As aspiring autocrats around the globe attack academic freedom, there is an understandable tendency on the part of those defending universities always to think about responses and strategies for self-defense on two different levels: what are the most coherent understandings of academic freedom on one level and, on another, how might one convince the public at large about the value of our institutions (and, more particularly, the necessity of academic freedom)?

All of this is a polite way of saying that there is a danger of overclaiming on the second, explicitly public-facing level. The danger is not new; many of us are aware how especially more functionalist approaches to academic freedom, while eminently plausible, can turn out to be double-edged: universities serve a particular function in complex modern societies, but that notion can also open the door to bad-faith critics of universities charging that institutions of higher education are failing to fulfil the expectations of contemporary societies (never mind the view – also prevalent among non-autocratic politicians that research should mostly serve technological innovation).

My plea here is for modesty on both levels when it comes to claims about the connection between democracy and universities – and for resisting a kind of overclaiming which might be especially tempting when aspiring autocrats are so obviously attempting to damage both core democratic institutions and academia at the same time. More particularly, I want to show that three well-known arguments for connecting academia and democracy are in many ways plausible – but also have significant downsides, if pushed too far, or need to be at least somewhat qualified.

Making Better Citizens?

First, we frequently hear the claim that those who attend university are trained in critical thinking and therefore turn out to be good – and, one supposes, in particular, vigilant — citizens; a somewhat related argument is that graduates have, broadly speaking, more liberal attitudes¹⁾, as they have been continuously exposed to the pluralism inherent in academia – not just “debates,” but the possibility of seeing problems from a range of different disciplinary perspectives (and, even within that, a plurality of methods); they are also more likely to question received wisdom, which is why academic freedom has been conceived of, in the words of Jonathan R. Cole, as inherently “unsettling”²⁾ for any society, or even been presented as a “rebel right,” to quote Renáta Uitz.³⁾ In the abstract, there is considerable merit to such arguments, and it so happens that there is empirical evidence in the form of surveys to back them up as well.

Somewhat related, and arguably less well-known, is the notion that a particular feature of a democratic way of life – in other words, not democracy as a matter of institutions, but of mentalities and dispositions – shares important characteristics with an, admittedly idealized, conception of academia: in a democratic way of life, people are supposed to encounter each other as equals; they ought to be able to look each other in the eye; this most obviously contrasts with practices of deference – scraping and bowing – as one finds them typically in feudalism. More concretely: when it comes to research, only the originality (or at least quality) should count; the rookie on the lowest level of the university hierarchy should be taken seriously and recognized, if they come up with something important.⁴⁾ We know that the reality is often different; but that is true of democracy as well. It still matters that we hold on to the ideal.

However, if idealizations are not the problem, is there maybe another one with this vision? Here is the flipside of the argument for overlaps between the virtues cultivated in democracy and academia: are those making it not on one level saying that those not attending university are bound to be worse citizens? But is the “diploma divide” not a source of problems for democracies already, and would tying democratic citizenship so closely to higher education not exacerbate them?⁵⁾ Are those without degrees really destined to be less liberal (and, even if they were, is that necessarily a problem for democracy)? Is the fact that academia does constantly judge – between good and bad or at least less good academic work – and discriminate against the less good not pulling in a different direction than a liberal (in a very old-fashioned sense) “live-and-let-live” attitude that can make it easier to deal with deep disagreements in a democracy? Or, on a different note: are academia and democracy really characterized by the same level of openness on the part of individuals? A researcher needs to be open to having an account falsified; but a citizen is perfectly entitled to say that their mind is not infinitely open politically, and that, instead, they are committed to a particular framework of values (which also, let’s say, explains why they are active in a particular political party).

Now, even if one accepts all the claims about the beneficial effects of education for democracy usually advanced in this context – are they not a reason to strengthen forms of political education at the secondary level (compulsory, after all, in most countries)? Should not as many citizens as possible have a chance to practice certain virtues? How can it be fair that those privileged to enjoy higher education get a capacity for being good democrats on top?

