Internal Threats to Academic Freedom: Problems of Professional Control

Attention has customarily centred on the academic profession’s ability to carry out its work in light of external threats to academic freedom. This article draws attention to internal threats − what the academic profession does to impair itself. Self-regulation is a central attribute of professions. In the absence of professional control, quality of practice is thrown into question. Like academic freedom, self-regulation is a principle and not always a practice. Focused on the academic profession’s teaching role, this article examines two types of problems in professional control that impair academic freedom: slippage and overreach. Both are instances of organizational deviance and abrogation of professional ethics. It is argued that the patterns threaten the structural integrity and public confidence of faculty, fields and higher-education institutions and thereby compromise the profession’s capacity to persuasively defend itself.