Academic Freedom and Philosophy of Music Education: A Critical Exploration

Abstract: Academic freedom has become an important topic in recent years, due to various kinds of threats to the freedom of research and teaching in higher education around the world. What makes investigating academic freedom difficult is its complexity and ambivalence, but also national legal frameworks and the history of higher education in respective countries. In music education and philosophy of music education, academic freedom has rarely been an explicit topic of research. Thus, it might be time to further scrutinize it. The purpose of this paper is to investigate academic freedom from the perspective of philosophy of music education. It is focused on academic freedom's philosophical dimensions and its meaning for philosophy of music education–and philosophy of music education's possible relevance for academic freedom.