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The way we communicate is dictated in part by the setting that that communication takes place in. You're supposed to tell your doctor everything; on the other hand, you wouldn't tell your business competitor much at all.In academia, communication is supposed to be somewhat provocative. The reaction to a provocative idea can't be to silence the one expressing it, but to approach it from the other side of the argument. One way to think about this is that if you don't understand the other side of an issue, then you can't claim to understand the issue.The opinions expressed in this video do not necessarily reflect the views of the Charles Koch Foundation, which encourages the expression of diverse viewpoints within a culture of civil discourse and mutual respect.

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NICHOLAS CHRISTAKIS

Nicholas A. Christakis is a physician, sociologist, and director of the Human Nature Lab at Yale University, where he is the Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science. His most recent book is Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society (March 2019). Follow him on Twitter @NAChristakis

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TRANSCRIPT:

NICHOLAS CHRISTAKIS: So when we think about academic freedom, we might ask the question, "Well, what's so special about academia?" Why might we have special rules of communication and openness within academia? I think in approaching this, one might think about other parts of our economy or other activities that we engage in in a society in which we outline special rules of communication. So think about, for example, healthcare. When you go to your doctor, you have a couple of expectations about how it is that you're going to communicate with your doctor. And special rules apply to those kinds of interactions. For example, rules of privacy. Doctors are supposed to keep things secret. When you tell your doctor something, those aren't supposed to be broadly advertised. Similarly, you have a kind of expectation of openness. I mean, one of the principle ideas about how you communicate effectively in a healthcare system is that you're supposed to tell your doctor anything that's bothering you.

How could a doctor diagnose and treat you properly if you lied to your physician? So you're supposed to reveal your secrets. You're supposed to have the expectation that that's the right thing to do. In fact, it's necessary for you to do that and furthermore that the doctor will guard those secrets properly. Or think about, for example, in industry. There are certain industries that are engaged in very competitive markets, let's say, high-tech industries. And in those types of firms there's an expectation that things will be kept secret and private. Here, in fact, there's not supposed to be a lot of communication. Different groups within the firm aren't supposed to talk to each other. They're supposed to work privately on their own as they advance the technology. So in this situation we might have a different kind of expectation about communication. Well, what about academia? What's the mission of a university? The mission of a university is the preservation, production, and communication of knowledge. The whole point of a university is to get smart people talking to each other in the most unfettered ways so that they might stumble on, discover, or co-create new ideas and new concepts.

And furthermore, communicate them liberally to outsiders, to everyone. The whole point of a university is to discover new ideas and to disseminate them. And for that to take place optimally, we need some kinds of rules that foster those activities. And this is, I think, the deepest origin of the principle of academic freedom. We want people working in universities not to feel constrained by any existing ideas. We want them to be open. We want them to talk to each other so that their ideas get checked. If we're really going to discover the truth, we need me, when I say something stupid or foolish, to have someone else say wait a minute, that's not right. Have you thought about this fact, or have you thought about this flaw in your argument. And that person needs to be at liberty to say that to me without fear of losing their job, for example, or other kinds of severe sanctions. We want to foster fluid communication so that we can discover this knowledge, we can discover the truth and then communicate it, model that for the broader society of which a university is a part.

Any...

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