Treading the tightrope: Can the polytechnics live with the idea of political and academic freedom

The very use of the phrase ‘Academic Freedom’ is invidious. Freedom is a concept which most of us can understand; our interpretation does however differ from place to place, and certainly there are ample grounds for disagreement between a citizen of, say, the Soviet Union, one from a poor and embattled country such as Egypt, and someone from the West. It is something we all want, which some have usurped, which some have struggled and suffered for, and about which we all seem to differ. The reasons for this are not hard to discern, although difficult to rectify; one man's freedom is another's servitude. The expression ‘Academic Freedom’ seems to imply that there might be some special sorts of freedom which are peculiarly appropriate to the academic environment. There might even be a suggestion that there should be some freedom enjoyed by the academic fraternity which is not enjoyed by everyone else; possibly there is also a latent notion that academic freedom in the polytechnics is a further special category.