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Bioethics ISSN 0269-9702 (print); 1467-8519 (online) Volume 28 Number 4 2014 pp 170–173
doi:10.1111/bioe.12094
ACADEMIC FREEDOM, PUBLIC REACTIONS, AND ANONYMITY MATTI HÄYRY
Keywords academic freedom, public reactions, anonymity, controversial ideas, individual responsibility, ethical individualism, Francesca Minerva, Ronald Dworkin, Fritz Machlup, John Stuart Mill, Alberto Giubiliani
ABSTRACT Academic freedom can be defined as immunity against adverse reactions from the general public, designed to keep scholars unintimidated and productive even after they have published controversial ideas. Francesca Minerva claims that this notion of strict instrumental academic freedom is supported by Ronald Dworkin, and that anonymity would effectively defend the sphere of immunity implied by it. Against this, I argue that the idea defended by Minerva finds no support in the work by Dworkin referred to; that anonymity would not in most cases effectively protect the kind of immunity sought after; and that in some cases it would not even be desirable to protect scholars from public reactions to their controversial claims.
In her article ‘New threats to academic freedom’,1 Francesca Minerva suggests that scholars should be allowed to publish their controversial ideas anonymously. She supports the suggestion by reference to her own recent experiences and to a notion of academic freedom loosely borrowed from Ronald Dworkin and Fritz Machlup. The aim of this article is to study whether or not Minerva’s case is sound. I will first examine Dworkin’s views on academic freedom alluded to by her; and then go on to evaluate the missing connection of her reported experiences to Dworkin and Machlup’s views. The outcome of these considerations will be that Dworkin and Machlup’s ideas on academic freedom offer little or no support to Minerva’s suggestion. I will then outline a reconstruction of Minerva’s case without reference to Dworkin and Machlup; and conclude that anonymity would not be the best possible protector of academic freedom and related values even in the sense implied by Minerva.
DWORKIN ON ACADEMIC FREEDOM In his essay ‘We need a new interpretation of academic freedom’ – on which Minerva purportedly rests her 1
F. Minerva. New Threats to Academic Freedom. Bioethics 2013; DOI: 10.1111/bioe.12066.
normative case – Ronald Dworkin presents a characterisation of academic freedom and two justifications for it.2 According to him, academic freedom means that scholars should be free from political and institutional constraints to investigate, teach, and publish anything that ‘they find important and true’.3 In Dworkin’s account, this idea only applies to the work of academics after they have been hired. States and individuals are free to define the kind of universities they want to establish, and universities are free to decide the kind of academics they want to hire. In Dworkin’s words, ‘The principle of individual responsibility [his justification of academic freedom] is not violated when politicians choose university presidents or presidents choose professors on the basis of some collective or institutional opinion about where truth lies.’4 But once scholars have been appointed, their work should not be constrained by the opinions and ideals of the university’s founders or officials. Curiously, Dworkin’s views on who can threaten whose academic freedom are not noted by Minerva in her article. The conventional justification for academic freedom is instrumental and it is based on John Stuart Mill’s views 2
R. Dworkin. We Need a New Interpretation of Academic Freedom. In L. Menand, ed. The Future of Academic Freedom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; 1996. 181–198. 3 Ibid: 189. 4 Ibid: 191.
