I begin with a straightforward proposition: academic freedom is inhumane. Its inhumanity isn’t of the physical, legal, or intellectual variety. Even at its best, academic freedom is capable of transforming human beings into instruments of bureaucracy. It is inhumane as an ontological category. It cannot provide the very artifact it promises: freedom. To become practicable, academic freedom requires textual boundaries. Under this sort of regime, freedom is merely academic.
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A transcript of the 2019 TB Davie Memorial Lecture at the University of Cape Town, delivered August 7, 2019.