certain. Back then, when scholars demanded autonomy from Church and state, they were often rebuked—or worse. What began as a slow-burning fuse eventually led to the concept of the modern research university a few centuries later, found in the writing of the English philosopher Francis Bacon and his 1627 novel, New Atlantis. There, Bacon envisioned a college called Salomon's House, in which scientists and others worked in an atmosphere of generosity and freethinking. This college came to be known as 'the noblest foundation (as we think) that ever was upon the earth; and the lantern of this kingdom,' as the Governor of Bacon's fictional utopia put it. 'It is dedicated to the study of the works and creatures of God.' Twelve of the resident fellows, called 'merchants of light,' sailed to foreign countries to bring back books and knowledge from other lands. Several devised experiments in both the 'mechanical arts' and the 'liberal sciences,' eventually creating such technologies as microscopes and hearing aids. Invention flourished in an ethos of imagination and unfettered investigation. Bacon was a forerunner of the Enlightenment. After centuries of intellectual progress, Americans must face a terrible question: Are we now descending from light into dark? Since April 22, more than 500 leaders of America's colleges, universities, and scholarly societies have signed a statement protesting the unprecedented interference of the Trump administration into higher education, interference that included external oversight of admissions criteria, faculty hiring, accreditation, ideological capture, and, in some cases, curriculum. As the statement says, higher education in America is open to constructive reform. However, 'we must oppose undue government intrusion in the lives of those who learn, live, and work on our campuses.' Especially targeted by the administration have been international students. At my university, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, at least nine members of our community—students, recent graduates, and postdocs—have had their visas and immigration status unexpectedly revoked. MIT's president, Sally Kornbluth, recently sent a letter to our community, part of which read: 'To live up to our great mission, MIT is driven to pursue the highest standards of intellectual and creative excellence. That means we are, and must be, in the business of attracting and supporting exceptionally talented people, the kind of people with the drive, skill and daring to see, discover and invent things no one else can. To find those rare people, we open ourselves to talent from every corner of the United States and from around the globe.' In the past, MIT and the many other institutions of higher learning in America have been Bacon's 'merchants of light.' Both tangible and intangible benefits flow from academic freedom. First, the tangible. The business world should be alarmed by the proposed jamming of the greatest engine of invention, innovation, and economic prosperity in our nation. To name just a few examples: The internet, in the form of the ARPANET, was developed by researchers at UCLA, Stanford, and MIT under the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in the late 1960s and '70s. Key concepts and materials for lithium-ion batteries were developed at the University of Texas and the University of Oxford. The first artificial heart was developed by Robert Jarvik and colleagues at the University of Utah. Google originated as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford. Natural-language processing, neural networks, and deep learning—all fundamental parts of AI—came out of research at MIT, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, and the University of Toronto. Pivotal work in CRISPR gene editing was done by Jennifer Doudna at UC Berkeley. (She received the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this work.) Many other technological inventions, although not directly produced in our universities, were nurtured by the training and knowledge gained in them: computers, vaccines, smartphones, social-media platforms, Global Positioning System (GPS), insulin synthesis, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), lasers. Of course, the intellectual and creative freedom in America has enabled great productivity far beyond the precincts of science and technology. Exemplars include William James in philosophy and psychology, Toni Morrison in literature, Noam Chomsky in linguistics and cognitive science, Hannah Arendt in political theory, Martha Nussbaum in law and ethics, Margaret Mead in anthropology, W. E. B. Du Bois in sociology, John Rawls in political philosophy, Susan Sontag in cultural criticism, John Dewey in philosophy and education, and many, many more. Our country, a relatively young country but a country weaned on freedom dating back to the American Revolution of 1775, has helped build the modern world, has helped human beings reach their fullest capacity and creativity. Academic freedom is what has made America great. By contrast, invention has been suffocated in authoritarian countries with choke holds on academic freedom. In China, despite major investments in research and higher education, topics such as political reform, Tiananmen, and human rights are taboo. These restrictions have limited open inquiry in the social sciences and humanities. In Iran, restrictions on gender studies, religious critique, and internet freedom have weakened its academic institutions and discouraged global collaboration. In Russia, the crackdown on academic freedom since 2010 has driven out many independent thinkers and scientists, weakening innovation and policy critiques. Talented academics and researchers frequently leave for countries with more freedom, taking their expertise and innovation potential with them, as illustrated recently by the very public departure of the Yale University professor Jason Stanley, who is leaving the U.S. for Canada. Where restrictions have been lifted, flowers bloom. South Korea was a military dictatorship up to the 1980s, and then became a democracy. In the authoritarian era, universities were tightly controlled, with crackdowns on student protests and censorship in curricula. After the removal of these restrictions, South Korea quickly became a global leader in technology and innovation, home to companies including Samsung and LG. Taiwan transitioned from martial law under the Kuomintang to a liberal democracy in the 1990s. The humanities and social sciences, previously constrained by anti-communist ideology, expanded significantly. Taiwan developed a strong knowledge economy, with competitive universities and thriving biotech and electronics industries. In particular, Taiwan is the home of the world's leading semiconductor foundry, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. What exactly is academic freedom? It is the freedom to express and debate ideas without fear of censorship or reprisal. It is the freedom to explore. It is the freedom to let the imagination wander. It is the freedom to exchange knowledge with colleagues and others. It is the freedom to question authority and received wisdom. It is the freedom to test ideas against experiment and to reject those ideas that fail the test. It is the freedom to be honest, even if that honesty challenges prevailing views. It is the freedom to be one's true self. Academic freedom is the oxygen and the light of higher education. Growing things need both. Aren't colleges and universities the nurseries of faculty, students, and their surrounding society? We need air. Instinctively, we seek light, just as some plants will change their pattern of growth in order to receive the sunlight needed for