How do scholars and academics differ?

This opening chapter discusses what the author considers as importance distinctions between a scholar and an academic, and suggests to whom specific agentic academic freedoms should be extended. To help with the distinction I call upon the notion of place, a location, which is best used to define academics, whereas it is intellectual space that defines scholars . I extend this to propose that the utility of the market is necessarily embedded in academic employment places and this is insufficient to warrant so called academic freedoms per se. By focusing on distinctive scholarly dispositions which could be encouraged to enable flourishing within intellectual spaces I suggest this then might justify specific personal freedoms, but questions the feasibility of generalised academic freedoms applicable to all of those doing broadly academics work (teaching, assessing research) and the restricted structures of places associated with its functional practice and administration. In this sense the argument does not support unconditional academic freedom but tries to identify to whom the privileges of academic freedom should apply, and why. To illustrate this point, a differentiation between scholar and academic is mainly discussed here but, in so doing, I acknowledged that a simple bifunction is inadequate for the actual complexity which embraces others such as public intellectuals and independent scholars. It is however important as the ex-higher education minster of the UK government said a university is expected to be “an institution that brings together a body of scholars to form a cohesive and self-critical academic community that provides excellent learning opportunities for people” . So, in a way, this chapter considers the very nature of the university.