We are arguably in dark times where rights to academic freedom have been conflated with expedient conceptions of free speech, its interdependence with other freedoms ignored, and its use as a tool to silence and oppress increasingly apparent. Contemporary media discourse, alongside current legislation in the UK, seeks to erase the historical connection and contemporary relationship between academic freedom, student protest and industrial action. This co-optation of academic freedom to uphold racist, sexist, classist, ableist, transphobic and other overlapping oppressive infrastructures is, however, not lost on academics. This network on academic freedom is a starting point, bringing together a working group of scholars looking at the problems and possibilities around academic freedom.

If you would like to be part of this network, please email academicfreedom@magneticideals.org

This network emerges from a panel at the 2022 Utopian Studies Society Conference which proposed starting points for reimagining academic freedom from a utopian perspective that is open, generative, critical and decolonial (slides are available upon request).

At the panel Dr Heather McKnight, Dr Audrey Verma and Dr Alice Corble presented critiques of academic freedom and invited broader consideration of whether academic freedom can be liberatory or is necessarily always oppressive. How can we work with, generate, or formalise overlaps between academic freedom and utopia? Can we centre responsibility and care over the right to offend? How can we raise awareness and understanding of its inter-determinacies with other rights? What new definitions have emerged of academic freedom when it is considered in relation to resistance? How should we counter moves that threaten academic freedom, or should we be arguing for radical alternatives?

The panel asked attendees to consider whether academic freedom should be extended to all, and be used in defence of all workers, students and the communities in which our institutions exist, thus making visible the roots of knowledge production. We propose that we should be considering the new definitions of academic freedom emergent in discourses of resistance in the institution and consider the prefigurative potential for academic freedom not just as a fixed definition but an open category, one that is subject to ongoing critique and change.

On the panel Dr Audrey Verma (University of Newcastle) addressed academic freedom in relation to neoliberalisation, precarity and digitisation, speaking to issues raised in her recently published article ‘A one-sided view of the world’: women of colour at the intersections of academic freedom. See resources below for link.

Alice Corble (University of Sussex) will addressed academic freedom within the context of library and archival work, exploring tensions between control and liberation in librarianship, particularly when it comes to decolonial practices. She addressed the invisibility and marginalisation of these workers in processes of knowledge production, and the exclusion of professional service staff in the right to exercise academic freedom.

Heather McKnight (Magnetic Ideals Collective) addressed how through joint resistance between staff and students, new narratives of academic freedom are emerging and how these sit at odds with institutional practice, media discourse and legislative changes. She will address new definitions arising through resistance to prevent, suggesting a prefigurative legislative approach to address the difficulties presented.

We hope to bring together people for a workshop in February/March 2023, with some informal discussion as a group about other possibilities as we approach this. If you would like to be part of this network, please email academicfreedom@magneticideals.org

Resources:

Network contact email: academicfreedom@magneticideals.org

Blell, M., Liu, S.-J.S., Verma, A., 2022. ‘A one-sided view of the world’: women of colour at the intersections of academic freedom. The International Journal of Human Rights 0, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/13642987.2022.2041601