Academic Debates on the Interpretation of Academic Freedom

Overall, it can be argued that there is no single commonly recognized and accepted definition of academic freedom. Instead, there are many scholarly and legal–political interpretations and descriptions of academic freedom, which have common elements that make it possible to study specific features of academic freedom in a valid way.

Academic freedom has traditionally been interpreted as a freedom granted to individuals who are members of the academic profession (UNESCO 1997, 2017; AAUP 2015a, 2015b). More recently, academic freedom is interpreted as also applying to higher education students and administrative staff (EHEA 2020, 2024; Vrielink et al. Reference Vrielink, Lemmens and Parmentier2010). In both the narrow and broad interpretation, academic freedom does not exist in a vacuum, but within a specific institutional setting, that is, ‘the University’ (Beaud Reference Beaud, De Gennaro, Hofmeister and Lüfter2022) or, more generally, an institutional setting comprising higher education institutions as well as research institutes and units (public and private). In this understanding, these institutions rely on public authorities to provide legal frameworks that acknowledge the importance and protection of academic freedom, although without defining academic freedom too narrowly. This in turn enables the institutions to protect the members of the academic community, including – where and when appropriate – students and non-academic staff.

Furthermore, the foundational argument for emphasizing that the responsibility for guarding academic freedom should rest with the academic community is that this provides the best guarantee that the principles of academic freedom will be respected by all relevant stakeholders. Moreover, the academic community can be expected to adhere more directly and effectively to the responsibilities and obligations that accompany academic freedom, such as respecting research integrity, than any external body or actor. The connection between the academic freedom of individual academics and other members of the academic community and the institutional setting is crucial (Beaud Reference Beaud, De Gennaro, Hofmeister and Lüfter2022: 213). This implies, for example, that the idea of ‘the University’ (Olsen Reference Olsen, Maassen and Olsen2007) is meaningless without academic freedom (Jaspers and Rossman Reference Jaspers and Rossman1961), while at the same time there is no other space in society outside the institutional setting where academic freedom can be exercised in a meaningful way.

The emergence of the research university model in Germany in the early 1800s, highlighting the concepts of Lehrfreiheit and Lernfreiheit, has strongly contributed to the central position of academic freedom in academia (Metzger Reference Metzger1978). Beaud (Reference Beaud, De Gennaro, Hofmeister and Lüfter2022: 208) argued:

From this perspective, academic freedom is essential for achieving high-quality education and research, because it enhances the capacity of scholars and students to acquire, generate and apply knowledge in ways that are essential for their societies.

This interpretation of academic freedom has been extended to include other values and conditions required to safeguard academic freedom, such as staff and student expressions on university governance and policy matters, labour conditions of academic staff, the financial freedom required to follow one’s scholarly curiosity and the appropriate democratic institutional governance structures and practices that allow for effective self-governance of academic and institutional affairs (see, for example, Beiter et al. Reference Beiter and Karran2016). In recent debates, the question regarding the relationship between academic freedom and institutional autonomy has come up regularly. In the extended interpretations of academic freedom, institutional autonomy is most generally regarded as constitutive for academic freedom (EHEA 2020: 2; see also EHEA 2024).

The argument is that once an appropriate legal frame for the protection of academic freedom is in place, the state should give higher education institutions and research institutes sufficient room to manoeuvre for enacting the promotion and protection of academic freedom as part of their institutional autonomy. Some interpretations even see institutional autonomy as an organizational dimension integrated with individual academic freedom (Beiter et al. Reference Beiter and Karran2016), instead of being a feature of public administration, that is, the formal division of governance responsibilities between public authorities and public-sector organizations, such as higher education institutions. For example, an interpretation from the Court of Justice of the European Union states (2020: 34):

