Introduction to the Special Issue: Academic freedom’s precarious future. Why it matters and what’s at stake

Kristen Lyons, University of Queensland

Introduction

Academic freedom – however elusive – is widely championed as the foundation of a good university. Academic freedom is held up as vital, to borrow from Hannah Arendt, in speaking ‘truth to power’, and axiomatic in the pursuit of the public, or common good. More broadly, it is understood as being vital for ensuring a healthy functioning democracy, and as an antidote to the contemporary dis-ease of post truth politics.

But just what is meant by ‘academic freedom’, and why has its defence – or at least some critical exploration of its politics – become so important? What forces threaten that freedom from both within and without the university sector, how have debates about academic freedom become fodder in the culture wars, and with outcomes that continue to drive the weaponisation and politicisation of universities? In guarding against the assault on academic freedom and its ripple effects, including the erosion of democratic systems of knowledge production, what forms of collective organising are being marshalled? More broadly, how might critical debates about academic freedom open up opportunities for a revitalised university that is equipped to grapple with the contemporary challenges that shape our ‘uncertain and unequal world’ (see Sharon Stein, this volume)?

This special issue of Australian Universities’ Review – Academic Freedom’s Precarious Future? Why it Matters and What’s at Stake – engages with these, and other issues and questions. In strident and lucid ways, each of the authors that have brought this special issue to life offers analysis and opinion that is set to shape the contours of contemporary and future debates and thinking on academic freedom.

A special issue on this topic is indeed timely, given amendments to the Higher Education Support Act were made in March 2021, just weeks prior to finalising this special issue. The insertion of definitions of ‘freedom of speech’ and ‘academic freedom’ – a dream realised for Queensland Senator Pauline Hanson as quid pro quo for lending her support to the Government’s steep fee increases for humanities degrees – (again) illustrates how acutely politicised academic freedom, and universities, have become. Similarly, the recent politically fuelled freedom of speech furore – demonstrated via protests on university campuses in response to a number of ‘reactionary speakers’, including widely disgraced men’s activist, Bettina Arndt – exposes how intertwined universities are in the culture wars (Funnell & Graham, 2020; NapierRaman, 2021).

Each of the contributing authors to this special issue – in rich and diverse ways – showcases the contestations related to discourses of academic freedom, as well as the right/ left ideological schisms and culture wars these ignite. In so doing, they locate academic freedom – and its curtailment – within broader structural processes and dynamics that are reimagining universities, both in Australia, and worldwide. Corporatisation, neoliberalisation and managerialism, as examples (themes well documented by critical university studies scholars, and previous articles in AUR), are each variously situated as bearing down upon the freedoms of individual academics, research agendas, institutional governance structures, and more.

Various contributors also tease out the interconnections between defence of academic freedom and the capacity of universities to play a part in building solidarities, relations and responsibilities to diverse peoples and ecologies. This includes the responsibilities of universities in the context of the global climate crisis, structural racism – as rendered bare via the global Black Lives Matter movement – and the culture of misogyny and sexual violence that pervades contemporary societies, including in the highest offices of the Australian Parliament.

In the midst of thesemultiple and intersecting crises (Lyons et al., 2021), contributors to this special issue provoke thinking about what the purpose of universities could be, and whose rights (if any) and interests they might support? Similarly, they invite consideration of the ways academic freedom is intertwined with opportunities for fostering forms of teaching, research, advocacy and service that respond – with purpose, care, and even love – in the face of current inequalities and injustices. The hope, in some small way, is that this special issue will further move academics, policy makers and others, towards engagement with these ideas.

Academic freedom and the COVID-19 global health pandemic

The impetus for this special issue was sparked just months before the onset of the COVID-19 global health pandemic turned all our worlds, including our universities, upside down. Australian universities, alongside universities worldwide, have been pounded by the shock waves of this pandemic. But the aftershocks are expected to reverberate long after the onset of this crisis, with implications that will likely bear down upon academic freedoms for many years to come.

