A new book by Frank Furedi, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Kent, argues that modern-day universities now exhibit the characteristics of ‘closed-minded authoritarian institutions’.
In his book, entitled What’s Happened to the University: A Sociological Exploration of its Infantilisation (Routledge, October 2016), Professor Furedi asks why universities, which in the 1960s nurtured radicalism and intellectual experimentation, have now become conformist and censorial.
Tracing attitudes to free speech and academic freedom on campus over the past 50 years, Professor Furedi seeks to explain how and why the culture that dominated higher education for many years changed. He concludes that universities now need to ‘re-appropriate’ academic freedom.
He considers current university practices such as ‘trigger warnings’, ‘safe spaces’ and ‘mandatory sensitivity training’, and asks how students and academics, previously at the forefront of radical thought and action, came to accept what he describes as an ‘intolerant, paternalistic etiquette’.
Charting the rise of the ‘paternalistic’ university as having its origins in the US – which then influenced other English-speaking societies – Professor Furedi suggests that globalisation has ensure that the estrangement of the academy from the ideals of freedom and tolerance is driven by cultural influences that transcend national boundaries.
Professor Furedi concludes his argument by suggesting that universities need to ‘re-educate themselves, and re-appropriate academic freedom as the foundation of their work’.