Academic Freedom

Students might vote with their feet that Italian and Spanish should close (so far they have voted the opposite); or the university community, after open and democratic debate of its philosophy and priorities, might take that decision. We shall see. But the intervention of the Minister of Education, directly naming Romance Languages as an area for "rationalisation", would be seen in other countries in which I have taught not simply as another inexperienced minister shooting off his mouth, but as an outrageous violation of academic freedom.