My assessment as I said, is that too high a price has been paid where political or religious passions and an ideology of conformity dominate. The image that must guide us in inhabiting the academic and cultural space provided by the university is that of the traveller and not the Sultan. Travelers must suspend the claim of customary routine in order to live in new rhythms and rituals. Most of all, and most unlike the Sultan who must guard only one place and defend its frontiers, the traveller crosses over, traverses territory, abandons fixed positions, all the time. To do this with dedication and love as well as a realistic sense of the terrain is, I believe, academic freedom at its highest, since one of its main features is that you can leave authority and dogma to the Sultan.
Academic freedom is risk and danger.
It means allowing oneself a few years where the conventions of society are suspended so that the search for knowledge can go on for the love of knowledge alone.