Academic culture is a set of rules (norms and values) regulating the institution of the university. The central component of academic culture is autonomy both in the sense of independence from external interference and the capacity to decide on research, teaching and organization of the university. Autonomy is endangered by the interference in academic culture of other cultural complexes characteristic for modern society: corporate culture, business culture, bureaucratic culture, financial culture, consumer culture. The resulting cultural clash is the reason for current crisis of the university. The defense of autonomy is the ethical and professional duty of scholars.

In the extensive polemic with the book Haunting History: For a Deconstructive Approach to the Past by Ethan Kleinberg, the reviewer comments on the innovative potential of deconstruction as it enables the conception of various scenarios of the future. Kleinberg’s reflections on the ontology (or hauntology) of the past are located within the current discussion about “the ontological turn.” The reviewer compares Kleinberg’s take on a deconstructive approach to the past with similar considerations presented by Sande Cohen in the US as well as by Keith Jenkins, Alun Munslow and, more recently, Berber Bevernage in Europe.

Trust and trustworthiness are crucial for science: equally for the scientific knowledge, scientific institutions and scientific community. For scientific knowledge the main criterion of trustworthiness is the search for truth, for scientific institutions it is the regime of autonomy, and for scientific community – respecting the ethos of science: norms of universalism, communalism, disinterestedness and organized scepticism (peer review and meritocracy). In the traditional academic science due to these criteria the level of deviance (fraud, plagiarism etc.) was very low. Alas in current post-academic science we witness numerous occurrence of fake knowledge, loss of autonomy of academic institutions and the neglect of the ethos of science among scholars. There are several processes responsible for this condition: fiscalisation, privatization, marketization, bureaucratization, and the pressure of non-academic, external forces and interests on scientific community. The regaining of autonomy and reactivation of academic culture (primarily the ethos of science), are the preconditions for overcoming the current crisis of trustworthiness in science.