Academic freedom and an invitation to promote its advancement

Abstract

Academic freedom is under threat internationally. Several high profile incidents suggest that academic freedom is a principle neither well understood nor appreciated by key decision makers and stakeholders whom one might expect to champion it, be they in government or within the academy itself. Among those incidents are the arbitrary exercise of ministerial discretion to override the Australian Research Council expert peer review recommendations for allocation of funding, recent attacks on the credibility of academic publishing internationally, and the atrocious treatment of scholars by authoritarian regimes across the globe. In light of such developments, the membership of the Institute of Australian Geographers recently adopted a resolution that, inter alia, called on the Council of the Institute of Australian Geographers ‘not to be silent on the issue of attacks on critical scholarship, academic freedom and the integrity of academic procedures in higher education, research and publishing’. Given the complexity of the issues, this paper invites further discussion and debate on how Australian geography and geographers might better appreciate and advance academic freedom including via the promotion of scholarship that gives full effect to the principle.

Geographers declare (a climate emergency)?

“…As Cupples (2020, 1) reminds us 'Geography is a broad, contested and indeed promiscuous discipline that crosses the arts, humanities, social sciences and physical sciences'. The neo-liberal corporate university, government funding cuts, shifting research priorities and faculty restructuring, which prioritise metrics (Crabtree 2017;Wainwright et al 2014) and the funding of 'physical sciences'/geosciences (Bartel 2019;Overland and Sovacool 2020), have resulted in the diversity of geography being open to a geoscientisation and fragmentation (Cupples 2020). Geographers are increasingly precariously placed within and outside of academia (Bartel 2019;Cupples 2020;Wainwright et al 2014).…”

“…We take inspiration from Natalie Osborne (2019) who encourages us to ask when faced with the end of worlds as we know them -'Now what?' The intent of this paper is not to offer a prescriptive or all-encompassing manifesto, rather it is to unpick, and then sew together, threads of conversations that already inhere within the discipline, to reflect on what we do and how we work as geographers (see Bartel 2019;Crabtree 2017;Head and Gibson 2012;Hulme 2008). In writing this piece we acknowledge that there are many other insights and ways of knowing the world and, as non-Indigenous people, we recognise it is important to be cautious with how we centre ourselves in mourning changes seen to landscapes that are not ours and ours alone.…”

Academic Freedom and Democratic Development in the Philippines: Findings from Expert-coded V-Dem Data

“…Although numerous scholars have debated what it is, why it matters, and how it matters, academic freedom remains an exciting subject of scholarly analysis that merits greater examination (Altbach, 2001;Bartel, 2019;Blessinger & de Wit, 2018;Thomas, 2010;Vrielink et al, 2011). It matters a great deal in developing democracies like the Philippines, where, although academic freedom is enshrined in its Constitution, its hard-fought ideals remain insecure.…”