What is academic freedom?

Perhaps only academics are interested in an answer to this question (and my experience in the academy leads me to believe, sadly, that a number of them aren't interested either).  In a time when most citizens (and again, many academics) are ignorant of the purpose of tenure, Daniel Little has a very interesting post that deserves to be read (see here).  Let me provide an extended quote from his piece.

So what is academic freedom? And how is it distinct from the other kinds of freedoms we have as either constitutional protections or fundamental human rights -- freedom of association, freedom of speech and thought, freedom of expression? Fundamentally the idea is that the faculty of a university have a more extensive and specialized version of each of these fundamental freedoms, and that their exercise of their academic freedom cannot be used as a basis for dismissing them from their positions within the university. (This is the fundamental justification of the system of faculty tenure.) The employees of a corporation have a right of freedom of expression; but their conditions of employment may set limits on their exercise of that freedom. For example, there are numerous examples of people dismissed from their jobs in the private sector as a result of their comments about the company they work for. The idea of academic freedom is that professors have a special right to think, reason, and express their ideas about subjects relevant to their teaching and research responsibilities without fear of sanction by the universities (or legislatures) that employ them. 

Again, in an age when the "mantra" is that universities should be run like corporations (another instance of people proclaiming what they do not understand), we all could do much worse than attempting to understand just what we have inherited regarding the practice of the profession of teaching.