Abstract
THE report of the Conference on Academic Freedom at Oxford in August 1935 and the publication entitled “The Frustration of Science” form the text of a fine plea for academic freedom by M. J. Pelseneer in Revue de VUniversitti de Bruxelles of October-November. M. Pelseneer refers again to the various directions in which academic freedom is threatened and to the necessity for organized united resistance to those threats, and he emphasizes the way in which the freedom of the intellectual is linked up with the freedom of mankind. True liberty of thought is that which liberates mankind from the indignity of bondage. In particular, he pleads for tolerance in the matter of university appointments in the sense not merely of respecting the opinions of others but also in allowing them reasonable opportunity of expression. In this connexion it is interesting to note the conditions in the University of Heidelberg as set out on p. 98 of this issue of NATURE. M. Pelseneer, recognizing that human society must look to science for just laws and rational organization, even if their application to the distribution of production and government involves a social revolution, suggests that even within the limits of a given economic system, it is still worth while to discover the means of securing the minimum frustration of science.
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Academic Freedom. Nature 139, 105 (1937). https://doi.org/10.1038/139105c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/139105c0