Critique, dissent, disciplinarity

Judith Butler

pp. 10-29

in: Karinde Boer, Karin de Boer, Ruth Sonderegger (eds), Conceptions of critique in modern and contemporary philosophy, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012

Abstract

Academic freedom has become a contested category in the United States. On the one hand, conservative scholars have sought to use the term to criticise what they perceive as political correctness in the academy, whereas progressive scholars have sought to bolster academic freedom as a principle that safeguards academic self-determination over and against corporate and government intrusion. Robert Post, for example, has argued that the way to preserve academic self-governance is to allow tenured faculty to make judgements about curriculum and appointments because they have undergone the relevant professional training in a given discipline and so are uniquely prepared to make these sorts of judgements. Protecting academic freedom, according to this view, depends upon our ability to protect the singular professional capacities that tenured faculty have assumed by virtue of professional training and practices of peer review.