◆ ACADEMIC FREEDOM Image: Name
Former NTEU National President, Jeannie Rea, spoke at Perspectives on Academic Freedom in Australia, the launch event for the Australian section of the US-founded Scholars at Risk Network in August 2021 at the University of the Sunshine Coast.
Perspectives on academic freedom in Australia I was fortunate to become involved in Scholars at Risk (SAR) when I was NTEU National President. The NTEU has been a consistent member of SAR and has supported Australian universities, where our members work, to sign on. SAR has been resolute in pursuing academic freedom, not as an abstract nor ideal, but the actual pursuit of it which, even when not intentional, has landed academics, researchers and university professionals in dire trouble with ramifications for their livelihoods, safety and that of their families, for their liberty, and even lives.
the real issue that sometime academics, despite codes of conduct and professional honour do sometimes fail to act with rigour and integrity .
SAR's practical program of seeking sanctuary in a university in another country has saved lives – and allowed some to continue their teaching, research and writing. The sad part is that around the world circumstances continue to deteriorate and few are able to return home – and their academic freedom and rights to free speech and assembly remain compromised with consequences to one’s colleagues, friends and family of speaking out.
Diversity & academic freedom
AUR special edition Australian Universities' Review (AUR) published by the NTEU, issued a special edition earlier this year titled ‘Academy freedom’s precarious future’ guest edited by Professor Kristin Lyons from UQ. Not surprisingly Australian contributors focused upon debates and characteristics within Australia, but with resonance across the world. Also included was the important contribution from Peter Greste with Fred D’Agonstino exploring why both academic freedom and media freedom are so difficult to protect. Most will remember that Peter Greste, now a professor at UQ, was an acclaimed journalist with the BBC and Al Jazeera, who was accused with 3 colleagues of spreading false news and jailed in Egypt. It took over 12 months to get him out and deported back to Australia. D’Agostino and Greste wrangle with analogies between the situation of academics and journalists seeking to act with integrity and honour. They also explore
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They also attributed this to the choices made on topics and approaches – which they argue are limited by the lack of diversity in the academy. I start with this observation because when we look at the silencing of academic freedom it is often when scholars seek to speak ‘truth to power’. Truth to Power – that old adage popularised by the Quakers urging people to stand up to and confront those in authority who are doing wrong. They were talking of slavery in the United States – and how prescient that is for today as in the US and other universities of the colonising and settler societies are confronting, not only their legacies of colonisation, but ongoing complicity in colonialism, and structural and systemic white supremacy. In Australia, this reckoning with Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander peoples who have fought their way into universities to study, to teach and to research, is long overdue. First Nations colleagues report that nearly every day continues to be a struggle with having to confront racism, to bear the load of ongoing attacks upon families and communities, of appalling levels of incarceration and deaths in custody, of inter-generational poverty and ill health – and having to always stand out and fight back. Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander colleagues also have to carry the burden – the load of expectations that they will teach the rest of us and alert us to respond and mobilise. It may be agreed that Black Lives Matter, yet how much is this reflected in universities when Indigenous student and staff retention is not increasing?
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Universities do not seem to be places of academic freedom to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander colleagues – they are still fighting for personal respect and recognition, and respect and recognition of knowledge systems, and for sovereignty. These are academic freedom matters. Racism, prejudice, discrimination and legacies of previous conquests and colonisations are key reasons why scholars are at risk. Researching and teaching and publishing from amongst and for, those being denied, often not just a voice, but their livelihood, and even their life.
Courage to think SAR recognises this. In 2018 Turkey’s Academics for Peace were awarded the Courage to Think Award 'for their extraordinary efforts in building academic solidarity and in promoting the principles of academic freedom, freedom of inquiry, and the peaceful exchange of ideas’. Academics for Peace had started as a petition protesting the prosecution of the Kurds and calling for a negotiated peace. The consequence was the suspension of staff, and even dismissal without pensions. Senior staff who would not cooperate with persecuting the academics were also punished. Students were recruited to spy upon their lecturers. Research grants were stopped. Passports were confiscated. The situation has worsened. The initial signatories were standing up for the Kurds – knowing full well that a government would also turn upon even mild dissidents. Rahil Dawood was the recipient of the Courage to Think Award in 2020. Dr Dawood, an Associate Professor in the Human Science Institute and founder of the Minorities Folklore Research Centre in Xinjiang University, was recognised for her work, alongside that of other academics and students of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, who contin-