growth. It's called phototropism. The petals of sunflowers actually track the movement of the sun throughout the day, changing their direction to point toward the sun. I have served on the faculties of several universities in America and visited a hundred more. And I have felt intellectually safe in all of them. More than safe, I have felt encouraged to express myself and to listen and debate and question. The ethos of academic freedom is subtle. It is a kind of liberation, a buoyancy of the spirit, a nourishment of the mind. It is a basking in the light. Academic freedom is the greatest lesson we can give to our students. Our young people are shaping the future. Do we want them to be afraid to express their ideas? Do we want them to be afraid to explore, to invent, to challenge the status quo? Do we want them to be afraid of being who they are? We set examples for our young people and students, moral as well as intellectual. Do we want them to see us restrict what we teach because of the rules imposed by some outside authority? Do we want them to see us hide evidence that challenges a prevailing viewpoint? Do we want them to see us deny admission to other qualified students because of quotas or ideological litmus tests or country of origin? Do we want them to see us conform to outside decrees that undermine our values? Do we want them to see us prioritize money above all other things? Do we want them to see us as cowards, lacking the courage to stand behind our values and convictions? The surrender of academic freedom in America and, in fact, freedom of all kinds may happen gradually, little by little. First with the disproportionate power of money and the wealthy who have it, then with attacks on the free press, the control of information, the weakening of checks and balances, the suppression of dissent, the surveillance of the population, and finally the normalization of repression. In George Orwell's novel 1984, a superstate called Oceania is ruled by a dictator called Big Brother, who is supported by his personality cult and the Thought Police. The protagonist of the novel, Winston Smith, works for the state, at the Ministry of Truth, but he secretly hates the ruling regime. He joins what he thinks is a resistance group called the Brotherhood but which turns out to be part of the state apparatus. Smith is then arrested and subjected to months of brainwashing. Eventually, he is released and comes to believe that he loves Big Brother after all. This is what happens when darkness replaces light, when the freedom to think, dream, and invent is squashed. We cannot let that happen to us in America.
Scientific American
25-04-2025
- Politics
- Scientific American
Science Isn't about Domination. It's about Democracy
Nestled in the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, the slash-and-burn playbook for the federal government that the Trump administration is following while saying it isn't, is a call for American ' science dominance.' There is no such thing. And what the project means by the term—turning the Department of Energy into a handmaiden of the coal, oil and natural gas industry—betrays not only the taxpayer but science itself. Science isn't a winner-take-all, zero-sum game of flag football. Whether during the cold war or the era of Sir Francis Bacon's New Atlantis, the bedrock of science has been international cooperation. People pursue scientific knowledge not solely for the sake of lording our spoils over everyone else. The monetary value of research is not the only reason why humans engage in asking why of the world around us. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. Science breeds diplomacy. It counters division. It tells us what is, not what we want things to be. Science enables democracy. The way the Trump administration is approaching it, by cutting funds for projects that run afoul of conservative values, such as ones related to diversity, or calling for research into claims that have already been debunked, which is the case for the idea that vaccines are linked to autism, defies all this. If that approach succeeds, it will make us a poorer nation in every sense of the word. By halting federal funds to scientific research, canceling university grants and threatening to deport immigrant scientists, the Trump administration is restricting the flow of ideas. By trying to legitimize debunked scientific ideas and allocating taxpayer dollars to research into those debunked ideas, the administration sows discord and undermines the role of public health in preventing sickness and disease. By canceling global aid for public health projects, the administration is shunning the U.S. role in global health. And in their push for energy dominance, Trump and his allies are kicking years of negotiation over climate change to the curb. By becoming insular, by cutting out the world, we stand to lose our best and brightest minds in science and the exchange of ideas that leads to innovation. Our country is a scientific and economic powerhouse precisely because we have been so open and collaborative for so long. China's academic scientific output, as measured by publications in Nature journals, has surpassed that of the U.S. How can cutting federal science funding help the administration's intellectual war with China? How can the U.S. further its national interests if we shut out ideas and people? How does democracy survive if we stop research and the flow of information? In setting the stage for the role of the U.S. government in science, Vannevar Bush told President Harry Truman in 1945 that 'scientific progress is one essential key to our security as a nation, to our better health, to more jobs, to a higher standard of living, and to our cultural progress.' He noted the federal government's role in supporting agricultural research and said, 'The time has come when such support should be extended to other fields.' From the 1950s on, the U.S. government has been the largest funder of scientific research in the nation, not to mention the world. Those dollars have helped develop countless drugs, and a wide assortment of military and domestic machinery, and they have paid the salaries of millions of researchers. Those dollars have saved people and helped industrialize nations the world over. American scientific research has also influenced policymaking. This is where the tie to democracy matters most: evidence-based policymaking allows the largest number of people in the country to be healthy, be safe and have a voice. This is what cutbacks to science threaten. This is how Trump administration–sponsored research into questions that have basically been answered, because officials don't like the answer, threatens the ability of all Americans to thrive. When Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., says the nation will know by the end of the summer what environmental factors cause autism and calls for the private medical records of autistic people as part of this push, this is a fishing expedition. Kennedy doesn't like the answers that we already have— vaccines do not cause autism, and genetics influences the development of autism—so he wastes taxpayer money. Recently, a group of scientists from all over the world earned Breakthrough Prize for the work they did at CERN, a multinational facility that tests fundamental ideas in physics. With cuts to science funding, what will happen to projects like this, plans to improve our Antarctic field stations, and efforts like the evidence-driven Paris climate agreement? Such ideas underpin our grasp of the natural world and probe the technologies the U.S. needs. Scuttling science and shutting doors on the world will leave us in the dark. Domination will doom us to failure.
