9 Jun 2015 | Academic Freedom, Magazine, Volume 44.02 Summer 2015
Illinois Urbana-Champaign University in the United States, where one academic had his job offer withdrawn over his tweets on the Israel-Gaza conflict. Credit: Alamy/ Jeff Greenberg
This article is taken from the summer issue of Index on Censorship magazine (volume 44, issue 2). To read the full report on academic freedom, subscribe or download the app on a free trial
The power of Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible continues to resonate in 2015. London’s Old Vic revived the play by Miller, a long-time supporter of Index, this year, and it has never seemed more chilling. As characters threw accusation and counter accusation at each other across the stage, the words felt just as relevant to the zip of the social-media age as to Salem in 1692.
In Ukraine, as our report in this issue details, attestation committees have now been set up to examine accusations by students and others that university academics might have “separatist attitudes” or have been using “provocative” speech. If found guilty lecturers can lose their jobs. This forms part of the brooding atmosphere currently hanging over Ukraine’s academic life, where former colleagues are banned from speaking to each other, and a system of national “patriotic” education has been introduced.
But Ukraine is not alone. In Belarus, a national committee acts casts a judgemental eye on any university that shows independence of spirit, or might choose to teach subjects in a way that the authoritarian government might find unsettling. And in Turkey, the nationwide YÖK committee stands disapprovingly on the sidelines, interfering in the minutiae of academic dress sense, giving orders about the wearing of headscarves and beards, as well as recently issuing a rule that academics should not give their opinions to the media, except on scientific subjects.
Around Turkey academic freedom is coming under attack from all sides, one lecturer who put a question about a Kurdish manifesto written in the 1970s on an exam paper, received multiple death threats and was accused of being “a terrorist”.
One hundred years ago the Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure was published in the USA, a century on, university faculty are still finding that institutions disapprove of them having public opinions on political issues. While some US universities restrict freedom of expression on campuses to painted-square zones, presumably where students can cope with hearing opinions they disagree with, faculty members are expected not to be outspoken on social media, or find themselves, as in the case of Steven Salaita (detailed in the magazine), having their assistant professorship job offer withdrawn.
Universities should be places where discoveries are made. Academia is an opportunity for students and teachers to challenge themselves; their preconceptions and values, and, perhaps, head off in a new direction. Studying can be the start of something big; a new idea that might end in an enormously valuable invention such as the Large Hadron Collider; or it might just be a big moment for the individual, who discovers a fascination for medieval history, or 8th-century literature.
Education opens up all sorts of avenues of discovery, but if we start closing some of those roads off, arguing they are too dangerous, or challenging, or hold possible stress, then we are heading off in a terrifying direction. For this issue of the magazine, we found academics, authors and activists around the world were worried enough to support the following statement:
“We the undersigned believe that academic freedom is under threat across the world from Turkey to China to the USA. In Mexico academics face death threats, in Turkey they are being threatened for teaching areas of research that the government doesn’t agree with. We feel strongly that the freedom to study, research and debate issues from different perspectives is vital to growing the world’s knowledge and to our better understanding. Throughout history, the world’s universities have been places where people push the boundaries of knowledge, find out more, and make new discoveries. Without the freedom to study, research and teach, the world would be a poorer place. Not only would fewer discoveries be made, but we will lose understanding of our history, and our modern world. Academic freedom needs to be defended from government, commercial and religious pressure.”
A full list of signatures can be seen here, with supporters including authors AC Grayling, Monica Ali, Kamila Shamsie and Julian Baggini; Jim Al-Khalili (University of Surrey), Sarah Churchwell (University of East Anglia), Thomas Docherty (University of Warwick), Michael Foley (Dublin Institute of Technology), Richard Sambrook (Cardiff University), Alan M. Dershowitz (Harvard Law School), Donald Downs (University of Wisconsin-Madison), Professor Glenn Reynolds (University of Tennessee), Adam Habib (vice chancellor, University of the Witwatersrand), Max Price (vice chancellor, University of Cape Town), Jean-Paul Marthoz (Université Catholique de Louvain), Esra Arsan (Istanbul Bilgi University) and Rossana Reguillo (ITESO University, Mexico).
The range of signatures from countries around the globe show just how far and wide the fear is that academic freedom is, in 2015, coming under enormous pressure.
© Rachael Jolley
This article comes from the summer issue of Index on Censorship magazine (volume 44, issue 2), which contains features from across the world, plus fiction and poetry by writers in exile. Subscribe or download the app (free trial) to read the magazine in full. For reproduction rights, please contact Index on Censorship directly, via [email protected]
Students and academics at 7500 universities around the globe have access to the magazine’s archive containing 43 years of articles via Sage.
Subscribers can read Arthur Miller in Index on Censorship magazine here.
9 Jun 2015 | Academic Freedom, Magazine, Volume 44.02 Summer 2015
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”What is the state of academic freedom in 2015? Index on Censorship magazine’s summer 2015 issue takes a global vantage point to explore all the current threats – governmental, economic and social – faced by students, teachers and academics. “][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2”][vc_column_text]
In the UK and US, offence and extremism are being used to shut down debates, prompting the adoption of “no-platforming” and “trigger-warnings”. In Turkey, an exam question relating to the Kurdish movement led to death threats for one historian. In Ireland, there are concerns over the restraints of corporate-sponsored research. In Mexico, students are being abducted and protests quashed.