In Australia, the Federal Coalition Government’s response to the dire challenges facing the higher education sector because of the COVID-19 crisis is one of a number of triggers for these aftershocks. In the face of haemorrhaging revenues tied to the loss of international students (estimated at up to $7.6 billion nationally between 2020-2024 (Larkins & Marshman, 2020), the Federal Government repeatedly refused to back the higher education sector, including by denying salary supplements via its national JobKeeper scheme for the sector’s 130,000 staff (Garnaut, 2021). Its hostility was further unmasked via skyrocketing fees to study humanities (as named above), while at the same time reducing the costs for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) degrees. These reforms have added to the Federal Coalition Government’s sustained use of its arsenal against the humanities (Brett, 2021) and its politicisation of universities, with outcomes that fuel a climate of anti-intellectualism.

But it is women of all ages who continue to be disproportionality affected by the global health pandemic, and the Federal Government’s responses to it, including across the university sector (Wenham et al., 2020). Demonstrating this, women are amongst those most affected by the haemorrhaging of appointments across universities; conditions tied to our high representation as casual employees, where the largest staff cuts haveto date occurred (Wenham et al., 2020). Additionally, the COVID-19 global health pandemic has exposed the ways in which women’s academic work is systematically rendered invisible; evidenced, for example, via the disproportionate citing of men as experts on COVID-19 quoted in the media in 2020-21 (Moodley & Gouws, 2020). Gendered structural forces have also driven the decrease in women’s publications, a set of dynamics that – despite our best efforts otherwise – have persisted in this special issue.

This special issue aims to draw attention to some of the particular vulnerabilities facing women, alongside early career and First Nations researchers, and the intersectionality of these impacts for academic freedom. However, as editor of this volume I must provide a caveat for the analysis presented. Despite a commitment to create space for the inclusion of diverse voices to ground this special issue, the COVID- 19 global health pandemic had other plans. A number of potential authors had intended to submit to this special issue, but multiple pressing commitments – exacerbated in the context of COVID-19 – meant they were unable to do so. Future collaborations on this topic will no doubt be enriched via the inclusion of additional perspectives – including showcasing the lived experiences of more women, Indigenous scholars and early career researchers – who can be expected to have different experiences of academic freedom compared to those in this special issue, myself included.

Contributions to this Special Issue

In the face of sustained structural inequalities across the university sector – including as exposed in the context of the COVID-19 global health pandemic – academic freedom remains an urgent priority. The contributors to this special issue take up an array of themes related to this.

Starting in Australia, the growing appetite for answers to questions related to academic freedom was signalled via the commission, in 2018, of Hon Robert French AC to report on the state of academic freedom in Australian universities. The outcome of this led to French’s (2019) Review of Freedom of Speech in Australian Higher Education Providers, which recommended the adoption of a Model Code to ‘ensure a culture of free speech and academic freedom is strongly embedded in institutions across the Australian higher education sector’ (Department of Education, Skills and Employment, 2020). Rob Watts (this volume) takes up a series of issues related to this review, including how French understood ‘academic freedom’, and whether, in fact, universities face a ‘crisis in academic free speech’, as a ‘small but noisy claque of neoliberal commentators would have us believe’.

Andrew Bonnell then examines the impact of corporate power on academic freedom, through a critical appraisal of corporate influence across universities. He singles out big tobacco, big sugar and big pharma as each wielding power and influence across universities via funding, gag clauses and ghost writing, amongst other means. He also carefully traces some of the ways big philanthropy has been weaponised to advance the cause of particular commercial interests, including Rupert Murdoch, the Koch Brothers and the John M. Olin Foundation in the United States, and the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation in Australia. In the face of such incursions across universities, Andrew Bonnell reminds us that ‘sunlight is a good disinfectant’, pointing to the urgent need for transparent and accountable governance and oversight.

