Power, Discourse, Ethics : A Policy Study of Academic Freedom

In this unique study, emerging higher educationleader and policy expert Kenneth D. Gariepy takes a Foucauldian genealogicalapproach to the study of the intellectually "e;free"e; subject through the analysisof selected academic freedom statement-events. Assuming academic freedom to bean institutionalized discourse-practice operating in the field of contemporarypostsecondary education in Canada, a specific kind of cross-disciplinary,historico-theoretical research is conducted that pays particular attention tothe productive nature and effects of power-knowledge. The intent is to disruptacademic freedom as commonsensical "e;good"e; and universal "e;right"e; in order toinstead focus on how it is that the academic subject emerges as free/unfree tothink - and therefore free/unfree to be - through particular, effective, andeffecting regimes of truth and strategies of objectification andsubjectification. In this way, the author suggests how it is that academicfreedom operates as a set of systemically agonistic practices that might onlyrealize a different economy of discourse through the contingent nature of thevery social power that produces it. Dr. Gariepy's use of Foucault's genealogicalanalysis provides a wholly different way in which to re-think the constructionand practice of academic freedom in Canada and is thus an importantcontribution to the broader discursive field it seeks to analyze. Givencontemporary neoliberal critiques of the university, the issue of academicfreedom and the intellectually free subject is a vital problem that is ofinterest to numerous knowledge producing communities - on and off campus. Equally important in addressing the problem of academic freedom is how the bookalso contributes a new description of the genealogical method - somethingFoucault did not stipulate - that is original, ambitious, compelling, andinsightful. I commend Dr. Gariepy for returning, to investigate anew, an issuewe think we know."e; - E. Lisa Panayotidis, PhD, Professor & Chair,Educational Studies in Curriculum and Learning, Werklund School of Education,University of Calgary, Editor of History of Intellectual Culture.