The Value Discriminant: How Metrics Threaten Academic Freedom

I argue that the respective understanding of value discriminates between two forms of ‘strong university leadership’: one that is incompatible with academic freedom, one that is compatible with, if not necessary for it. The structural evolution of modern science implies that present-day sciences understand their path of knowledge creation in terms of the enhancement of measurable functional control over effects with regard to problems of life. Consequently, measures, parameters, quanta – in short: values – are a condition of ‘scientific progress’. If we understand academic freedom as the openness to a fundamental transformation of knowledge, in the domain of value-driven science, the scope of freedom is therefore structurally narrow. However, a particularly pernicious threat to academic freedom arises when scientific practice is controlled by a-scientific values. Once a-scientific metrics gain the upper hand over scientific values, academic freedom is out of play. University leaders who cannot discriminate between scientific ‘thinking in values’ and a-scientific ‘evaluating’, will likely adhere to the latter. ‘Strong university leadership’ will then merely consist of the authority to exercise an indiscriminate, arbitrary prerogative in deciding the ‘what’ and ‘who’ of scientific research and education. The effects on academic freedom of such ‘strong leadership’ can only be detrimental.