Academic freedom and Netflix’s ‘The Chair’: Implications for staff-student dialogue

Abstract

Academic freedom is seriously under threat. Here I will consider how the marketisation of Higher Education has exacerbated the decline of ‘academic freedom’. While the effects of a ‘cancel culture’ on university provision are difficult to ignore, threats to academic freedom raise a number of questions, such as: ‘who is allowed to speak on campus?’, ‘to whom?’, and ‘about what?’. These questions are fundamental to the academic profession, and therefore have clear implications for teaching and learning in Higher Education. Through an analysis of Netflix’s The Chair (2021), and drawing on the works of Martin Buber, I argue that academics’ freedom to teach is implicitly constrained by student-consumer desires, and in turn this reduces the space for genuine dialogue on university campuses. Rather than closing down debate and the discussion of ‘controversial’ topics, universities instead need to cultivate a climate of trust, openness, and reciprocity on campuses, such that genuine staff-student dialogue can flourish. University campuses are precisely the places where academics should be able to engage in scholarly debate on matters of importance – where students may be exposed to radically different viewpoints and perspectives – and film and TV series can be used to initiate such conversations.

Keywords:

• Academic freedom
• freedom to teach
• student consumerism
• dialogue

Acknowledgements

This paper developed from the following presentations:

Skea, C. (2022, February 9). Academic freedom and Netflix’s The Chair: Implications for staff-student dialogue [Paper presentation]. North-West Branch Seminar, Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain.

Skea, C. (2022, March 2–-27). Academic freedom and Netflix’s The Chair: Implications for staff-student dialogue [Paper presentation]. Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain Annual Conference, Oxford, England.

Notes

1 A recent example of staff-student discord and highly publicised student protests is in the case of Kathleen Stock at the University of Sussex. Stock came under fire for her philosophical views which were branded ‘transphobic’ by students. In her teaching and research, Stock discussed the distinction between ‘sex’ and ‘gender’, arguing that it is ‘sex’ rather than gender which determines ‘femalehood’ or ‘malehood’. After Stock’s personal safety was threatened and the protests became more heated, she resigned from the university. The Office for Students (OfS) is now set to investigate whether or not the university failed to fulfil their obligation to protect Stock’s academic ‘freedom of speech’. For further details, see: Adams (2021), Lambert (2021), and Thorburn (2021).

2 The ‘Academic Freedom Index’ (AFi) is a quantitative measure of the level of de facto academic freedom experienced in different countries around the world. The AFi is calculated based on five indicators: ‘freedom to research and teach’, ‘freedom of academic exchange and dissemination’, ‘institutional autonomy’, ‘campus integrity’, and ‘freedom of academic and cultural expression’ (Kinzelbach et al., 2021, p.8). Worryingly, the AFi scores for both the UK and USA have decreased between 2011 and 2021. For a more detailed analysis of the shifting landscape of academic freedom on a global scale, see: Kinzelbach et al. (2022).

3 2021 Byron explains the emergence of ‘safe spaces’ as follows: ‘Safe spaces find their roots in feminist consciousness-raising efforts of the 1960s and 1970s. These separatist spaces were meant to provide women with opportunities to discuss issues that affected them with other women’ (2017, p.118).

‘Trigger warnings’ are integral to the creation of ‘safe spaces’; essentially, these warnings involve directly highlighting if any sensitive or ‘traumatic’ issues (such as domestic violence, sexual assault, or self-harm) are discussed in a particular book, film, or set of images. These warnings then enable people, in this case students, to make an informed choice to engage with the material or not, and if so, that they might need to approach it with greater care.

4 ‘Cinemeducation’ is broadly defined as ‘the use of movie clips or whole movies to help educate medical students and residents on the biopsychosocialspiritual aspects of health care’ (Alexander et al., 2006, p.12021).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Claire Skea

Dr. Claire Skea is a Lecturer in Education at Liverpool Hope University. Claire is a philosopher of education, with a specific focus on policy and practice in Higher Education. Her research interests include student satisfaction and the student experience in Higher Education, student engagement and reading habits, and philosophy and film.