Academic Ethics and Its Relationship with Academic Autonomy and Freedom

There are some observations indicate examples of misconduct in academic environments, such as credentialism, academic plagiarism, and parasitic behaviors in joint activities. Academics cannot actualize academic ethics as they should, carrying out social responsibilities has become controversial and the social impacts of academics in reducing human bitterness, human hardships and sufferings have been doubted. These have been the result of the distortion of academic autonomy and freedom and ultimately academic ethics. The university has been a colonial territory of the government. To investigate this issue, three ethical logics are the main basis of the present study; a. ethics of result and benefit, b. ethics of duty and responsibility; and c. virtue ethics. Academic ethics has been compared based on the three mentioned logics. Then, the author has discussed referring to two academic philosophies, that is, the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and the philosophy of Max Weber. The finding of the study was that in the absence of academic autonomy and freedom, the whole academic ethics goes to waste. If there is no academic autonomy and freedom, not only the academic ethics, but also the existential philosophy of science, scientific teaching and learning and science operation are distorted, the nature of science, the structural and functional requirements of science are damaged, and science basically loses its objectivity. In this study, five categories of academics were observed and typologized: 1. academic emigrates, 2. academic cryptographers, 3. academic pragmatists, 4. academic staff and 5. academic intellectuals. The best situation of academic ethics is possible in the fifth type, which is an optimal combination of ethics of results, ethics of responsibility and ethics of virtue.