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Comment by bee_rider | Hacker News Reader

If we exclude the social context in which academic discussions occur from "academic context" then I guess there won't be very many cases where academic freedom is infringed upon.

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The original commenter did not mention being banned from any academic discussions -- his freedom was not infringed. It is the other people's freedom to ignore him that he wanted to infringe. He wanted to force other people to engage with him. That's the opposite of freedom.

And now for a case of real infringement of academic freedom:

https://quillette.com/2018/09/07/academic-activists-send-a-p...

No, I just wanted to paint a broad picture. Maybe I failed in that regard for you specifically, but I think other people got it.

The broad picture you painted is that society nowadays is somehow more free because less people disagree with your views. That's absolutely incorrect and has nothing to do with the concept of academic freedom to boot. I'm getting tired of reiterating.

You started with an argument-free assertion and your point seems to rely (as far as I can tell) on a pretty specific meaning of "academic freedom," which you've only defined by telling us that various aspects which one might expect to fall under "academic freedom" don't quite qualify. So it isn't that surprising that you've had to "reiterate" a bit.

I think we'll probably all agree that the juice isn't really worth the squeeze here, though.

Academic freedom is a relatively well-defined term, and requiring other people to acknowledge you and your ideas is not a part of it. Forcing your ideas onto others is fascist and the opposite of freedom.

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