Address for correspondence: Matti Häyry, Aalto University, School of Business, Department of Management Studies, PO Box 21230, Helsinki FI-00076 AALTO Finland. Email: [email protected] Conflict of interest statement: No conflicts declared © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
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on liberty and utility.5 The chances of finding the truth are at their best when all opinions are freely expressed for collective scrutiny. And truth is socially beneficial, because it allows for the most effective running of our joint affairs.6 This is the line of thinking apparently subscribed to by Minerva.7 Dworkin, however, rejects the instrumental justification and introduces a moral one to replace it. A creed he calls ‘ethical individualism’ imposes on us two duties – a duty ‘not to profess what one believes is false’ and a ‘duty to speak out for what one believes to be true’.8 Since these are obligations that all citizens share, the government would cause moral damage by impeding their execution, and this is why we all ‘have a general right of free speech on political matters’.9 But what is more, the responsibilities entailed by ethical individualism are especially stringent for members of certain professional groups. Priests should preach their faith; journalists ought to report the truth; doctors must tell what is in the best interest of their patients; and, most relevantly to our purposes, scholars have a moral ‘duty to discover and teach what they find important and true’.10 The practical implication is that ‘politicians and university officials and colleagues’ should not try to control what position-holding scholars investigate, teach, or publish.11
MINERVA’S EXPERIENCES AND THEIR MISSING CONNECTION TO DWORKINIAN ACADEMIC FREEDOM Minerva recently published, with Alberto Giubilini, an article on abortion and infanticide that stirred up considerable controversy.12 As untoward effects of the controversy, Minerva lists negative media and internet attention, threatening communications by email, a withdrawn offer for a position in an ethics committee, an application for tenured university post rejected, heightened security at the workplace, an institutional recommendation not to travel to the United States, worried relatives, harassed colleagues, threatened journal editors, threats against a person thanked in the article, lowered personal productivity, and severe subjective stress.13 All 5 J.S. Mill. On Liberty [1859]. In On Liberty and The Subjection of Women. Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Classics of World Literature; 1996. 1–114. 6 Dworkin, op. cit. note 2, p. 185. 7 Minerva, op. cit. note 1. 8 Dworkin, op. cit. note 2, p. 188. 9 Ibid: 188. 10 Ibid: 189. 11 Ibid: 191. 12 G. Giubilini & F. Minerva. After-Birth Abortion: Why Should the Baby Live? J Med Ethics 2012. DOI:10.1136/medethics-2011-100411. 13 Minerva, op. cit. note 1.
these are attributed by Minerva to the internet, with its rapid and wide distribution of ideas, often removed from their proper contexts, and frequently without proper controls.14 Academic anonymity, Minerva argues, would prevent reactions from being directed at the authors of controversial ideas, and would protect them from the negative impact of public reactions. In terms of academic freedom in the sense outlined and defended by Dworkin, Minerva’s experiences do not support her case. According to Dworkin in the paper cited by Minerva, academic freedom is impeded if (and only if) political or academic officials try to control what scholars study and profess once they have been appointed to their positions. The definition is slightly extended by another expert on academic freedom quoted by Minerva, Fritz Machlup, who also recognizes and condemns sanctions threatened by church authorities, students, and ‘occasionally also by other power groups in society’.15 But the upshot of both definitions is that unless internet users are to be counted as a power group in society (I will return to that idea momentarily), the hurdles described by Minerva cannot, in the context identified by Dworkin and Machlup, be properly thought of as threats to academic freedom. Only the withdrawal of the committee position and the failure of the job application involve authorities readily recognized by Dworkin and Machlup. But insofar as they both relate to selection of candidates instead of attempts to control tenured professors, Dworkin and Machlup’s models do not recognize these as full-blown obstructions to academic freedom. What about the idea that internet users are a power group in modern societies, and should therefore be listed as potential restrictors of academic freedom? Dworkin and Machlup offer no support to Minerva here. Dworkin is silent on the matter. Machlup concedes that in an ideal world scholars would enjoy ‘undisturbed privacy’ as well as comprehensive ‘freedom from harassment and vilification’,16 but then observes that in the real world there are limits to the protection we can claim; especially, that no ‘scholar in his right mind’ would ‘claim immunity from criticism, however acid and from whatever quarters, academic or non-academic’.17 So as long as critical internet responses are not libellous, scholars probably should, in Machlup’s view, take them in their stride as drawbacks of the trade.
14
Ibid. F. Machlup. On Some Misconceptions Concerning Academic Freedom. Bulletin of the American Association of University Professors 1955; 41: 753–784, pp. 753–754. Cited by Minerva, op. cit. note 1, although incompletely, leaving out the specification of possible sources of obstruction. 16 Ibid: 760. 17 Ibid: 765. 15
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Academic Freedom, Public Reactions, and Anonymity
RECONSTRUCTING MINERVA’S CASE WITHOUT DWORKIN AND MACHLUP Knowing now that the way Minerva defines and justifies academic freedom must be different from the way Dworkin and Machlup have taken, what exactly is it? Reading between the lines is always dangerous, but since what is on the lines does not in this case provide the answer, that is the only resort. The following is, I hope, a fair description of Minerva’s view once it has been extracted from Dworkin and Machlup’s incompatible ideas. Academic freedom, according to Minerva, is threatened when adverse reactions from the general public (including particularly internet responses) intimidate, directly (death threats and other hate mail) or indirectly (fear of career obstructions due to peer and administrative perception) academics (tenured or nontenured), and thereby potentially dictate their future scholarly interests and prevent them from pursuing the truth as they see it. This, according to Minerva, is bad because scholars enjoying academic freedom from such intimidation contribute better to the pursuit of truth and innovation, and benefit society more than those who are intimidated and unfree. (Here Machlup partly agrees with Minerva,18 while Dworkin rejects the instrumental justification and argues that it is conceivable that society could in some instances benefit more if academics were told what to do.)19 Anonymity, according to Minerva, would prevent freedom-impeding intimidation by hiding the author from the general public. For the sake of scholarly assessment, the link between author and contribution should be known to academic selection committees, the publication’s editors, the author’s head of department, and others who ‘directly deal with the author’.20 But it should not be known to the readers of the journal, to the media, or to ordinary internet users.
