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Description
This 1967 lecture (transcript edited by Alexander Bazelow), listed as the first in the series of 1967, is a forceful defense of academic freedom amid Cold War pressures on American higher education. Heinrich Blücher condemns government infiltration, politicization, and financial coercion of universities as threats to the academy’s central purpose: the free pursuit of truth. He argues that both conformity and nonconformity can become nihilistic when they undermine independent judgment and the cultivation of higher human faculties. Situating education within a global crisis marked by technological power, political violence, and moral disorientation, Blücher presents the academy as a rare space where individuals can learn to think freely, critically, and responsibly. The lecture frames the Common Course as an effort to preserve this space by examining major turning points in human thought and by fostering world-conscious, ethically grounded individuals capable of orienting themselves—and living together—in an increasingly complex world.
Publication Date
1967
Recommended Citation
Blücher, Heinrich, "11-XI. Academic Freedom (1967)" (1967). Bazelow Transcripts. 11.
https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/blucher-bazelow-transcripts/11