Furthermore, it is generally acknowledged that academic freedom is not an absolute freedom, implying that there are legitimate limitations to academic freedom (see, for example, Axelrod Reference Axelrod2017; Vrielink et al. Reference Vrielink, Lemmens and Parmentier2010). A straightforward example concerns the fiscal framework conditions, namely that no government can be expected to publicly fund all research activities that the academic staff of universities, colleges and research institutes would like to undertake. In more general terms, the purpose and nature of these legitimate limitations can be identified as follows: when it comes to the purpose of limitations, first we can identify limitations justified internally, that is, justified by the academic activity’s own purpose and own basic norms, including research integrity. Second, there are limitations justified externally, that is, they are justified by the idea that research and teaching have interfaces with non-academic activities and actors, and under specific circumstances external framework conditions can directly or indirectly limit academic freedom legitimately in these interfaces.

Academic Freedom and Governmental Reforms

As part of the democratization of Europe and other parts of the world during the second half of the twentieth century, academic freedom has developed from being a relatively abstract norm to becoming a legally acknowledged and protected principle (see, for example, UNESCO 1997, 2017; AAUP 2015a, 2015b). This codification of academic freedom started at a time when higher education was still a rather small and relatively self-standing part of society. Consequently, higher education was a marginal policy area, which made it possible for public authorities to allow it to function and operate on the basis of the principle of self-governance. In this situation, the formal de jure protection of academic freedom contributed to it being taken for granted as part of the social contract (or pact) between higher education and society (Gornitzka et al. Reference Gornitzka, Maassen, Olsen, Stensaker, Maassen and Olsen2007). At the same time, while in most countries around the world academic freedom was legally protected, it remained a concept that lacked a globally agreed upon definition. In addition, the exercise of academic freedom in practice was complex, and the potential and real threats and violations to the de facto exercise of academic freedom were in general poorly understood (Karran Reference Karran2009).

The academic reforms introduced in European countries since the late 1980s reflected the growing integration of higher education and research with other policy areas and the political focus on the need to enhance the responsiveness of higher education and research to meet societies’ needs (Gornitzka et al. Reference Gornitzka, Maassen, Olsen, Stensaker, Maassen and Olsen2007). These reforms focused especially on the governance, organization and funding of higher education institutions, and less on basic values and principles central to the mission of higher education, such as academic freedom (Jungblut et al. Reference Jungblut, Maltais, Ness, Rexe, Jungblut, Maltais, Ness and Rexe2023). Furthermore, there were few serious discussions of how a commitment to purely external political goals and expectations with respect to higher education and research can be squared with academic values and principles, as incorporated in academic freedom (Olsen and Maassen Reference Olsen, Maassen, Maassen and Olsen2007: 9).

Even though there were national variations among European countries in reform instrumentalization and implementation, the reform ideas nonetheless aimed at realizing comparable changes. In the implementation of these ideas, enhancing institutional autonomy was an important policy intention (Maassen et al. Reference Maassen, Gornitzka and Fumasoli2017; Capano and Jarvis Reference Capano and Jarvis2020; Capano and Pritoni Reference Capano and Pritoni2020; Maltais et al. Reference Maltais, Jungblut, Ness, Rexe, Jungblut, Maltais, Ness and Rexe2023). In the reform agendas, institutional autonomy was predominantly interpreted from the perspective of the effective distribution of responsibilities between public authorities and higher education. The universities and colleges should have more institutional autonomy and, at the same time, be more accountable for how they used their enhanced autonomy. This required new institutional governance structures based on strategic priorities and the executive management of human resources, infrastructures, investments and administrative procedures.

