Perspectives on academic freedom in Australia

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.

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.

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.

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 the real issue that sometime academics, despite codes of conduct and professional honour do sometimes fail to act with rigour and integrity .

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.

Diversity & academic freedom

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?

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 continue to struggle for academic freedom and freedom of opinion, expression, belief, association, and movement. Dr Dawood has disappeared.

A number of the Academics for Peace have successfully escaped Turkey with the help of the SAR network. So universities can provide a haven, which universities have in the past and continue to do – but this is violated more and more.

Remember last year, the Hong Kong students who ran from their street protest into their universities, and the police followed and beat and arrested them. We were pretty outraged in mild Australia a few years ago as armed police burst through a legal picket line over Enterprise Agreement negotiations, to chase students seeking to speak to the few classes still being held. We have had other incidences in Australia of police coming in to break up or to protect protesters and assemblies, depending upon the whims of their political masters.

For academic freedom and freedom of speech are used as weapons by those with power to exercise power, but this does not stop aspiring to better – to facilitate conditions that enable students and educators and researchers to take on the hard and controversial – to seek explanations and answers to what is difficult. To speak truth to power.

It should be remembered that it was in Australia where our climate scientists faced death threats a decade ago. Our pioneering feminist and queer researchers and advocates have, over decades, faced lack of interest and support from local universities, while being applauded overseas.

We may not have been jailed for teaching feminism – like an Iranian anthropologist teaching about gender equality. She is also unable to live in her homeland, but is at least safe thanks to a SAR network. Today, our hearts go out to all Afghan women – including university women now probably refused access to university or worse. It is not dangerous to speak out at Australian universities, just unpopular. But it is all the more important to keep speaking up as colleagues are silenced elsewhere.

Conditions of work matter too

But I am a trade unionist – and along with academics and journalists, trade unionists are also persecuted for speaking uncomfortable truth to power. Education unionists – teachers and academics and researchers and support staff – are all targets. Participation in SAR is part of our work for the NTEU. But the conditions of work matter too: who gets jobs and what sort of jobs.

It has taken many decades for universities to take on those prickly feminists and the contemporary gender critical academics. It is in my working memory that an Australian university could have no women professors, where women could not get permanent jobs to get promoted, and even today too many women academics are still blocked at that jump into the professoriate. And that professoriate also does not reflect the multiracial and multicultural diversity of university students – let alone of Australia.

Academic careers are hard work. And even harder for young aspiring academics, as few can get onto a decent contract from which they can be promoted. As the NTEU and researchers and commentators have continually evidenced, the majority of the teaching in Australian universities is done by highly qualified and often very experienced professionals employed sessionally – that is by the hour for a short period of time. It is a piece rate system – paid for some activities.

Too many of our researchers are on short term contracts, sometimes for over 20 years. Many never get promoted. But others may get all the way to professor and still without an ongoing job.

Speaking truth to power

Why is this an academic freedom issue and how does this relate to speaking truth to power? A critical casually employed academic, even commenting within the subject they are teaching and in which they have a PhD, may well find herself labelled difficult and not employed again. And what of the casually employed lecturer who wants to enter into scholarly debate with a professor. Unlikely to be asked back.

Let alone the tutor that questions why they are not being paid for all the work they do. It is shameful that many of our universities, after union intervention, are now reimbursing staff because of wage theft. And what of the contract researcher that needs to question the research methodology or the actual data gathered. What if it is so serious they need to blow the whistle. Will they still have a career?

And then what of the courage to take on the wicked problems – when funding for research is so limited and it is wiser to play safe. When university funding is continually squeezed by government so that universities are told to cut courses – just stick, we are told, with those mainstream courses currently attracting students and for which there are clear graduate jobs. This is not going to solve the wicked problems.

Is there not an academic freedom issue, and here I am being blatantly political, in doubling the costs for students undertaking humanities subjects.

Sourcing funds

Compounding the problem as NTEU Vice-President Andrew Bonnell pointed out in that same AUR special edition, academic freedom can also be curtailed as universities go out increasingly desperately looking for other funders because of government funding shortfalls.

And what happens when the corporate or government client or partner wants research that reinforces their preferred position – whether that be in drug trials, or gambling policy, or impacts upon biodiversity of development proposals . The removal of staff and student elected representatives on university councils and making the business of these meetings confidential also mitigate against fearless commitments to academic freedom. Democratic decision making is another demonstration of academic freedom.

Having an academic freedom policy means little, if few believe it is enforceable, and are not sure that their university will back them up. Interestingly, this may come to a head as Australian university staff, students and even managements advocate for our universities to be more environmentally sustainable, more diverse and inclusive, and answerable – as we welcome university council’s endorsing carbon neutral plans for their own operations and – those of their partners.

As universities also seek to make real commitments to local Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islanders people and communities. But this all still falls short if students and staff can’t stay at university because they cannot pay the fees and need income support, or they cannot continue to limp from one casualised session to a short term contract to no income, and are still expected to be grateful.

I expect better of our universities and we need to find sustainable ways of operating including having decent jobs, and inclusive and accountable education and research. Then we will be performing academic freedom at home, which will become even more important when we open back up to international students – and to those scholars needing a safe and respectful haven. ◆

Associate Professor Jeannie Rea, Victoria University