الحرية الأكاديمية : التابوهات و الإكراهات في المجتمع الاكاديمي التونسي

Abstract EN

This research paper addresses the theme of academic freedom and its relation to the central role of the academic institution, as a social actor seeking to elevate his action to the level historical action, capable of mobilizing intellectual and elitist forces.

Nowadays, the university is, more than ever before, invited to invest in the high levels of freedom to create intellectual and societal mobility as the Tunisian state has granted more freedom to the academic institution.

In fact, the Tunisian society (and the majority of Arab societies) is almost hopeless due to the passivity of its elite, the failure of the latter to engage in the current historical context.

An elite which must be effective, creative and must play a leading role for its society.

The Tunisian society suffers from a crisis of values, an identity disorder and dispersal of the rationales of action.

An academic institution cannot play its expected, anticipated and even conjoined role, if it fails to dispose of its right to exercise its academic freedom.

The approach adopted in this research paper is, therefore, based on a historical reading of the concept and experience of exercising academic freedom in the academic communities that have had the most profound contribution in deepening the concept and accumulating experience.

Then, depending on observing through participating (as part of the Tunisian academic community), I am allowed to draw a number of subjective observations and conclusions, that I support by reading in the attitudes, ideas and opinions of a number of academics via the free interview technique, in order to discern the various influences that may hamper and shrink the academic freedom realistically and effectively, such as the influences of historical, religious, political and societal taboos on the degree and level of exercise of academic freedom.

In addition to the constraints that members of the academic community may go through/experience, they constitute practical and daily impediments that reduce their chances of being up to the expected, anticipated and required level of them.