In this, institutional autonomy became decoupled from academic freedom but was rather seen as an instrumental approach to incorporating New Public Management approaches in higher education governance (Maassen Reference Maassen2017; Capano and Jarvis Reference Capano and Jarvis2020). Instead of presenting visions of how basic values and principles could be integrated into more effective governance and organizational structures, quality assessment of education and research, and new funding arrangements, institutional autonomy was linked to executive leadership and management, accountability, strategic organizational actorhood (Krücken and Meier Reference Krücken, Meier, Drori, Meyer and Hwang2006), universities becoming more complete organizations (Seeber et al. Seeber, Reference Seeber, Lepori, Montauti, Enders, de Boer, Weyer, Bleiklie, Hope, Michelsen, Mathisen Nyhagen, Frølich, Scordato, Stensaker, Waagene, Dragsic, Kretek, Krücken, Magalhães, Ribeiro, Sousa, Veiga, Santiago, Marini and Reale2015) and growing competition for funding, students, staff and reputation (Jongbloed and Vossensteyn Reference Jongbloed and Vossensteyn2010; Musselin Reference Musselin2018).

The impacts of these reforms have gradually brought a number of worries to the fore about the position of values and principles, including academic freedom, in the reformed academic systems and institutions. The reforms’ emphasis on performance and responsiveness of higher education institutions, the professionalization of university leadership and management, the institutions’ contributions to economic competitiveness and innovation, and more recently the geopolitical role of knowledge, have inspired various activities and debates in academia and the wider society. These include public statements, open letters from the academic community to public authorities and a growing number of academic projects, studies and publications addressing de facto threats to academic freedom in European countries, as interpreted and experienced by institutional leaders, as well as academics and students and their representative bodies. These statements, letters, policy briefs and the like, are addressing multiple factors that are underlying threats to academic freedom, and which are argued to be much more complex than in the past. In this, they have formed an essential foundation for the European Parliament’s decision to launch the Academic Freedom Monitor and the annual studies presented in this article (Panel for the Future of Science and Technology (STOA), n.d.).

Government and Politics

This category refers to the ways in which political actors, i.e., public authorities and their agencies and individual politicians, such as members of parliament, and their parties, affect or want to affect the state of academic freedom in their country in such a way that it unduly limits the possibilities of academics and students to optimally exercise their academic freedom.

Undue political interference in academic freedom falls into two overall patterns. The first concerns direct interference of government in academic freedom, for example, by questioning the scientific nature of one or more academic fields, i.e., the research conducted and study programmes within these fields. This interference is not based on the academic productivity of the field(s) in question, but in essence is linked to the political ideology of the government. The clearest example is Hungary, where the government has revoked the state recognition of gender studies programmes despite its accreditation of these programmes. Furthermore, it is also affecting basic research conditions negatively, for example, by interfering in the decision making on which research proposals should be selected for public funding and by making access to data for research on government-controlled sectors, such as health care and the prison system, increasingly difficult.

Another case is Romania, where the government announced its plan to impose a ban on curricular and extra-curricular activities based on gender-critical theories. The announced ban on gender studies did not materialize, because it was deemed unconstitutional by the constitutional court. Therefore, unlike the situation in Hungary, in the case of Romania the worries about the condition of academic freedom are, until now, more about increasing threats of government interference than about structural governmental violations of academic freedom.

The second pattern concerns the proposals of public authorities or specific political parties or politicians, who often are not part of the government, to change the conditions under which academic freedom is to be exercised. This includes proposals to shift control over the guarding of academic freedom from within to outside academia. In these cases, which include Austria, Belgium, Denmark and the Netherlands, the interference of political actors with the academic responsibility for guarding academic freedom is inspired by a specific political agenda. For example, in Denmark, Parliament has discussed a proposal to establish a national body to monitor ‘questionable’ research, implying a transfer of the responsibility for guarding academic freedom from academia to the public authorities. Even though the threat did not materialize, the politicians involved indicated that it still might be necessary in the future to shift responsibility for guarding academic freedom away from the academic community (Maassen et al. Reference Maassen, Martinsen, Elken, Jungblut and Lackner2023).

