Losing Academic Freedom

The neoliberal university doesn’t need overt censorship, writes Samyuktha Kannan. It’s perfected the art of silent control. It’s not that one is explicitly told what can’t be written — it’s that over time, one simply learns what is too dangerous to say. 

By Samyuktha Kannan
Z Network

There was a time when the university was imagined as a space of intellectual risk, where thought could move freely, unrestricted by the anxieties of power or professional survival. That time is long gone. 

Today, for students and faculty alike, the act of writing — of producing knowledge, of articulating critique — is suffused with fear. Not the productive fear that accompanies intellectual rigor, but the dull ache and exhausting fear of consequence. 

What will this essay, this paper, this published article mean for my future? Will it cost me a job? A fellowship? A visa? Will it mark me, quietly and irrevocably, as a threat?

I remember drafting an abstract for a Marxist conference in Berlin, excited by the possibility of engaging with ideas beyond the sanitized limits of our classrooms. It was a small act — writing a 300-word abstract and submitting — but one that felt, for once, intellectually honest. 

A faculty member, someone I trusted, pulled me aside. Their warning was not unkind. It was pragmatic, even protective: “You have postgrad applications coming up in a few months. Why invite the wrong kind of attention?”

I nodded, understanding what was left unsaid. A line on my CV, a question in an admissions interview, an invisible mark against my name — were risks worth taking? The abstract was never sent. But I realised my mistake a day too late. 

The neoliberal university does not need overt censorship: it has perfected the art of silent control. It is not that one is explicitly told what cannot be written — it is that over time, one simply learns what is too dangerous to say. 

Controversial words disappear from syllabi. Faculty stop assigning texts that might provoke discomfort in the wrong quarters. Students internalize the limits of acceptable inquiry, sculpting their research to fit within an increasingly narrow, apolitical frame.

And so, without official prohibitions, entire fields of thought shrink. The range of permissible discourse is not policed through direct suppression but through precarity — through the quiet, unspoken understanding that dissent has consequences.

For many, this fear is not abstract. It is deeply personal, woven into the reality of insecure contracts, shrinking academic jobs and the quiet but ruthless surveillance of CVs and publication records. 

A single article, a single critique in the wrong place, can close doors before they even open. 

In a system where everything — from research funding to job prospects — depends on demonstrating compliance, the most rational choice is silence.

And so the university, once imagined as a site of knowledge production, becomes instead a space of careful omission, where what is not written, not spoken, not thought, tells us more than what remains. 

The Violence of Silencing: When Ideas Become Personal

At its core, academia is not just a site of learning — it is a space where ideologies collide, evolve and take form. Disciplines are not built on neutral facts but on contestations, on the ability to question, challenge and defend ideas. 

Every field, from history to law, from literature to political theory, is shaped by the ideological commitments of those who inhabit it. To study is not just to accumulate knowledge: it is to position oneself within a larger intellectual and political tradition. And for many scholars, especially those engaged in critical, radical, or anti-establishment thought, this positioning is not merely academic — it is deeply personal. 

To curb discourse is not just to control what can be said, it is to suffocate the intellectual life of a scholar who is committed to their politics. 

The violence of this is not always visible, but it is relentless. It is in the quiet revisions of a research proposal to remove a politically charged term. It is in the hesitation before citing a scholar whose work has been deemed controversial. It is in the exhaustion of constantly assessing whether a thought is “safe” enough to articulate. 

Over time, this does not just limit discourse — it hollows out the very purpose of intellectual inquiry. For those who enter academia not as a careerist project but as a site of political engagement, this erasure is not just professional: it is existential. 

A scholar who writes against the grain, who studies capitalism critically, who engages with Marxism, feminism, anti-caste thought, or anti-imperialism, does not do so as an abstract exercise. Their work reflects the world they live in and the world they seek to change. 

To tell them to self-censor, to sanitize their arguments, to “choose their battles wisely,” is not just a professional warning — it is an instruction to sever a part of themselves, to dilute their own convictions for the sake of survival. The result is an academic culture that is not just fearful but profoundly uncreative. 

The kind of intellectual risks that produce new ways of thinking are abandoned in favour of work that is acceptable, palatable and ultimately safe. Scholars who might have produced groundbreaking work instead learn to work within the narrow confines of what will not jeopardize their careers. 

And so, the university, which should be a space of intellectual possibility, becomes instead a space of intellectual resignation. What is lost in this process is not just the vibrancy of academic debate but something more fundamental – the ability to think freely, to create without fear, to exist in a field of study without constantly negotiating one’s own silence. 

