Commentary
Long live academic freedom… as long as it’s good for business
If the university is a corporation, an encampment is not a political gesture whose value must be recognized as a legitimate expression of dissent, but the violation of a property right.
The statement by Alan Garber, Harvard’s president, is featured prominently on the university's website and has been shared around the world, carried by a wave of outrage against further measures threatened by Trump and U.S. government officials. It is reasonable to suppose that Garber must have carefully weighed the words he chose to summarize his own position and that of the institution he represents. For that very reason, they are worth a careful reading:
“No government—regardless of which party is in power—should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.”
On the surface, one can agree with these words unreservedly. However, there is a disturbing detail that raises a number of questions. Why specify that the principle of autonomy claimed by Harvard applies to “private” universities? Is Garber suggesting that the kind of control he rightly rejected over his own university would be perfectly acceptable if imposed on universities that are not private?
The answer to this question brings us to the heart of the problem of “corporate universities,” as scholars in the field call them – a term describing universities which, like Harvard and the other large private universities in the United States, have become a de facto large corporation, with a budget that would even dwarf the budget for the entire education system of a number of countries, including European ones. A corporation which produces extraordinary results in terms of advancing knowledge in various fields – as highlighted, once again, on the university's website right after Garber's statement – but which claims these results as a good return on investment rather than as a mission with intrinsic value.
From that perspective, academic freedom is seen as instrumental for the product it is able to put out; it has no independent justification.
To a university thus conceived, losing the tax exemptions guaranteed to donors is a serious loss; at the same time, it is precisely that favorable tax regime that has given the private funders of some universities increasing power to influence the choices made by these institutions (as we have seen glaringly in recent months with the heavy lobbying by multibillionaire Bill Ackman at several U.S. universities). If Trump's claims to control are unacceptable, why are those of a private citizen not so? One suspects that the underlying issue is not academic freedom, but protecting the institution’s budget.
This private character of the corporate university has shown itself to be entirely compatible with a climate of repression of dissent and intimidation of the movement of solidarity with Palestine, which is reaching levels comparable to those of McCarthyism. Little does it matter that Jewish students are also protesting in many cases. The protests are displeasing to the donors, and to a number of organizations whose main purpose seems to be to defend Netanyahu and his cronies rather than (as they claim) the citizens of Israel or Jews in the diaspora.
In deference to this kind of pressure, universities have taken restrictive measures (such as closing down campuses) and in some cases have even gone so far as to call in the police to clear out student encampments.
If the university is a corporation, an encampment is not a political gesture whose value must be recognized as a legitimate expression of dissent, but the violation of a property right. Finally, it is worth pointing out that, a little less than a year ago, the same Adam Garber who is now so eloquently defending academic freedom had no qualms about denying graduation to some students who had taken part in the Palestine protests, and was criticized for doing so by many faculty and researchers at his own university.
If we look deeper than the noble-sounding words, what we are witnessing is yet another defeat of liberalism for which the main culprits are none other than liberals like Obama, who is now speaking out against Trump's demands and calling on universities to resist, but who didn’t move a finger to put the academic freedom of all universities – both public and private – on a more secure footing, deluding himself that reputational mechanisms were sufficient to guarantee it. And also harboring the delusion that the growing influence of private funders in setting the teaching and research agenda was not bound to erode the core ethical presuppositions of the universities’ mission in a democratic society.
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/viva-la-liberta-se-non-e-lo-schermo-degli-investitori on 2025-04-16