I realize it's in quotes, but very few academics hearing the phrase "academic freedom" would think of "the ability to work on anything you like." They would, r

I realize it's in quotes, but very few academics hearing the phrase "academic freedom" would think of "the ability to work on anything you like." They would, rather, think of what Wikipedia aptly describes as: ". . . the belief that the freedom of inquiry by faculty members is essential to the mission of the academy as well as the principles of academia, and that scholars should have freedom to teach or communicate ideas or facts (including those that are inconvenient to external political groups or to authorities) without being targeted for repression, job loss, or imprisonment." I've been in academia for (including graduate school) a little over twenty years, and I've been astounded at the ways in which freedom of inquiry is threatened from without and from within. And while few American and European academics face imprisonment for their views or objects of study, many academics in other parts of the world do. And U.S. and European academics certainly can face job loss or sanction for being interested in "inconvenient" things. I would encourage the author to confine his use of this phrase to its traditional meaning, lest anyone forget the far more important problem to which it refers.