A scholar whose politics are central to their work is not just losing a platform: they are losing a piece of their own mind. And what remains is not scholarship, but survival. 

The University as a Site of Precarity and Control

The university, once imagined as a space of critical inquiry, has been hollowed out by the logic of neoliberalism. No longer an intellectual commons, it now functions as a corporate entity — managed, bureaucratized and increasingly detached from the very idea of free thought. 

The language of learning has been replaced by the language of capital: students are “consumers,” faculty are “service providers,” and knowledge is only as valuable as its ability to secure funding. In this landscape, risk-taking is not just discouraged — it is actively penalized. 

At the heart of this transformation is precarity. Tenure is disappearing, replaced by a workforce of adjuncts, visiting faculty and contract teachers who have no institutional protection. Their continued employment is contingent on remaining uncontroversial — on being docile enough to secure another short-term contract, on ensuring their research does not antagonize funders, on performing intellectual labour that aligns with the university’s market logic. 

Even full-time faculty are not exempt: tenure tracks are narrowing and promotions are increasingly tied to grant money, which in turn is tied to political and corporate interests. 

The fear that this system produces is not just external — it is internalized. I have caught myself altering my arguments, choosing softer language, avoiding certain keywords even when they are the most accurate descriptors of reality. Sometimes, I do this without even realizing it, as if my mind has already adapted to the consequences of speaking too freely. 

It was a comrade who first pointed this out to me after reading a draft of mine. “Why are you holding back?” they asked. “This isn’t how you actually talk about this.” 

They were right. Without meaning to, I had sanded down the rough edges of my argument, made it more palatable, more “academic.” Not out of intellectual dishonesty, but out of habit — out of an unspoken knowledge that writing a certain way would make my work more acceptable, more publishable, less risky. 

I have seen the same fear in my peers, in professors who once spoke more freely but now hesitate, glancing over their shoulders before making a critical remark. It is in the small revisions we make to our papers, the choice of conference panels we avoid, the reluctance to cite scholars who have been marked as “too political.” This is not just about avoiding direct punishment — it is about survival.

We instinctively understand that funding, fellowships and even future job opportunities depend not just on the quality of our work but on how well we navigate the silent, unwritten rules of academic acceptability. 

Funding is the unspoken gatekeeper of academia. Research that attracts state or private sponsorship flourishes, while work that interrogates capitalism, caste, state violence, or majoritarianism struggles to survive.

The politics of publishing mirrors this dynamic — journals, conferences and institutional support all subtly, but decisively, steer scholars away from work that is too radical, too unsettling. The choice is clear: conform or be pushed to the margins.

The cost of this is not just intellectual stagnation — it is the slow death of the university as a space of critical thought. When scholars are forced into self-censorship, when students internalize fear before they even begin writing, when entire fields are shaped not by the pursuit of knowledge but by the imperatives of funding and employability, what remains is a university in name only. 

A space where learning is reduced to careerism, where thought is managed rather than nurtured and where the most dangerous thing one can do is think freely. 

The Right-Wing’s Academic Takeover

The shift of universities toward the right is no accident: it is a deliberate restructuring of academic spaces to align with the interests of the state and capital. Administrators actively discourage dissent, not necessarily through direct prohibitions, but through institutional inertia – by making it difficult for radical voices to thrive, by ensuring that funding and career security are tied to compliance. 

The result is an academic culture where right-wing professors can openly declare, “I am a Zionist,” without consequence, while leftist or critical faculty must navigate their words with caution, knowing that a single misstep could make them targets of smear campaigns, job insecurity, or worse. 

Surveillance, both formal and informal, has become an unspoken reality of the classroom. Students record lectures. Colleagues report each other.

A passing comment, a critical remark on state policy, a casual mention of Marx or Ambedkar, can be flagged, weaponized and used to justify administrative action. 

This culture of policing does not need state intervention to function – it is internalized, operating within the university itself. Fear replaces discussion. Silence replaces critique. The classroom ceases to be a space of inquiry and becomes one of performance, where the safest thing to do is to say nothing at all. 

This is not about silencing the right — it is about the left not even being allowed to speak. Academia was never meant to be a monologue: it was meant to be a collision, a space where ideas clashed, where arguments were sharpened through debate, where thought was forced to evolve.

What remains when only one side is allowed to speak? What is left to synthesize when a thesis is denied its antithesis? Nothing. Nothing but the slow, quiet death of intellectual thought.

Samyuktha Kannan is a student of law, based out of India. Her work includes research and writing on Kashmir, Political Economy and Carcerality. Her works have previously appeared in places such as ZNetwork.org, Human Geography and Groundxero. 

This article is from Z Network.

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.