Another example is threats to institutional autonomy. While, institutional autonomy is obviously not static, the EP studies show that the level of institutional autonomy is in many cases an issue of contestation. This is caused, for example, by new sector laws that are argued to give the government the opportunity to interfere in institutional affairs, for example, through the political appointment of institutional leaders, or the establishment of a politically controlled internal or external management body. In the EP studies, concerns about institutional autonomy as a consequence of government interference in institutional affairs have been clearly identified in Hungary. But also in other EU Member States, such as Croatia, Denmark, Greece, Ireland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia, there are worries about the possible impacts on academic freedom of proposed or materialized legal changes in the governance relationships between the government and the universities, which strengthen the opportunities of the government to interfere in institutional matters. At the same time, in a number of cases, it has been argued by some of the stakeholders involved that one or more actors who criticized the proposed legislation did so not because of its negative impact on institutional autonomy, but in order to move attention away from another issue, for example, accusations of corruption (Maassen et al. Reference Maassen, Martinsen, Elken, Jungblut and Lackner2023).

Institutional Leadership and Management

This category concerns the ways in which the leadership and management of higher education institutions affect, or want to affect, academic freedom in their institution with the potential to unduly limit the possibilities of academics and students to exercise their academic freedom. Institutional leadership and management include both formal academic institutional leaders, such as presidents, rectors, vice-chancellors and deans, as well as institutional administrative leaders/managers, such as heads of administrative offices, and administrative procedures and routines.

The EP studies show that in many countries more executive forms of institutional leadership and management have been introduced in higher education, which has led to growing worries about the ways in which the new leadership affects academic freedom within its institution. These worries concern violations of academic freedom, e.g., by imposing undue limits to the academic freedom of expression of its staff, or changes in the conditions for academic freedom, for example, by altering self-governance practices or academic labour conditions. The EP studies show that threats to academic freedom by the institutional leadership and management have emerged in several countries, including Denmark, France, the Netherlands and Sweden. For example, in Denmark, many academics and students are arguing that the executive institutional leadership that emerged as a consequence of the implementation of the 2003 University Autonomy Law is responsible for various threats to and (possible) violations of academic freedom. These include the limitation of self-governance, the suggestion that tenured university staff have, in some institutions, lost their jobs because they were critical of their leadership, and allowing for a growing influence of external economic and political interests (Craciun et al. Reference Craciun, Elken, Maassen, van der Meulen and Jungblut2024).

The Academic Community

This category refers to the ways in which members of the academic staff and students affect the state of academic freedom in their institution, or in higher education in general, in such a way that it potentially limits the possibilities of other academics and students to exercise their academic freedom.

Internal academic debates, disagreements, tensions and conflicts in themselves do not form a threat to academic freedom, and clashes of ideas are inherent to scholarly endeavours. However, there are also instances where academic interactions become of a kind that render open academic debate impossible, and thereby can become a constraint on academic freedom. This is the case, for example, when specific research themes or lecture topics addressed by certain academics are labelled as unscientific and therefore unacceptable by other academics and/or students. Worries that this might develop into a more structural problem have increased since internal academic debates have become more polarized. The EP studies show that in some countries attempts to silence specific strands of research, teaching or academic expression are in some cases initiated by academic staff and/or students (Craciun et al. Reference Craciun, Elken, Maassen, van der Meulen and Jungblut2024).

In this, it is important to mention that the coverage of such internal academic conflicts might be imbalanced – and intense debates concerning single cases in some countries do not necessarily mean that this would not be an issue in other countries (albeit in different versions). Nor does it mean that a heated debate in a few cases indicates that this is a systemic threat to or a violation of academic freedom. Not least, this is a category where there is no clear-cut boundary as to when academic debates, disagreements, tensions and conflicts might represent threats to or violations of academic freedom. While the EP studies point towards certain debates and potential incidents, for example, in Austria and France, this is an area where the interpretation of boundaries of academic freedom, empirical data and a systematic knowledge basis need to be further improved (Craciun et al. Reference Craciun, Elken, Maassen, van der Meulen and Jungblut2024).

