What Does it Mean to be an Academic? A Colloquium

Abstract This paper takes the form of a position statement followed by three responses from colleagues located in different institutions of higher education. The resulting colloquium is concerned, among other things, with the role of the academic within higher education and with the notion of freedom as it relates to the definition and development of that role. It sets itself against the traditional notion of ‘academic freedom’ and explores alternative constructions of academic professionalism. Freedom remains central to these constructions; but an outward‐looking emancipatory notion of freedom, not an inward‐looking and self‐interested notion. The practices that are documented in the paper and the issues that these raise are a direct consequence of this preoccupation with reconstructing the moral bases of academic professionalism. The paper reaches no firm conclusions, but highlights a number of key differences within a shared emancipatory project: differences shaped by the institutional and cultural con...