Across Europe, it can feel as if preparedness is all we talk about.
Governments are planning for war, cyberattacks, infrastructure failure and supply shocks – stockpiling, stress-testing and building resilience into the systems on which societies depend.
But preparedness is still being defined too narrowly, treated as a question of infrastructure, logistics and defence. One critical pillar is largely missing – the capacity to produce knowledge before we know what kind of knowledge we need.
Knowledge capacity can’t be built on demand. It develops over time, through sustained investment in research across a wide range of fields, including those that may not appear immediately useful. And it depends on a condition that is often defended in abstract terms but rarely explained in practical ones – academic freedom. Without the freedom to pursue questions whose value isn’t yet obvious, societies make themselves smaller than their futures.
The freedom argument
When public debates turn to research funding, universities often fall back on familiar arguments – institutional autonomy, peer review and the value of curiosity-driven inquiry. These are essential principles, but they aren’t always persuasive outside academic settings. For many people, research can seem distant from everyday concerns, or difficult to justify when all you know is what’s in the headline.
That scepticism isn’t new. In the 1970s, US Senator William Proxmire handed out his “Golden Fleece” awards to publicly funded research projects he deemed wasteful, and the awards resonated because they captured something real – when research is judged in isolation, it can seem obscure or disconnected from practical needs.
There is something deeply democratic about shining a light on how public money is spent, and taxpayers are entitled to transparency and responsibility. The question isn’t whether research should be scrutinised, but how that scrutiny is carried out. When evaluation becomes short-term, or driven by what sounds sensible in a sound bite, it can narrow the range of questions researchers are willing to pursue.
From fleece to goose
In response to the Golden Fleece awards, scientific organisations later created the “Golden Goose” award to highlight research that once appeared obscure but eventually delivered major societal benefits. The message wasn’t that all research is equally valuable, nor that it should be shielded from criticism – it was a reminder that, at the outset, we often can’t tell which lines of inquiry will matter most.
History offers many examples. The development of GPS relied on decades of basic research in physics and engineering with no immediate commercial endpoint, and the invention of the barcode grew out of theoretical work that once seemed far removed from practical application. In each case, the work began without a guarantee of immediate payoff.
These examples point to something modest but important, and the same dynamic is visible today – societies can’t reliably predict which research will prove decisive. If funding decisions are driven mainly by what appears immediately useful, research systems become narrower and more cautious, and over time they also become less prepared.
AI and the unknown
Today, similar dynamics are visible in research on the risks and safety of artificial intelligence. Much of this work can appear speculative or distant from immediate application – efforts to understand how advanced AI systems might behave in unexpected or unintended ways, for instance – and is often difficult to justify in terms of short-term impact. Yet it is precisely this kind of research that builds capacity for challenges we don’t yet fully understand and can’t afford to face unprepared.
Decades of investment in basic research have often yielded benefits that were impossible to foresee at the time, and capacity built in one era becomes decisive in another. Preparedness, in this sense, isn’t only about having the right equipment or plans in place – it’s about maintaining a system capable of producing knowledge under conditions of uncertainty.
This is where academic freedom takes on a more practical meaning. It isn’t simply a principle internal to universities, nor a claim to exemption from accountability – it is what allows research systems to remain open enough for unexpected insights to emerge, ensuring that inquiry can be guided by evidence and expertise rather than by short-term political or economic pressures.
Smarter scrutiny
The answer to public scepticism isn’t less oversight, but smarter oversight – evaluation systems that protect long-term capacity, not just short-term results. Transparent processes, rigorous evaluation and responsible stewardship of public resources are essential, but evaluation mechanisms must recognise that valuable discoveries often emerge from work that didn’t appear immediately useful. Accountability should protect breadth of inquiry, not narrow it.
What would this look like in practice? It means resisting the pressure to tie all research funding to short-term deliverables or narrowly defined impact metrics, protecting space for investigator-driven research alongside mission-oriented programmes, and evaluating research portfolios not only for efficiency but for diversity – ensuring that systems retain the capacity to explore questions whose relevance isn’t yet obvious.
Public servants who must explain research budgets to elected officials deserve arguments that are both principled and practical. They shouldn’t be left to defend academic freedom as an abstract entitlement, but as a long-term strategy for preparedness.
If we want ministers, neighbours and taxpayers to defend academic freedom when it is tested, they need arguments they can use at the dinner table and not only in the faculty senate.
They need to be able to explain why societies invest in questions whose answers are uncertain. Academic freedom, understood this way, isn’t an abstract privilege – it is a practical component of preparedness in a complex world.
