The question: When in conflict should academic freedom be placed above community standards?
Another wording of the same question: When academic freedom comes in conflict with the community standards, should it be allowed to pursue academic freedom?
Before you start philosophizing let me define a few terms: Academic freedom - liberty to teach and pursue knowledge and to discuss it openly without restriction
community standards - the standards placed forth by a certain community as a result of group beliefs and knowledge.
Uh, could you be more specific? I don’t think a community would be too happy if they found a certain group of males injected with syphilis in order to observe its effects on them. On the other hand, a rigid religious community might reject medical research because it goes against their religion. Academic freedom is great, but it is also in an academic community (and therefore at times suppressed) so I suppose you’d have to define community a little more clearly.
That’s not what I meant, though I do appreciate they hyperbole. I meant like when Socrates got arrested for “corrupting young minds” or when a local teacher got in trouble for teaching the poem “Howl” to his 12th grade AP english class.
Except that it’s not a hyperbole, it really happened. But your two examples seem more involved with high school than with academic freedom. What exactly is the role of universal public education in a society is a good question.
What do we teach our young people and what scientists/researchers do are two different things. Should a teacher be allowed to teach ‘Howl’? The historical significance (and aesthetic influence) of the poem is without question. Hmmm, maybe they shouldn’t teach ‘Oedipus Rex’ either. Perhaps ‘Mein Kampf’ should be taught? Again, its historical significance is without question. My teacher refuse to teach Kipling and “The Merchant of Venice” for individual non-aesthetic reasons. She also refused to teach Coleridge’s “Xanadu” on the grounds that it was drug induced.
So, I say the community should have a say in what is taught, but it should be placed in a continuing dialogue, not that one side universally takes precedence over another at all times.