Yet bringing the dark corners of the university into the light requires ‘freedom of inquiry, and a safe and peaceful environment’ ( Jeannie Rae, this volume). As she sets out, university staff and students who are engaged in teaching, researching and speaking out against state, military, religious and other powers, face increasing threat of attack. Reporting on the internationally significant work of Scholars at Risk (SAR) in defending the rights and interests of staff and students worldwide, Jeannie Rae makes interconnections between the erosion of academic freedoms and the demise of democracies.

Such risks are brought to life in diverse ways across international settings. It is also exposed in the Australian context. A recent Senate inquiry into underpayment and casualisation in Australian workplaces, for example, was told that underpayment was ‘embedded in the business model of Australian universities’ (Zhou, 2021a). The consequences of calling out this structural inequality, however, including the tangible ways this bears down upon the bodies of academic staff and teachers, has come at great cost for some. As part of this inquiry, educators described various consequences of speaking ‘truth to power’; including being removed from internal communications and email lists, and losing work (Zhou, 2021a). Speaking up, and speaking out, is arguably even more risky in the current university sector, in which over 17,000 staff have already lost their jobs, with more job losses expected (Zhou, 2021b).

In addition to these macro-level structural constraints upon academic freedom, Richard Hil describes the various pernicious small ways in which university staff experience the erosion and/or denial of freedoms, with outcomes that leave staff with barely space to breath. He sets out the ways constraints to academic freedom are built into governance structures of the so-called ‘modern university’, with graduate attributes and e-portfolios each turning critical thinking into commodified products, while performance reviews demand academics ‘sell’ themselves and their products. In this hyperindividualised work environment, stopping ‘productive work’ to share a cup of tea with a colleague – who, heaven forbid, might be a friend or ally – has become a radical act. That academics acquiesce to constraints upon their freedom is, as Rob Watts also explores, part of the slow violence of the managerial university.

So how might we gesture towards the conditions of possibility for a freedom of inquiry that these contributors variously call for?

Gerd Schröder-Turk potently makes the case for good governance as the basis for academic freedom. In its simplest form, this should include governing bodies and structures that ensure a diversity of views, including – not surprisingly – the perspectives from the academic body itself. Yet in his careful analysis of university governance and legislation in Western Australia, he describes how a self-selecting mechanism sets the conditions for a concentration of power and, somewhat ironically, the maintenance of governance echo-chambers that exclude those with firsthand experience of working in universities.

Fred D’Agostino and Peter Greste then invite us to move beyond the boundaries of the academy to explore the slippery beasts of academic and media freedoms. By anchoring their analysis of academic freedom in relation to consideration of journalistic freedom, they provoke thinking about academic freedom that moves beyond the current line-of-sight, to understand the diversity of threats that bear down upon the search for ‘truth’ better. They conclude that the battles that journalists have fought in defence of press freedom are only marginally removed from those the academy continues to struggle with. In bringing these diverse perspectives together, they offer new pathways and opportunities for considering academic freedom.

In an afterword to this special issue, Sharon Stein then shifts our focus by asking what the necessary conditions might be for academic freedom to flourish? Alongside reflecting upon the contributions of each of the authors to this special issue, she explores some of the intellectual, affective and relational conditions that might foster academic freedom. In so doing, she centres approaches that: embrace ecologies of knowledges and intellectual humility; lean into difficult conversations without compromising collegial relationships and acknowledge the interdependencies (between humans and the non-human world) as the basis for building meaningful relationships. These approaches, she posits, may provide a vision for academic freedom within the context of our ‘complex, uncertain and unequal world’.

Overall, the hope is that this special issue of Australian Universities’ Review – Academic Freedom’s Precarious Future. Why it Matters and What’s at Stake will feed national – and international – curiosity and debate related to academic freedom, as well as critical thinking in regard to the responsibilities of universities for the common good.