WOULD ANONYMITY PROTECT ACADEMIC FREEDOM IN MINERVA’S SENSE? Is anonymity the answer to Minerva’s problem? Would it prevent the reactions to provocative academic publications that Minerva would like it to prevent? Let us consider the main categories she has introduced. Negative internet responses would not necessarily be stopped by anonymity. Internet users could still find the controversial articles and discuss them in a more or less informed manner, as they have done before. The general public might, of course, think that anonymous authors are 18 19 20
Ibid: 765–7. Dworkin, op. cit. note 2, pp. 185–186. Minerva, op. cit. note 1.
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
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not worthy of their consideration, and this could reduce the amount of discussion. But such a development would hardly be ideal, if the point is to have controversial notions and proposals extensively discussed. Minerva believes that ideas instead of individuals would be debated in the case of anonymous contributions. It is, however, equally possible that individuals would still be the target of hostility, albeit in this setting as ‘the authors of article X’. Personal threats and insults directed at the authors could feasibly be stopped by a no-name policy, provided that anonymity can be retained. There are, however, considerations that make this possibility less tangible and less attractive than would first seem. First, it is not certain that the identity of authors could be kept secret in our current political climate of transparency and information leaks. Secondly, it is arguable that some of the reactions should not be thwarted to begin with. Authors have access to people’s living rooms with ideas that may cause offence and anxiety – so it is only fair that people have comparable access to the authors’ professional spaces with their responses. Thirdly, the instances in which public reactions exceed the limits of propriety and can be interpreted as harassing or physically threatening should be dealt with by legal means anyway. Institutional support in taking such cases to court would be a far more concrete statement for academic freedom than denying academics their rights and responsibilities by anonymisation. Career obstructions caused by differences of opinion would not be prevented by Minerva’s model, because selection panels and department heads would still be notified of the author-contribution connections. A far better way of improving the situation would be the education of recruitment committees to pay more attention to competence and less to normative inclinations. Dworkin, as we have seen, would accept the choice of a candidate with the right kind of agenda and ideas, but this need not be fully accepted. We can also believe, and it seems that Minerva does, that the best candidate in terms of general competency should be chosen rather than someone with convenient opinions. Qualified anonymity of the kind suggested by her would, however, take us no closer to that goal. Career obstructions caused by unfavourable media attention would be prevented by anonymity, and this would further academic independence from attitudes prevailing in society. That can be seen as a good thing, but it can also be seen as a sign of scholars withdrawing to ivory towers and isolating themselves from the concerns of real people. In any case, the actual level of protection provided by anonymity would here again be contingent on the success of keeping the authors’ identities undisclosed. My conclusion is that anonymity in scholarly papers would protect academic freedom only in a specific sense (not shared by Dworkin and Machlup) and only to a limited extent (against personal insults and popular pressures on selection panels if anonymity can be
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secured); and that the specific sense implied by Minerva is partly in conflict with the values surrounding academic freedom in the more general form (universal freedom of expression and the duty of scholars to stand by their views). Acknowledgements This article was produced as a part of the Academy of Finland project Synthetic Biology and Ethics (SA 272467, 2013-2017). I acknowledge the Academy’s support with gratitude.
I would also like to acknowledge the stimulus and support of the iSEI Wellcome Strategic Programme The Human Body, Its Scope, Limits, and Future in the preparation of this paper.
Matti Häyry is Professor of Philosophy at Aalto University School of Business in Helsinki, Finland. During 2004-2013, he was Professor of Bioethics and Philosophy of Law at the University of Manchester in England. Based on his book Rationality and the Genetic Challenge (CUP 2010), he has recently released an album called Playing God – Corky Laing and the Perfect Child Perform Original Music from Test: the Rock Opera (Gonzo Multimedia 2013).