Universities as Suppliers of Democratic Competence

Second, there is Robert Post’s well known theory that the knowledge produced by academia can help “democratic competence,” as experts assist citizens with arriving at collectively binding decisions.⁶⁾ There is also the notion of the university as a distinct “knowledge institution” that can supply citizens with relevant information and, more particularly, act as a watchdog for democracy by continuously assessing the quality of a democracy (and possible threats to it); there is even the claim that universities should be understood as something like a “fifth branch”⁷⁾ – the press being the fourth, of course – in the American constitutional system.⁸⁾ Put differently, there are basic epistemic requirements and, as Aziz Huq and Tom Ginsburg have put it, “epistemic mandates” for democracy to function well. As Huq and Ginsburg explain further, “where information is systematically withheld or distorted by government so as to engender correlated, population-wide errors, democracy cannot fulfill its epistemic mandate.”⁹⁾

Undoubtedly the quality of certain discussions might be improved if researchers supplied more competence; but there is obviously also a danger of technocracy, and possible tensions between what Post theorized as democratic competence on the one hand and democratic self-government on the other (and, of course, playing the latter off against the former has been an increasingly popular strategy among nefarious political actors).

While knowledge institutions do indeed play an important role in democracies, not all of them can plausibly be covered by something like academic freedom: the press operates according to a different logic, as do courts and many government institutions tasked with producing reliable data. Technocracy – or what an influential German book called die Epistemisierung des Politischen – is hardly inevitable¹⁰⁾; but it is important to remind ourselves that democracies making stupid collectively binding decisions can still be democracies. It might be best to settle on the view that universities can have an important instrumental value for democracy, or, in the parlance of German constitutional law, academic freedom is best understood as a “serving basic right,” a dienendes Grundrecht.

Universities as Part of Civil Society

That leaves a third argument, one that is not really very specific to universities but one that has played an increasing role as academic institutions started to come under pressure from aspiring autocrats. The claim here is that universities are part of a vast, heterogeneous landscape of autonomous civil society institutions which provide a counterweight to a potentially overbearing, if not outright authoritarian state. Many civil society institutions, so the reasoning goes, provide spaces for freely associating; more important still, they provide spaces for free discussions and the development of ideas – all of which, by definition, ought especially to be the case inside universities.¹¹⁾

There are two problems with this vision; they are not inherent in anything, but contingent, and yet serious (and arguably frequent) enough such that one cannot simply dismiss them as freak aberrations. First, it is simply not true that civil society is by definition democratic, in the sense of featuring, let alone producing, democratic actors. The Weimar Republic had a rich associational life – it just so happened to be full of citizens who held passionately anti-democratic beliefs.¹²⁾ Less obviously, a robust set of institutions beyond the state can also make it easier for autocrats to penetrate society; once the institutions are captured, autocracy will become more entrenched than in societies that initially might be more vulnerable to autocratic takeover, but then resist being organized according to the autocrat’s imperatives – not because citizens all want to resist, but because there are no structures, neither for autocracy nor for resistance.¹³⁾

And then there is the even more uncomfortable fact that in some countries universities themselves are organized along fairly authoritarian lines – in the midst of more or less well-functioning democracies.¹⁴⁾ In many institutions, plenty of lip service is being paid to participation by faculty and students; but de facto presidents and trustees decide. This is certainly the case with a very large number of universities in the US, which are de facto controlled either by wealthy trustees often with no particular investment in academic freedom or by state legislatures (also often with no particular investment in academic freedom). Now, granted, none of these observations are fatal to the academia-as-civil society argument; even when universities largely disempower faculty and students, faculty and students might still enjoy important free spaces (which aspiring autocrats will always find objectionable). But we should also not be starry-eyed.

A Modest Conclusion

Edward Shils once asserted confidently that “the universities owe a great deal to liberal democracy and … liberal democracy owes a considerable part of its successful functioning to universities.”¹⁵⁾ In many ways that remains true. But there is also the danger of pretending that connections between academia and democracy are actually stronger than they really are – conceptually and empirically – when, on the second level I mentioned at the beginning, defenders of the university try to justify their institutions to citizens at large. Overclaiming might well backfire, even among good-faith observers. A more modest, but ultimately also more robust approach would serve both universities and the societies in which they find themselves better.