Acknowledgement

I acknowledge the Traditional Custodians and Elders past, present and emerging, of the lands upon which we live and work, and recognise these lands and the sovereignty of the First Nations have never been ceded.

I wish to thank each of the anonymous peer reviewers who gave generously to the process in ensuring the timely publication of this special issue, as well as all contributors, including those who considered submitting papers, but for various reasons were unable to do so. AUR will welcome your papers at a future time so that we might continue this dialogue, including in ways that expand the diversity of issues and themes discussed. Sincere thanks to Ian Dobson, for careful editing and review of all papers in this special issue: we would be three full stops short of a picnic if not for you, so many thanks. Thank you to the entire editorial board of Australian Universities’ Review for supporting this special issue and crafting the contours of its brief; like all good ideas, this special issue is a reflection of a collective of energies and efforts.

Kristen Lyons is a Professor of Environment and Development Sociology in the School of Social Science at the University of Queensland. She has over 20 years’ experience in research, teaching and service that delivers national and international impacts on issues that sit at the intersection of sustainability and development, as well as the future of higher education. Kristen works regularly in Uganda, Solomon Islands and Australia, and is also a Senior Research Fellow with the Oakland Institute. Contact: kristen.lyons@uq.edu.au

References

Brett, J. (2021). The bin fire of the humanities. The Monthly. March.

Department of Education, Skills and Employment. (2020). Independent Review of Adoption of the Model Code on Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom’. Retrieved from https://www. education.gov.au/independent-review-freedom-speech-australianhigher-education-providers

French, R. (2019). Review of Freedom of Speech in Australian Higher Education Providers. Canberra: Department of Education and Training. Retrieved from https://www.dese.gov.au/ uncategorised/resources/report-independent-review-freedomspeech-australian-higher-education-providers-march-2019

Funnell, N. & Graham, C. (2020) Psychologist, clinical psychologist, doctor or none of the above? Will the real Bettina Arndt AM please Stand up! New Matilda. ( Jan 28). Retrieved from https:// newmatilda.com/2020/01/28/psychologist-clinical-psychologistdoctor-or-none-of-the-above-will-the-real-bettina-arndt-am-pleasestand-up/

Garnaut, R. (2021). Reset: Restoring Australia After the Pandemic Recession. Melbourne: La Trobe University Press.

Larkins, F. & Marshman, I. (2020). $7.6 billion and 11% of researchers: our estimate of how much Australian university research stands to lose by 2024. The Conversation. (Sept 22).

Lyons, K., Esposito, A. & Johnson, M. (2021 submitted December 2020) ‘The Pangolin and the Coal Mine: Challenging the Forces of Extractivism, Human Rights Abuse and Planetary Calamity’, Antipode Intervention. Retrieved from https://antipodeonline.org/2021/02/01/ the-pangolin-and-the-coal-mine/

Moodley, K. & Gouws, A. (2020). How women in academia are feeling the brunt of COVID-19. The Conversation. (August 7). Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/how-women-in-academia-arefeeling-the-brunt-of-covid-19-144087

Napier-Raman, K. (2021) Tudge introduces uni free speech laws, a throwback to forgotten culture wars. Crikey. (March 17).

Wenham, C., Smith, J. & Morgan, R. (2020). COVID-19: The gendered impacts of the outbreak. The Lancet. 395(10227), 846-848.

Zhou, N. (2021a). Australian University Staff Say They were Blacklisted after speaking out on underpayment. The Guardian (10 March). Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/ mar/10/australian-university-staff-say-they-were-blacklisted-afterspeaking-out-on-underpayment?fbclid=IwAR2_xk_RnHnxiW_ ci-ixk_ziciRHsUXJANHqV8BlSd7IH2yeoXmenskrekg

Zhou, N. (2021b). More than 17,000 jobs lost at Australian universities during Covid Pandemic. The Guardian, (3 February). Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/feb/03/morethan-17000-jobs-lost-at-australian-universities-during-covid-pandemic