Academic Freedom and the Goose that Laid Golden Eggs

What is academic freedom? Is it a glorified term supporting job security for university professors? Is it a vague phrase in liberal ideology, of little practical interest?

In this essay, I argue that universities, especially research universities with doctoral programs, are essential institutions in producing new knowledge in all fields—in natural sciences, social sciences, philosophy, and humanities—that have enabled the transformation of society and economy of today’s world. Academic freedom—meaning freedom from restrictions on research, teaching, and learning in universities—is key to universities’ success.

1810–1910: The Goose that Laid Golden Eggs

In the years around 1900, a parable spread through Germany, explaining how German universities had become the strongest and most prestigious in the world. In this heroic story, philosopher Wilhelm von Humboldt founded the University of Berlin in 1810 as a research university, with professors who were both teachers and researchers, leading doctoral students in research seminars, and publishing their results in academic journals.

Academic freedom meant that professors were protected from church or state restrictions on the topics and methods of their research and teaching. In this story, the Berlin model of universities succeeded and spread across Europe to Japan and North America, culminating in the International Association of Academies (IAA), which assembled national academies of university-based disciplines beginning in 1899.

Thus, secular universities and their academic freedom became “the goose that laid golden eggs” in an image drawn from Aesop. The “goose” was the university system that sheltered the freedom of academic departments and graduate seminars; the “eggs” were the discoveries of knowledge, which could be applied to benefit society. In the areas of natural science, social science, philosophy, and culture, knowledge expanded through free academic inquiry; debate resolved unsettled questions.

1910–1970: The Benefits of Academic Freedom    

The protective “goose” of the German university survived and produced a century of “golden eggs” of knowledge. Yet the parable based on the University of Berlin proved to be oversimplified. Indeed, the university faced internal flaws such as elite bias and inadequate finances, as well as external vulnerabilities to restrictive pressures of state and religion.

The nineteenth century, with its dramatic expansion of knowledge in many fields, was also a time of hierarchical and exclusionary ideas. Racism, national hierarchy, gender discrimination, and simplified theories of natural and social relations obstructed the expansion of knowledge. Humboldt’s university, despite its vision of expanding global knowledge, was an elite institution, neglecting people outside a privileged few. And the persistence of religious restrictions and the expanding structures of national governments interfered with university research.

Increasingly, professors became explicit in defending their academic freedom, supporting individual faculty members and the open climate of the university. In the United States, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) formed in 1915. It built the logic and institutions of academic tenure to defend individual professors, leading to a 1940 declaration of academic freedom principles that is still widely cited.

External factors included World War I, which divided universities and academies into competing national camps. Thus, the IAA collapsed in 1914 and recovered only partially after the war. From the 1920s,  the rise of fascism and militarism brought new state controls, the expulsion of Jewish and other professors, and the near collapse of German universities with World War II.

The defeat of Axis powers in 1945 opened a great era of postwar educational reform. The United Nations Educational, Social, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) formed to support and coordinate universities, academic associations, and global exchange of knowledge. Postwar education expanded throughout the world. Established nations expanded their universities and, by 1970, some 70 nations had gained independence and founded universities.

With the reaffirmation of academic freedom and new attention to university autonomy, a more nuanced university parable might emerge: The university—still a goose—spread her wings over nations and disciplines, laying golden eggs and maintaining the strength to survive. But the goose’s eggs might not be made of pure gold, and universities might be weakened by political limits on their financial strength and efforts to dismiss professors with critical views. Golden eggs thus became new disciplines in climatology, area studies, and in management studies to support corporations and foundations. Overall, the postwar system of universities reached its high-water mark in 1970.

1970–2005: More Golden Eggs and New Academic Tension

With more disciplinary departments, cross-disciplinary and collaborative research led to formalized methods for analysis at both micro and macro scales. New knowledge expanded the institutional structure of society in governments, corporations, foundations, religion, and international organizations. Internet communication and then the rise of network theory accelerated these changes from the 1990s.

As economic growth slowed in the 1970s, governments began to cut back on university funding. The rise of neoliberal philosophy emphasized that decisions should rely on market prices rather than on assessments of social welfare. Programs of deregulation followed in field after field: the industries of fossil fuels, agribusiness, and food processing greatly cut their tax bills. Corporate and government grants to universities gave priority to projects centered on corporate interests.

In religion, groups within each major faith pressed universities to limit student admission and to teach within limits of revealed knowledge of Jihadist Islam, evangelical Christianity, Zionist Judaism, nationalist Hinduism, and nationalist Buddhism. Corporations, especially multinational corporations (MNCs), expanded from just a few to becoming the dominant sector in the world economy and in university research. Nonprofit foundations too used management techniques to grant near-complete control to CEOs of hospitals and charitable organizations. Further, the rise of the “all-administrative university” undermined the previous system of shared professorial governance.

Amid this era of MNCs, UNESCO’s 1997 report reaffirmed university autonomy and academic freedom. But corporate control of universities continued to grow, distorting research priorities. The parable of the goose and the golden eggs needed to be revised yet again.

2005–2025: A Caged Goose

After decades of growing pressure on academic freedom through corporate and religious restrictions, governments joined to add explicit violations of academic freedom, resulting in a general decrease in academic freedom in many nations after 2005.

Governments undermining academic freedom included Poland from 2009 and Brazil from 2017. The most extreme interference came with the 2025 election of Donald Trump as President of the United States: an executive order led to the arrest and attempted expulsion of Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University researcher and permanent U.S. resident who opposed the U.S.-Israeli war on Gaza; Trump’s Department of Justice arrested a Wisconsin judge who advised a plaintiff on his rights as a resident; and Trump’s Department of Education simply canceled all federal grants to Harvard.

University social scientists responded by expanding global analysis of social relations. The Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) program at Sweden’s University of Gothenberg published an Academic Freedom Index from 2017. Figure 1 summarizes its results, year by year, giving the number of countries surveyed (grey), countries with declining academic freedom (purple), and countries with increasing academic freedom (yellow). This is the best available measure of global academic freedom, though it measures only governmental and legal restrictions on academic freedom. (If it included religious and corporate restrictions, it would show a significantly more serious weakening of academic freedom.)

Figure 1 also shows accelerating decline in academic freedom from 2005 (in purple)—demonstrating that the current crisis has been building for twenty years. Yet the great peak of 1991 in new academic freedom also stands out. So, while we can see both growth and decline in academic freedom in the past, we cannot yet tell whether academic freedom will grow or decline in the future.

At the present moment, it appears that the university’s goose is being caged by corporate, state, and religious influences. Her powers of creating knowledge are wounded. Her eggs have come to be controlled and even owned by powerful institutions. The university contribution to society is threatened. In addition to rights of free speech, the current crises of environmental change and social inequality are unlikely to be resolved without expanded autonomy at the university level, which is essential to conducting relevant research and developing new and effective ideas. Academic freedom, in fact, is among the most important issues in global affairs—at all scales.