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Bioethics ISSN 0269-9702 (print); 1467-8519 (online) Volume 28 Number 4 2014 pp 170–173
doi:10.1111/bioe.12094
ACADEMIC FREEDOM, PUBLIC REACTIONS, AND ANONYMITY MATTI HÄYRY
Keywords academic freedom, public reactions, anonymity, controversial ideas, individual responsibility, ethical individualism, Francesca Minerva, Ronald Dworkin, Fritz Machlup, John Stuart Mill, Alberto Giubiliani
ABSTRACT Academic freedom can be defined as immunity against adverse reactions from the general public, designed to keep scholars unintimidated and productive even after they have published controversial ideas. Francesca Minerva claims that this notion of strict instrumental academic freedom is supported by Ronald Dworkin, and that anonymity would effectively defend the sphere of immunity implied by it. Against this, I argue that the idea defended by Minerva finds no support in the work by Dworkin referred to; that anonymity would not in most cases effectively protect the kind of immunity sought after; and that in some cases it would not even be desirable to protect scholars from public reactions to their controversial claims.
In her article ‘New threats to academic freedom’,1 Francesca Minerva suggests that scholars should be allowed to publish their controversial ideas anonymously. She supports the suggestion by reference to her own recent experiences and to a notion of academic freedom loosely borrowed from Ronald Dworkin and Fritz Machlup. The aim of this article is to study whether or not Minerva’s case is sound. I will first examine Dworkin’s views on academic freedom alluded to by her; and then go on to evaluate the missing connection of her reported experiences to Dworkin and Machlup’s views. The outcome of these considerations will be that Dworkin and Machlup’s ideas on academic freedom offer little or no support to Minerva’s suggestion. I will then outline a reconstruction of Minerva’s case without reference to Dworkin and Machlup; and conclude that anonymity would not be the best possible protector of academic freedom and related values even in the sense implied by Minerva.
DWORKIN ON ACADEMIC FREEDOM In his essay ‘We need a new interpretation of academic freedom’ – on which Minerva purportedly rests her 1
F. Minerva. New Threats to Academic Freedom. Bioethics 2013; DOI: 10.1111/bioe.12066.
normative case – Ronald Dworkin presents a characterisation of academic freedom and two justifications for it.2 According to him, academic freedom means that scholars should be free from political and institutional constraints to investigate, teach, and publish anything that ‘they find important and true’.3 In Dworkin’s account, this idea only applies to the work of academics after they have been hired. States and individuals are free to define the kind of universities they want to establish, and universities are free to decide the kind of academics they want to hire. In Dworkin’s words, ‘The principle of individual responsibility [his justification of academic freedom] is not violated when politicians choose university presidents or presidents choose professors on the basis of some collective or institutional opinion about where truth lies.’4 But once scholars have been appointed, their work should not be constrained by the opinions and ideals of the university’s founders or officials. Curiously, Dworkin’s views on who can threaten whose academic freedom are not noted by Minerva in her article. The conventional justification for academic freedom is instrumental and it is based on John Stuart Mill’s views 2
R. Dworkin. We Need a New Interpretation of Academic Freedom. In L. Menand, ed. The Future of Academic Freedom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; 1996. 181–198. 3 Ibid: 189. 4 Ibid: 191.
