Exploration of Philosophical and Legal Reasons for Inclusion of Academic Freedom in the Bill of Rights

The Bill of Rights forms part of the South African constitution and is the cornerstone of reference as it enshrines all human rights recognised in the Republic of South Africa. While the Bill of Rights enshrines all human rights and affirms democratic values like human dignity, equality, and freedom, it still has not found a space to include academic freedom, which is this paper’s focus. The debate today about whether to include academic freedom in the Bill of Rights is long overdue, and academic freedom should have come into the Constitution together with institutional autonomy. The non-inclusion of academic freedom in the Bill of Rights makes it seem strange to those who want to undermine it and invasively overpour their authoritative tyranny over academics. Since it has been a long moment of silence on academics from different institutions of higher learning, this conceptual desktop study adopts an analytic theoretical framework to argue that academic freedom must be included in the Bill of Rights. Since academic freedom will empower/protect the freedom of expression in teaching and assessment in universities, it is high time that scholars call for the recognition of a “right to academic freedom.”