Beyond the political interference of authoritarian regimes, the neoliberalisation of the academy has emerged as one of the key threats to academic freedom in the twenty-first century. The demand to produce research outputs of sufficient quantity, quality, and impact for scholars to justify their taxpayer-funded appointments reconceptualises the responsibility of the "public scholar" from one who challenges the status quo and inequitable power relations, to one who provides a worthwhile return on investment. Accordingly, questions have been raised as to whether academia is a feasible realm in which to further ideals of equity and justice in music education. In this article, I examine the tension between critical imperative and methodological conformity, considering how the policing of method reinforces individualized frames of knowledge-production that fix and limit notions of what knowledge is and what it does. I argue that music education scholars may be well placed to deviate from procedural method in realizing a more creative and relational public scholarship, in working toward a more ethical conceptualisation of academic freedom through the inquiry process itself.