Address for correspondence: Matti Häyry, Aalto University, School of Business, Department of Management Studies, PO Box 21230, Helsinki FI-00076 AALTO Finland. Email: [email protected] Conflict of interest statement: No conflicts declared © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
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Matti Häyry
on liberty and utility.5 The chances of finding the truth are at their best when all opinions are freely expressed for collective scrutiny. And truth is socially beneficial, because it allows for the most effective running of our joint affairs.6 This is the line of thinking apparently subscribed to by Minerva.7 Dworkin, however, rejects the instrumental justification and introduces a moral one to replace it. A creed he calls ‘ethical individualism’ imposes on us two duties – a duty ‘not to profess what one believes is false’ and a ‘duty to speak out for what one believes to be true’.8 Since these are obligations that all citizens share, the government would cause moral damage by impeding their execution, and this is why we all ‘have a general right of free speech on political matters’.9 But what is more, the responsibilities entailed by ethical individualism are especially stringent for members of certain professional groups. Priests should preach their faith; journalists ought to report the truth; doctors must tell what is in the best interest of their patients; and, most relevantly to our purposes, scholars have a moral ‘duty to discover and teach what they find important and true’.10 The practical implication is that ‘politicians and university officials and colleagues’ should not try to control what position-holding scholars investigate, teach, or publish.11
MINERVA’S EXPERIENCES AND THEIR MISSING CONNECTION TO DWORKINIAN ACADEMIC FREEDOM Minerva recently published, with Alberto Giubilini, an article on abortion and infanticide that stirred up considerable controversy.12 As untoward effects of the controversy, Minerva lists negative media and internet attention, threatening communications by email, a withdrawn offer for a position in an ethics committee, an application for tenured university post rejected, heightened security at the workplace, an institutional recommendation not to travel to the United States, worried relatives, harassed colleagues, threatened journal editors, threats against a person thanked in the article, lowered personal productivity, and severe subjective stress.13 All 5 J.S. Mill. On Liberty [1859]. In On Liberty and The Subjection of Women. Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Classics of World Literature; 1996. 1–114. 6 Dworkin, op. cit. note 2, p. 185. 7 Minerva, op. cit. note 1. 8 Dworkin, op. cit. note 2, p. 188. 9 Ibid: 188. 10 Ibid: 189. 11 Ibid: 191. 12 G. Giubilini & F. Minerva. After-Birth Abortion: Why Should the Baby Live? J Med Ethics 2012. DOI:10.1136/medethics-2011-100411. 13 Minerva, op. cit. note 1.
these are attributed by Minerva to the internet, with its rapid and wide distribution of ideas, often removed from their proper contexts, and frequently without proper controls.14 Academic anonymity, Minerva argues, would prevent reactions from being directed at the authors of controversial ideas, and would protect them from the negative impact of public reactions. In terms of academic freedom in the sense outlined and defended by Dworkin, Minerva’s experiences do not support her case. According to Dworkin in the paper cited by Minerva, academic freedom is impeded if (and only if) political or academic officials try to control what scholars study and profess once they have been appointed to their positions. The definition is slightly extended by another expert on academic freedom quoted by Minerva, Fritz Machlup, who also recognizes and condemns sanctions threatened by church authorities, students, and ‘occasionally also by other power groups in society’.15 But the upshot of both definitions is that unless internet users are to be counted as a power group in society (I will return to that idea momentarily), the hurdles described by Minerva cannot, in the context identified by Dworkin and Machlup, be properly thought of as threats to academic freedom. Only the withdrawal of the committee position and the failure of the job application involve authorities readily recognized by Dworkin and Machlup. But insofar as they both relate to selection of candidates instead of attempts to control tenured professors, Dworkin and Machlup’s models do not recognize these as full-blown obstructions to academic freedom. What about the idea that internet users are a power group in modern societies, and should therefore be listed as potential restrictors of academic freedom? Dworkin and Machlup offer no support to Minerva here. Dworkin is silent on the matter. Machlup concedes that in an ideal world scholars would enjoy ‘undisturbed privacy’ as well as comprehensive ‘freedom from harassment and vilification’,16 but then observes that in the real world there are limits to the protection we can claim; especially, that no ‘scholar in his right mind’ would ‘claim immunity from criticism, however acid and from whatever quarters, academic or non-academic’.17 So as long as critical internet responses are not libellous, scholars probably should, in Machlup’s view, take them in their stride as drawbacks of the trade.
14
Ibid. F. Machlup. On Some Misconceptions Concerning Academic Freedom. Bulletin of the American Association of University Professors 1955; 41: 753–784, pp. 753–754. Cited by Minerva, op. cit. note 1, although incompletely, leaving out the specification of possible sources of obstruction. 16 Ibid: 760. 17 Ibid: 765. 15
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Academic Freedom, Public Reactions, and Anonymity
RECONSTRUCTING MINERVA’S CASE WITHOUT DWORKIN AND MACHLUP Knowing now that the way Minerva defines and justifies academic freedom must be different from the way Dworkin and Machlup have taken, what exactly is it? Reading between the lines is always dangerous, but since what is on the lines does not in this case provide the answer, that is the only resort. The following is, I hope, a fair description of Minerva’s view once it has been extracted from Dworkin and Machlup’s incompatible ideas. Academic freedom, according to Minerva, is threatened when adverse reactions from the general public (including particularly internet responses) intimidate, directly (death threats and other hate mail) or indirectly (fear of career obstructions due to peer and administrative perception) academics (tenured or nontenured), and thereby potentially dictate their future scholarly interests and prevent them from pursuing the truth as they see it. This, according to Minerva, is bad because scholars enjoying academic freedom from such intimidation contribute better to the pursuit of truth and innovation, and benefit society more than those who are intimidated and unfree. (Here Machlup partly agrees with Minerva,18 while Dworkin rejects the instrumental justification and argues that it is conceivable that society could in some instances benefit more if academics were told what to do.)19 Anonymity, according to Minerva, would prevent freedom-impeding intimidation by hiding the author from the general public. For the sake of scholarly assessment, the link between author and contribution should be known to academic selection committees, the publication’s editors, the author’s head of department, and others who ‘directly deal with the author’.20 But it should not be known to the readers of the journal, to the media, or to ordinary internet users.
