ABSTRACT
Somewhere in his 'Adventure of Ideas,' Alfred North Whitehead observes that 'Great ideas often enter reality in strange guises and with disgusting alliances.' This observation might be made, perhaps without much hesitation, by one who has studied the contemporary development of the idea of student academic freedom. If one grants that this idea—at least in the field of education—approximates the significance of the essential equality of men which Whitehead was alluding to, student academic freedom might indeed be shown to have entered the world of the university in 'strange guises and with disgusting alliances.' It came with ragged clothes and long hair, rough manners and coarse language, open six, and defiance of authority. But further, it came initially not as a moral cause under which student rebels rallied. Rather, it appeared, in the words of Sidney Hook, 'adventitiously in the wake of other student demands that required an ex post facto rationale.' (1)
