Abstract
Academic freedom, which is the most important value for any university, both in democratic and authoritarian countries face new challenges from university administrators, the general public or state. In this paper, I present six arguments for the justification of academic freedom. While one of my arguments is the argument of consistency, the others are the rationality,open-mindedness, libertarian, utilitarian, and creativity and diversity arguments, each appeal to a different value as its basis. I argue that unless a person is against academia itself, they have no option but to defend academic freedom.
