The Online Library of Liberty

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• Literature of Liberty a Review of Contemporary Liberal Thought
• Editorial Staff
• Associate Editors
• Editorial
• Bibliographical Essay: Henry B. Veatch, Natural Law: Dead Or Alive?
• I: Natural Law
• “nature” and “law” In Natural Law
• The Anatomy of Natural Rights
• Egoism and Rights
• The Is/ought Chimera
• Deriving “ought” From “is”
• Facts Vs. Value-laden Whims
• Is/ought and Probable Reasons
• Does Righteous Anger Imply Rights?
• Why Be Moral?
• Truth As an Objective Value
• Was the Revolution Objectively Necessary?
• Natural Law and State of Nature
• Natural Law and the State
• Natural Rights and Anarchism
• Dworkin On Rights
• Liberalism, Rights, and Abortion
• Rights and “mercy Killing”
• Rights and the “brain Drain”
• The Natural Law Right to Work
• Grotius: Contract and Natural Law
• Rights and Communication
• II: Autonomy, Privacy, and Authority
• Bureaucracy and “the Organization Man”
• Autonomy and Anarchism
• Autonomy and Taking Responsibility
• Autonomy, Motivation, and “buck-passing”
• Schooling For Conformity
• The Schoolroom Vs. Autonomy
• Obedience to Authority
• The Meaning of Privacy
• Privacy and Autonomy
• Privacy and Consent
• The Court and Privacy
• III: The Ambiguities of Liberty
• Clarifying Freedom
• Rehabilitating Mill's “harm Principle”
• Experiencing Freedom
• Do Offers Coerce Freedom?
• The Danger of “dangerousness”
• Freedom, Motivation, and Government Programs
• Freedom Vs. Determinism
• Negative Vs. Positive Freedom
• Smith and Utilitarian Economic Freedom
• Locke, Freedom, and Tacit Consent
• Religious Freedom
• Freedom, Existentialism, and Innocent Victims
• Does Censorship Harm Freedom?
• IV: Slavery
• Slavery, Ideology, and Subordination
• Slavery and Imperialist Ideology
• Enlightenment Liberalism Vs. Slavery
• The Anatomy of a Slave Revolt
• Colonial American Slave Law
• Jefferson On Slavery
• Slavery and the Poor
• V: Planning
• Regulation and the Warfare State
• Mail, Privacy, and Social Control
• Corporate State Capitalism: Coal
• French War “planification”: Chlorates
• Bureaucracy and British Regulation
• British Foreign Policy and Stagnation
• Political Decisions and the Economy
• Government, Labor, and Multinationals
• Black Markets Vs. Regulation
• Regulation Vs. Academic Autonomy
• Government Schools and Social Control
• The Economics of Charity
• International State Planning and Inflation
• Competition and Individual Knowledge

Regulation vs. Academic Autonomy

Robert M. Rosenzweig

• Stanford University

“An End to Autonomy: Who Pulls the Strings?” Change 10 (1978): 28–34, 62.

The question now confronting government-university relationships is whether government funding inevitably entails government intervention. Rosenzweig notes that “virtually the whole range of public regulatory activities now bears on the university.” The result has been a growth in internal bureaucracy. Still, activities in the classroom, laboratories, and even admission committees have not been subject to much direct government regulation.

Particular problems, however, have developed for medical schools in their relations with the government. One example concerns American students, enrolled in foreign medical schools, who then seek to transfer to American schools. Efforts to increase the number of such transfers threatened loss of federal capitation grants unless the schools changed their normal admission requirements. After a confrontation within Congress over this issue, a very moderate resolution emerged that did not compromise admission requirements. After a confrontation within Congress over this issue, a very moderate resolution emerged that did not compromise admission requirements. Still the threat of government control left many medical school administrators shaken.

Another recent issue of government intervention concerns regulations directed toward the conducting of research on recombinant DNA. The author states: “What is at stake is not simply the means by which an important but still narrow line of research will be regulated, but almost certainly the way in which biomedical research generally will be dealt with.” The author points to the inappropriate nature of a democratic solution to this problem.

Such problems are the forerunner of similar, broader problems which other segments of the university community may soon encounter.