http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1197349
Enjoyed this piece – so important to think what higher education is about, what it’s for, and how much we can achieve when we share values (difficult in such a time of competition):
Delivering the conference’s presidential address on 12 December, Sir David said that universities needed to think harder about their “moral compass”, adding that the cardinal rule for the academy should be to “strive to tell the truth”.
“Academic freedom, in the sense of following difficult ideas wherever they may lead, is possibly the fundamental ‘academic’ value,” he said.
His second commandment was for universities to “take care in establishing the truth”, urging academics to prize the scientific method or the search for “authenticity” in the humanities.
“There’s a particular type of academic bad faith, which moves too quickly to rhetoric and persuasion in advance of the secure establishment of the grounds for conviction,” he argued.
Read full article.