Across the globe, recent years have seen academic institutions come under growing political pressure. From Hungary to Poland, from Brazil to Turkey, and increasingly also in the US and Western Europe, forced closures, armed sieges, nationalizations, mass layoffs and defunding and licensing initiatives are on the increase.
Go directly to: navigation
Go directly to: content
4Sep
Organised by: The Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS-KNAW)
NIAS Opening Academic Year: Academic Freedom: What's At Stake? (And Who Cares?) – keynote Michael Ignatieff
Universities have been battlegrounds for bottom-up generational protest and political change forever, and – as is in full view today – will surely remain so for as long as they remain credible and vibrant liberal democratic institutions. The political reaction now building momentum across liberal democracies, however, appears to be materially different: post- or illiberal, top-down, and in a fight not to make academia live up to its democratizing potential but, on the contrary, to erode academic freedoms as well as the resolve and means to actively promote them as the democratic civil institutions that they are.
But what, then, are these academic freedoms? How are they threatened? With wat results? What happens if they crumble? What lessons may be learned from countries that have been there, and back again – and from recent developments in Dutch academia? And, finally, what might a broader response across the institutions of civil society (the press, the judiciary, civil service, education, ngo’s) look like?
More information and registration
Pease visit NIAS' website for more information about the program, the lectures and the free registration.
