This is an article by Roger Scruton: Academic Freedom in Conformist Times which is a review of a book by Joanna Williams with the title, Academic Freedom in an Age of Conformity: Confronting the Fear of Knowledge.

She shows how important historically academic freedom has been to the pursuit of knowledge, and examines the baleful consequences of the contemporary assault on truth and objectivity. I sympathise with her, too. Much as I had to do for my book Fools, Frauds and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left, Williams has had to sit down for hours, poring over poisonous stuff written by destructive narcissists and digesting it into something with which issue can be taken. She has done a great service to civilisation – as we wave goodbye to it.

I have just written a review of his Fool, Frauds and Firebrands for Quadrant and there was nothing more evident than the pain that had to be gone through to read through such vast oceans of insanity. I will now order Williams’ book to go along with his. And while I cannot comment on her book, I certainly can on his. You should read it. If you have any interest in understanding the shipwreck of our culture, you should read it. So let me just leave you with this from the end of the review:

Roger Scruton is a philosopher and a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the British Academy. He is the author, most recently, of Fools, Frauds and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left, published by Bloomsbury Continuum.

Academic Freedom in an Age of Conformity: Confronting the Fear of Knowledge, by Joanna Williams, is published by Palgrave Macmillan.

You can buy it on Amazon or at your local bookshop which I always recommend since we would like to keep as many of these around as we possibly can.