ACADEMIC FREEDOM

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22851, 5 October 1937, Page 8

ACADEMIC FREEDOM

"We have been permitted to enjoy throughout the present century the two grand conditions of academic health and prosperity—civic order and intellectual liberty," said the Bishop of Durham, Dr. Hcnaley 'Henson, speaking at the centenary celebration of Durham University. "Not even the terrific disaster of the Great War, which depleted our ranks and diminished our resources, was able to rob ns of those supreme and vital boons of order and freedom. These have no,t often or for long been granted to universities. They are never boons that can wisely be taken for granted. They must be guarded as well as enjoyed. The cause and the justification of academic privilege in the Middle Ages was the necessity of creating, in the heart of a violent and unstable society, some protected area within which men might live in peace and think in freedom. The immunities of the clergy were then the buttresses of intellectual liberty. They survived their purpose and became hindrances instead of aids to human progress. The new universities were born and cradled in an atmosphere of freedom. They surely must stand in the forefront of the champions of academic liberty against the aggressions of the totalitarian State or the subtler assaults of racial fanaticism. In our difficult post-war world the universities are called to a noble service. They seem to hold a position somewhat analogous to that of the Tribunes of Roman history. They are commissioned to be the watch-dogs of human liberty. They are required to interpose their implacable veto when the reigning powers—political, social, economic—seek to crush into congruity with their own fell designs the reason and conscience of mankind. They also are the Lord's temples, and 'where the spirit of the Lord is there is liberty.' "