WOULD ANONYMITY PROTECT ACADEMIC FREEDOM IN MINERVA’S SENSE? Is anonymity the answer to Minerva’s problem? Would it prevent the reactions to provocative academic publications that Minerva would like it to prevent? Let us consider the main categories she has introduced. Negative internet responses would not necessarily be stopped by anonymity. Internet users could still find the controversial articles and discuss them in a more or less informed manner, as they have done before. The general public might, of course, think that anonymous authors are 18 19 20
Ibid: 765–7. Dworkin, op. cit. note 2, pp. 185–186. Minerva, op. cit. note 1.
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
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not worthy of their consideration, and this could reduce the amount of discussion. But such a development would hardly be ideal, if the point is to have controversial notions and proposals extensively discussed. Minerva believes that ideas instead of individuals would be debated in the case of anonymous contributions. It is, however, equally possible that individuals would still be the target of hostility, albeit in this setting as ‘the authors of article X’. Personal threats and insults directed at the authors could feasibly be stopped by a no-name policy, provided that anonymity can be retained. There are, however, considerations that make this possibility less tangible and less attractive than would first seem. First, it is not certain that the identity of authors could be kept secret in our current political climate of transparency and information leaks. Secondly, it is arguable that some of the reactions should not be thwarted to begin with. Authors have access to people’s living rooms with ideas that may cause offence and anxiety – so it is only fair that people have comparable access to the authors’ professional spaces with their responses. Thirdly, the instances in which public reactions exceed the limits of propriety and can be interpreted as harassing or physically threatening should be dealt with by legal means anyway. Institutional support in taking such cases to court would be a far more concrete statement for academic freedom than denying academics their rights and responsibilities by anonymisation. Career obstructions caused by differences of opinion would not be prevented by Minerva’s model, because selection panels and department heads would still be notified of the author-contribution connections. A far better way of improving the situation would be the education of recruitment committees to pay more attention to competence and less to normative inclinations. Dworkin, as we have seen, would accept the choice of a candidate with the right kind of agenda and ideas, but this need not be fully accepted. We can also believe, and it seems that Minerva does, that the best candidate in terms of general competency should be chosen rather than someone with convenient opinions. Qualified anonymity of the kind suggested by her would, however, take us no closer to that goal. Career obstructions caused by unfavourable media attention would be prevented by anonymity, and this would further academic independence from attitudes prevailing in society. That can be seen as a good thing, but it can also be seen as a sign of scholars withdrawing to ivory towers and isolating themselves from the concerns of real people. In any case, the actual level of protection provided by anonymity would here again be contingent on the success of keeping the authors’ identities undisclosed. My conclusion is that anonymity in scholarly papers would protect academic freedom only in a specific sense (not shared by Dworkin and Machlup) and only to a limited extent (against personal insults and popular pressures on selection panels if anonymity can be
173
Matti Häyry
secured); and that the specific sense implied by Minerva is partly in conflict with the values surrounding academic freedom in the more general form (universal freedom of expression and the duty of scholars to stand by their views). Acknowledgements This article was produced as a part of the Academy of Finland project Synthetic Biology and Ethics (SA 272467, 2013-2017). I acknowledge the Academy’s support with gratitude.
I would also like to acknowledge the stimulus and support of the iSEI Wellcome Strategic Programme The Human Body, Its Scope, Limits, and Future in the preparation of this paper.
Matti Häyry is Professor of Philosophy at Aalto University School of Business in Helsinki, Finland. During 2004-2013, he was Professor of Bioethics and Philosophy of Law at the University of Manchester in England. Based on his book Rationality and the Genetic Challenge (CUP 2010), he has recently released an album called Playing God – Corky Laing and the Perfect Child Perform Original Music from Test: the Rock Opera (Gonzo Multimedia 2013).
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
