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The importance of moral courage to teaching and learning has been recognized by a number of authors. The process pedagogy of Alfred North Whitehead proposes that emotion is central to experience and to the imaginative questioning which enables learning and the ability to stand up for one's beliefs. Faculty who wish to connect with their students should recognize this fact lest ideas become "inert." In contrast, process pedagogy encourages a holistic, cyclical approach in which students and faculty engage in the "adventure of ideas" as a balance between freedom and self-discipline. This search for new ideals involves certain risks, as both a recent example of alternative higher education and Whitehead's own vision of the university show. Process pedagogy's synthesis of the emotional and intellectual can spur imaginative critique and the capacity to put one's ideas into practice.

Academic freedom has been a contested concept throughout its history, but it is a necessary condition for the advancement and dissemination of shared knowledge. It is an integral part of university education and research, and is intimately connected with collegial governance and the common good. In Canada's research-intensive universities, the threats to academic freedom are both internal and external. This article examines these issues and suggests ways in which to resist and possibly overcome them, including the establishment of alternative universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]