On Academic Freedom, Security and Flattery

Luxury conferences in the Swiss Alps, featuring cocktail parties and high profile speakers, like the secretary general of the UN, still continue today.

October 30, 2025

On Academic Freedom, Security and Flattery

Your Scholarly Digest 16th October, 2025

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Hi Scholar,

One of our members in Scholar Square shared the following in our community dedicated to research, scholarship, and learning, and we wanted to share it with you: 

It succinctly captures the communal and craft-like spirit that animates why and how we do scholarship. We can hardly “have”— that is, buy or acquire — scholarship for ourselves, as though attaining rights to it as property. Yet this is precisely what is being made possible by modern economic and financial instruments, which increasingly render scholarship a transaction in the market. Is it any surprise, then, that we are also seeing a diminishing appreciation for the qualities of scholarship: the very qualities of knowledge and of the environment in which the scholar operates? 

We will leave that with you to ponder upon.

In today’s Digest, we have: 

  • Brain Food: On the Organisation of Academic Freedom

  • Current Affairs: Knowledge is (Geopolitical) Power

  • Resource: How Scholars Work

  • Keeping it Real: Flattery Will Get You Everywhere

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