Academic freedom, religion and the natural sciences

Tom McLeish

pp. 63-84

in: Kenneth García (ed), Reexamining academic freedom in religiously affiliated universities, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016

Abstract

Academic freedom is less frequently associated with the natural sciences than with the humanities and social sciences. Tom McLeish identifies important but overlooked pressure points for academic freedom within the sciences, finding that constraints are as often imposed from within the research community as from without. He uses the examples of climate change, industrial alignment, evolution and the materialistic framing of scientific research to illustrate current threats to academic freedom at different scales, and draws on theological material as a resource with which to resist their potential damage to the health of academia and its social context, finding this a particular, but not exclusive, task for institutions with religious foundation.

Cited authors

McLeish Tom