ACADEMIC FREEDOM.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 184, 6 August 1934, Page 9

ACADEMIC FREEDOM.

TO INQUIRE AND TO ANNOUNCE

UNIVERSITY TEACHER'S CLAIM.

"Universities are, or should be, places in which controversy is not clouded with the mist of feeling and the atmosphere of discussion is not electric with the engagement of personal interests," said Professor W. A. Sewell in the course of his address on "Free Speech" at a meeting of the Rationalist-Association last night.

"In the universities more than anywhere else men are likely to be interested in the true and the good. You will never have in" your universities the spirit of free inquiry, the disinterested search for true opinion and rational belief, if there ie any suggestion that the university teacher should be supervised, corrected, reprimanded, or, in the last resort, dismissed, because of opinions that may not be in accord with the traditions and views of the majority of citizens.

"If we say to the university teacher, 'You must discover the truth, but on no account must it be this or that,' we rob the university of what prestige it should have in the world of the intellect, as well as in the more hurried, more heated world of everyday affaire.

"But that is not all. Ido not believe in cloistered learning. It is the business of the university to respond to the needs of the day—to make its contribution to the settlement of the problems of the day. The university should not be like a straw in the wind of gusty changes in public mood and opinion; it should be the solid and sympathetic arbiter of such change. The university teacher would do little good if he found the truth and kept it to himself. Hu must announce it—and no one has the right to make him afraid - to announce it."