ABSTRACT
How can the value of academic freedom be conceptualized as an enlightened ideal and sustained as an institutional practice? This chapter considers this question by situating Weber’s occasional writings on academic freedom in the university (1908–11) within the framework of his early methodological reflections on objectivity (1904), on the one hand, and his later discussion of value-freedom (1917), on the other. After elaborating on Weber’s contribution to the debates over the role of the university and the conditions of academic freedom of his time with respect to professorial appointments and promotion, academic publication and discussion, and classroom teaching and learning, the essay concludes by considering the implications of his arguments for fostering the autonomy of higher education today.
