ABSTRACT
This chapter takes stock of some important insights contained in the analyses offered so far and anticipates in succinct terms some of the key arguments of the following chapters. Thus, it serves as a pause and a segue for the reader, while at the same time giving a sense of the overall thrust and central thesis of this book. The question which provides the framework for this retrospective and prospective look asks about the relationship between university leadership and academic freedom. In line with what has been laid out in the previous chapters, we argue that the nature and implications of this relationship cannot be properly characterized without a reference to the notion of value, hence to an understanding of the Evaluation Machinery. How could those who lead our institutions of higher education safeguard and promote free scientific inquiry and teaching without being guided by at least a sense, if not an explicit understanding, of the critical difference between the reliance on values which characterizes latter-day research practices and the a-scientific, or rather counter-scientific, use of values in self-referred procedures of evaluation? Hence, something like a “value discriminant” is key in determining whether those who are entrusted with a leadership role in academia will be capable of preserving whatever genuine scientific spirit is alive in their institutions, or whether, on the contrary, they will act as head-enforcers of alleged “marches towards excellence” which nip in the bud even the awakening of a memory of academic freedom.
