Academic Freedom Under Pressure

Is academic freedom threatened? The book examines current challenges to academic freedom in Europe, focusing mainly on Italy and Germany. The cases discussed demonstrate that research and teaching are under pressure in European democracies: in Hungary and Poland due to political constraints, in other countries due to societal expectations. Considering different interrelated aspects, the four parts of the book explore many real and potential threats to universities, scientific institutions and researchers, ranging from the European dimension of freedom of the arts and sciences to comparative analysis of emerging challenges to academic freedom against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic. They highlight threats to university autonomy from the economic orientation of university governance, which emphasizes efficiency, competition, and external evaluation, and from new rules concerning trigger warnings, speech restrictions, and ethics commissions. Detailed study of these complex threats is intended to stimulate scholarly reflection and elicit serious discussion at European and national level. The volume contributes to the search for a new role of universities and scientific institutions and is addressed to academics and political stakeholders.

This book argues that academic freedom in higher education in East Asia, the U.S. and Australia is under stress. Academic freedom means freedom to teach, research, and serve in multiple political and social roles based on professional principles. It is closely linked to shared governance, in which academics participate in and influence decision making in core academic concerns such as choosing new faculty, faculty promotion, tenure decisions and the approval of new academic programs. In different countries and regions, the duress confronting academic freedom may come from different directions, and the ability of faculty to share power can vary greatly. In authoritarian mainland China, it is mostly political and ideological controls that greatly affect academic freedom, and shared governance is very much limited. In semi-democracies like Hong Kong and Macau and democracies like Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, the U.S. and Australia, corporatization and commercialization have had great impact on both academic freedom and shared governance. The result is that the roles professors play within academia are continually being diminished and the academic profession is struggling to maintain its ground. Similar developments are also occurring in Europe. These developments should cause great concern to educators, researchers and policymakers everywhere. The authors collected here present attempts to learn from current practice in order to move policy into directions that will help protect higher education as a common good. This book highlights the importance of academic freedom and provides insights into the ways it is being infringed both by commercialization and corporatization on the one hand and political repression on the other. It vividly illustrates detailed case studies and empirical data that make it a compelling read.- Professor Ruth Hayhoe, University of Toronto, Canada Academic freedom is as important today as at any time in the last century. The authors point out the challenges that academic freedom faces on a global scale. The import of the book is in its comparative perspective steeped in data and analysis. Thoughtful. Cogent. Compelling. - Professor William G. Tierney and Professor Wilbur-Kieffer, University of Southern California, United States

Covering issues from the resistance in universities to Darwinist thought, to the experience of women and ethnic minorities, to "economic" and "political correctness," from 1860 to the present.

In these seventeen essays, distinguished senior scholars discuss the conceptual issues surrounding the idea of freedom of inquiry and scrutinize a variety of obstacles to such inquiry that they have encountered in their personal and professional experience. Their discussion of threats to freedom traverses a wide disciplinary and institutional, political and economic range covering specific restrictions linked to speech codes, the interests of donors, institutional review board licensing, political pressure groups, and government policy, as well as phenomena of high generality, such as intellectual orthodoxy, in which coercion is barely visible and often self-imposed. As the editors say in their introduction: "No freedom can be taken for granted, even in the most well-functioning of formal democracies. Exposing the tendencies that undermine freedom of inquiry and their hidden sources and widespread implications is in itself an exercise in and for democracy."

Higher education is being reshaped, challenging institutions to strategically respond to the reconfiguration of their role and missions. This book addresses the interactions between policy drivers and institutional practices in major issues such as governance, funding, quality and management.

Drawing on rich interviews with academics in four different countries, this book develops a transnational theory of academic freedom.

For more than a century academics have had unique rights not enjoyed by other citizens -- to speak, teach, and write freely. Central to the case for academic freedom is that scholars must be able to voice their views free of fear in order for society to gain a better understanding of ourselves and our world. Academic freedom has always faced challenges. Professors have been pressed to alter their work because it offends powerful interests -- both inside and outside the university. Some have been fired or denied jobs for their political views, their criticisms of colleagues and administrators, and their refusal to buckle under corporate pressures to hush up research findings. The sixteen contributors to this volume cite many such instances in Canada and the U.S. More significantly, they point out how governments, corporations, and university administrators today are seeking to narrow academic freedom. Among them: Major donors are acquiring control over university teaching and even hiring decisions University administrators are firing professors with unpopular political views, while pretending that the reasons for their decisions lie elsewhere Governments are using funding mechanisms to force-feed research in some areas, while shutting down inquiry in others Campus-wide policies enforcing civility rules are preventing criticism and debate within a university Judges are issuing decisions which reverse previous rulings supporting academic freedom in the U.S. and Canada Together the contributors to this book document the many arenas in which academic freedom is in jeopardy and explore its legitimate limits.