Statement on academic freedom and the management of university events
Amnesty International UK’s report, Silencing Dissent, documents how UK universities have managed academic events about Gaza and related campus protests, and it raises concerns that BISA shares. In our statement on academic freedom, BISA supports the definition of academic freedom in the 1997 UNESCO Recommendation. Several events in the report, including staff events withdrawn at short notice and lecturers investigated over what was said in a seminar, appear to bear on academic freedom as defined there.
Academic freedom, freedom of expression and the right to protest overlap, but they rest on different legal footings and are tested against different standards. Academics need to be clear about which of them they are defending and on what legal basis, and the report does not always separate them. BISA accepts that universities must weigh proportionality, safety and competing rights. We are concerned, however, that heavy-handed management of academic events, and the prospect of an investigation even where no sanction follows, discourages teaching, research and debate. The statutory protection for academic freedom is framed around not losing one’s job or privileges, which may be harder to apply to PhD researchers who teach, teaching assistants and staff on fixed-term contracts, whose posts can lapse without any dismissal. The report also finds that staff and students on visas face heightened immigration risks, and that the harm has fallen disproportionately on racialised students and staff, including Palestinian, Muslim and Arab colleagues. Universities have duties under the Equality Act 2010. They should consider how their handling of events falls on these colleagues and give organisers written reasons when an event is postponed or made subject to conditions.
Academic freedom matters most when the subject is contested and feeling runs high. Teaching and research in international studies depend on the freedom to examine war, conflict and injustice, and to put forward unpopular arguments about them. BISA supports that freedom for everyone who teaches and researches in the field, whatever their seniority and whatever position they take.
Photo by Oleg Laptev on Unsplash
