How Do Scholars and Academics Differ?

This opening chapter discusses what the author considers as important distinctions between a scholar and an academic, and suggests to whom specific agentic academic freedoms should be extended. To help with the distinction I call upon the notion of place, a location, which is best used to define academics, whereas it is intellectual space that defines scholars (This bipolar is crude and used for the purpose of clarity of argument. Occurring due to the new management responsibilities academics face a third space (Whitchurch, Reconstructing identities in higher education: The rise of third space professionals. Routledge, 2013) where academic work as administrator and scholar are pulled into activities counter to their roles. (Also see McIntosh and Nutt in this volume). I extend this to propose that the utility of the market is necessarily embedded in academic employment places and this is insufficient to warrant so-called academic freedoms per se. By focusing on distinctive scholarly dispositions which could be encouraged to enable flourishing within intellectual spaces, I suggest this then might justify specific personal freedoms, but questions the feasibility of generalised academic freedoms applicable to all of those doing broadly academics work (teaching, assessing research) and the restricted structures of places associated with its functional practice and administration. In this sense, the argument does not support unconditional academic freedom but tries to identify to whom the privileges of academic freedom should apply, and why. To illustrate this point, a differentiation between scholar and academic is mainly discussed here but, in so doing, I acknowledged that a simple bifunction is inadequate for the actual complexity which embraces others such as public intellectuals and independent scholars. It is however important as the ex-higher education minster of the UK government said a university is expected to be “an institution that brings together a body of scholars to form a cohesive and self-critical academic community that provides excellent learning opportunities for people” (Jo Johnson, in the House of Commons Higher Education and Research Bill Committee, 15 September 2016, Higher Education and Research Bill (Eighth sitting)—Hansard—UK Parliament). So, in a way, this chapter considers the very nature of the university. This introductory chapter sets out one position and the remainder of the book offers other well-argued perspectives. These call on different ontological positions and reveal different worldviews which the editors hope will widen the debate on the topic.