Academic Freedom in Higher Education of Ethiopia

This book shows how academic freedom is a myth in the sense of being highly desired by the academy, yet threatend by it. In the Ethiopian educational context, every body qualified to to be a threat to the other. The enemies of academic freedom are the state, the faculty the management, students and other members of the society. This suggests a political context where every one is against the other. The history of the three political systems, imperial aristocracy, Soviet type of Military Socialism and ethnic federalism, of Ethiopia demonstrates the extent to which each system defined an environment of threats to academic freedom. No state was immune from being a threat to academic freedom of university professors and students. The claim of the academy for public service mission according to its definition of truth had always resulted in crossing the boundary between itself and the state. The mutual invasion of boundaries had always resulted in invasion of the university by the state. The project of truth claim ended in lose/win results always to the disadvantage of the university.The university looses its power and the state becomes the university. pp. 210.