Opponents of Academic Freedom Get the History of Classical Education Wrong

Academic freedom is under assault in the U.S. This attack has included state censorship of educational materials and classroom discussions; bans on initiatives to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion; and proposals to end tenure and faculty governance.

Many right-wing officials even embrace the notion that conservatives should capture and reshape higher education to serve hyper-partisan interests, led by appointees who come from outside of academia and are instead loyal to state power holders. In 2023, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin directed all of his appointees to university boards to consider themselves an “extension of the executive branch.”

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During recent oral arguments in front of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, a lawyer representing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ administration took this position to its logical extreme: “In the classroom, the professor’s speech is the government’s speech, and the government can restrict professors on a content-wide basis and restrict them from offering viewpoints that are contrary.”

Organizations like the conservative Heritage Foundation justify these partisan takeovers as necessary to restore “classical education” in universities. Yet such claims misunderstand classical education. In fact, the idea that teachers ought to be free to teach their specialties unobstructed and that students should be free to learn what they want is integral to ideals of classical education dating back centuries.

Protections for academic freedom in medieval times helped pave the way for a flourishing of individual liberties in the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. The idea of academic freedom is older than the Magna Carta, classical liberalism, and modern declarations of rights. In a very real way, like those seminal ideas and documents, academic freedom is directly related to traditions of self-governance and individual liberty.

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The first universities originated as self-governing entities. Students formed the Studium at Bologna in 1088 AD. (As the University of Bologna, it remains the oldest in the Western world.) The growing reputation of the studium, which attracted scholars from across Europe, helped the village of Bologna become a commune with powers of municipal self-government. Bologna quickly became a major metropolis, eventually called the Learned City because of deep ties between the university and the city. Both institutions — studium and commune — were versions of self-governance that exemplified how “medieval people experimented in democratic representation, often at a small scale.”

Subsequent medieval universities, such as the University of Paris and the University of Cambridge, followed this model.

In 1155, Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I issued the Authentica Habita or Privilegium Scholasticum, which established the first rights and privileges for universities. Frederick gave scholars a status akin to clergy, categorizing them as a privileged class with similarly customized rules of self-governance. Frederick established these liberties because the Studium of Bologna represented an innovative new experiment in the dissemination of knowledge, yet scholars who traveled to it from other regions lacked protections from the different spheres of civil and church authority through which they passed. The proper enrichment of knowledge for purposes of general welfare, just like the proper administration of the church, required freedoms of self-governance.

The Authentica thus granted scholars freedom of movement and travel, which was essential to developing networks of knowledge across borders. Muslim-Arab scholars preserved the works of numerous classical thinkers, including Plato and Aristotle, during centuries when many Europeans lost knowledge of them. It was no coincidence then that the first university appeared in a part of medieval Europe (Bologna, in Northern Italy) with heavy Arabic and Islamic influences. Academic freedom to pursue cross-cultural exchanges was conducive to a quality university education from the beginning.

Finally, Frederick extended scholars the right of immunity from reprisals. The state would not punish teachers and students for what they taught and studied. Scholars would enjoy relative freedom to teach and learn according to their academic goals. Frederick and other leaders provided the right of immunity because the first universities trained professions valuable to society at large: lawyers, clergy, doctors, and scientists. Cultivating legitimate, self-determined expertise in these professions benefited the state by improving the general welfare.

Papal equivalents to such imperial protections appeared soon after. In 1179, Pope Alexander III decreed that a teacher’s license to teach should be based on proper scholarly qualifications. Pope Gregory’s Parens scientarium (1231) was an even more consequential affirmation of university autonomy: it assigned qualified teachers “the right to teach everywhere without further examinations.” Gregory, in other words, stipulated that scholars’ expertise and credentials should determine what they taught — a revolutionary idea for its time.

State and church protections for self-governance were intertwined with the foundational idea of what a university was. Both empire and papacy seemed to realize that restricting their own power over universities would endow those institutions with scholarly authority to benefit all society. Protecting scholars to do their work aided the growth and refinement of secular and religious power structures alike.

Medieval universities did not automatically lead to modern (and universal) declarations of rights and secular governance for all. They were primarily restricted to privileged members of society (and remain so in many ways today). Repressions of free thought and expression were also common in the medieval period.

Over time, however, the origins of academic freedom spread essential seeds of revolutionary change in Western modernity. The rediscovery of classical scientific knowledge in medieval universities created communities of scientists who contributed to the scientific revolution in the 16th and 17th centuries. Leaders of the protestant reformation in Europe, most famously Martin Luther, emerged from university programs in theology with historical ties to medieval institutions.

Enlightenment-era universities also promoted the idea that education could be a source of liberation from political and religious dogmas — a historical echo of scholars who began to question such dogmas in medieval studiums. Academic freedom helped propel each of these revolutionary events, which dramatically expanded individual liberties through a combination of scientific knowledge, freedom of belief, and the values of self-determination.

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Tragically, the values of independent thought and self-governance that academic freedom symbolizes are now under threat in the U.S. Propogandists refute academic freedom as a nebulous standard. Pundits dismiss integral elements of it, like tenure, as “fringe benefits.” Attacks on academic freedom that define universities as mere adjuncts of state power are less enlightened in their understanding of the relationship between universities and political authority than some medieval doctrines.

Yet these hyper-partisan assaults are also characteristically modern. Authoritarian regimes in recent centuries have consistently targeted spaces for individual thought and conscience that academic freedom allows.

The right-wing rhetoric of “reclaiming” higher education to defend Western culture also misconstrues the history of the first universities. Multiculturalism — a major target of that rhetoric — was integral to the origins of university education in Europe. The classical education that conservatives venerate and claim to safeguard only became possible because of academic freedom that limited outside interference and reprisal in far more restrictive societies.

We should name assaults on academic freedom today, in all their forms, as both unenlightened and authoritarian threats. They erode not only the public goods of higher education, but also vital elements of the Western tradition at its best.

Bradford Vivian is professor of communication arts and sciences at Pennsylvania State University and author of Campus Misinformation: The Real Threat to Free Speech in American Higher Education (Oxford University Press).

Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.