Civil Society

This category covers the ways in which individual citizens or groups of citizens affect, or want to affect, the condition of academic freedom in their country (and sometimes beyond) in ways that limit the ability of academics and students to exercise it. The use of social media can play a key role in this category.

In this, we can refer to the importance of the traditional pact between higher education and society (Gornitzka et al. Reference Gornitzka, Maassen, Olsen, Stensaker, Maassen and Olsen2007), which provided stability, was based on mutual trust and incorporated relatively clear roles for both society and the university. This pact has lost its vigour, and higher education and society are looking for a new mutually acceptable compact. In the meantime, the roles of higher education and science in society are no longer as uncontested as before. Academic expertise is no longer ‘automatically’ legitimate, and individual academics are attacked, especially through social media, for the academic work they are disseminating or for the role they are playing as academic experts in public-policy processes.

This includes their participation in public debates; their presentations of specific scientific perspectives, for example, on climate change or vaccinations; their representations of certain political, social or cultural perspectives, for example, linked to identity issues; and their involvement in providing scientific knowledge to be used in political decision making. The latter was, for example, the case when academics involved in public debates on the Covid-19 pandemic and the introduction of Covid-19 measures, were attacked on social media in such a way that many of them either withdrew from their expert role, or even from Covid-19-related academic work. This was the case, amongst other countries, in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden (Maassen et al. Reference Maassen, Martinsen, Elken, Jungblut and Lackner2023).

Private Sector

This category focuses on the ways in which private companies and organizations, such as foundations, affect or want to affect the state of academic freedom in their country (and sometimes beyond) in such a way that it limits the ability of academics and students to exercise it. The use of both legal and financial instruments plays a key role in this category.

The possible impact of private-sector actors on academic freedom is discussed in several EU Member States. A key element in this concerns the role of private funding, especially of research. To maintain research activities with decreasing levels of public funding, researchers need to obtain a higher degree of funding from private sources. While this can lead to productive collaborations between academia and the private sector and is not a problem per se, the EP studies show worrying cases of undue interference of private funders in the research problems to be addressed, the results to be produced, and the academic publications that are allowed. In addition, there are various conflicts about the ownership of the knowledge produced in privately funded academic research.

The EP studies show, for example in Denmark, a threat from the private sector to academic freedom through legal cases aimed at preventing ‘unwanted research results’ being published, or critical scientifically based opinions publicly presented by academics. Furthermore, we can point to the use of SLAPPs (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) by private sector companies against critical academics, e.g., in France, where measures were recommended to reduce the threat of SLAPPs that have not yet been implemented (Maassen et al. Reference Maassen, Martinsen, Elken, Jungblut and Lackner2023). In addition, in other EU Member States, e.g., Germany, Malta and the Netherlands, there are worries about the impact of the growing involvement of the private sector in funding scientific research on academic freedom (Craciun et al. Reference Craciun, Elken, Maassen, van der Meulen and Jungblut2024).

Security Policies

This is identified as a separate category on the basis of the findings of the 2024 EP studies (Craciun et al. Reference Craciun, Elken, Maassen, van der Meulen and Jungblut2024) that show the rapid emergence of European and national security policies as a consequence of growing geopolitical tensions and conflicts. These concerns and policies increasingly affect or threaten to affect academic freedom. This concerns research, education and academic expression, as well as the conditions under which academic freedom is to be exercised, and is often linked to countering foreign interference, espionage or other security threats in the context of growing global competition among states. In practice, security worries and policies form the foundation for new, more explicit science diplomacy approaches, new research-funding mechanisms, new framework conditions for the internationalization of higher education and restrictions to the dissemination and sharing of scientific knowledge. All of these have a potential impact on academic freedom, and the EP studies show that we are at a beginning of a process in which the main stakeholders involved are trying to develop an appropriate, new balance between the fundamental values of academia, including academic freedom, and national as well as European security interests.