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Plus we have reports on Ukraine, China and Belarus, on how education is expected to toe an official line. Also in this issue: Sir Harold Evans, AC Grayling, Tom Holland and Xinran present their free-speech heroes. Ken Saro-Wiwa Junior introduces a previously unpublished letter from his activist father, 20 years after he was executed by the Nigerian state, and Raymond Joseph reports on the dangers faced by Africa’s environmental journalists today. Comedian Samm Farai Monro, aka Comrade Fatso, looks at the rise of Zimbabwean satire; Matthew Parris interviews former UK attorney general Dominic Grieve; Italian journalist Cristina Marconi speaks to Marina Litvinienko, wife of the murdered KGB agent Alexander; and Konstanty Gebert looks at why the Polish Catholic church is upset by Winnie the Pooh and his non-specific gender.
Our culture section presents exclusive new short stories by exiled writers Hamid Ismailov (Uzbekistan) and Ak Welaspar (Turkmenistan), and poetry by Musa Okwonga and Angolan journalist Rafael Marques de Morais. Plus there’s artwork from Martin Rowson, Bangladeshi cartoonist Tanmoy and Eva Bee, and a cover by Ben Jennings.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”SPECIAL REPORT: FIRED, THREATENED AND IMPRISONED” css=”.vc_custom_1483456198790{margin-right: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;border-bottom-width: 1px !important;padding-top: 15px !important;padding-bottom: 15px !important;border-bottom-color: #455560 !important;border-bottom-style: solid !important;}”][vc_column_text]
Is academic freedom being eroded?
Silence on campus – Kaya Genç explores why a Turkish historian received death threats for writing an exam question
Universities under fire in Ukraine’s war – Tatyana Malyarenko unveils how Ukrainian scholars have to prove their patriotism in front of a special committee
Industrious academics – Michael Foley looks at how the commercial pressures on Ireland’s universities and students is narrowing research
Stifling freedom – Mark Frary’s take on 1oo years of attacks on US academic freedom
Ideas under review – Lawyer and journalist Suhrith Parthasarathy looks at how the Indian government interfering with universities’ autonomy. Also Meena Vari asks if India’s most creative artistic minds are being stifled
Girls standing up for education – Three young women from Pakistan, Uganda and Nigeria on why they are fighting for equality in classrooms
Open-door policy – Professor Thomas Docherty examines the threats to free speech in UK universities. Plus the student’s view, via the editor of Cambridge’s The Tab new site
Mexican stand-off – After the abduction of 43 students, Guadalajara-based journalist Duncan Tucker looks at the aftermath and the wider picture
Return of the red guards – Jemimah Steinfeld reports on the risks faced by students and teachers who criticise the government in China
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”IN FOCUS” css=”.vc_custom_1481731813613{margin-right: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;border-bottom-width: 1px !important;padding-top: 15px !important;padding-bottom: 15px !important;border-bottom-color: #455560 !important;border-bottom-style: solid !important;}”][vc_column_text]
Pride and principles – Matthew Parris in conversation with the former UK attorney general Dominic Grieve
A letter from Ken Saro-Wiwa – A moving tribute from the son of one of the Ogoni nine and a previously unpublished letter from his father who was killed in Nigeria 20 years ago
Hunt and trap – Raymond Joseph reports on the dangers currently being faced by Africa’s environmental journalists
Litvinienko’s legacy – Italian journalist Cristina Marconi speaks to Marina Litvinienko, wife of the murdered KGB agent Alexander
God complex – Konstanty Gebert looks at why the Polish Catholic church is so worried about Winnie the Pooh’s gender
Zuma calls media ‘unpatriotic’ – Professor Anton Harber speaks to Natasha Joseph about the increasing political pressure on South African journalism
Dangers of blogging in Bangladesh – Vicky Baker on the recent murders of Bangladeshi bloggers by fundamentalists, plus a cartoon by Dhaka Tribune’s Tanmoy
Comedy of terrors – Samm Farai Monro, aka Comrade Fatso, on the power of Zimbabwe’s comedians to take on longstanding political taboos
Print under pressure – Miriam Mannak reports on the difficulties facing the media in Botswana, as the president tightens his grip on power
On forgotten free speech heroes – Sir Harold Evans, AC Grayling, Tom Holland and Xinran each pick an individual who has made a telling contribution to free speech today
Head to head – Lawyer Emily Grannis debates with Michael Halpern on whether academic’s emails should be in the public domain
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”CULTURE” css=”.vc_custom_1481731777861{margin-right: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;border-bottom-width: 1px !important;padding-top: 15px !important;padding-bottom: 15px !important;border-bottom-color: #455560 !important;border-bottom-style: solid !important;}”][vc_column_text]
The pain of exile – Exclusive new fiction from Uzbek writer Hamid Ismailov, who has not only had all his books banned back in his homeland, but every mention of his name
Eye of the storm – A poem by Musa Okwonga on the importance of allowing offensive views to be heard and debated on university campuses
The butterfly effect – The lesser known poetry of Index award-winner Rafael Marques De Morais
Listening to a beating heart – A new short story from Ak Welsapar, an author forced to flee his native Turkmenistan after being declared an enemy of the people
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”COLUMNS” css=”.vc_custom_1481732124093{margin-right: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;border-bottom-width: 1px !important;padding-top: 15px !important;padding-bottom: 15px !important;border-bottom-color: #455560 !important;border-bottom-style: solid !important;}”][vc_column_text]
Global view – Index’s CEO Jodie Ginsberg on the difficulties of measuring silenced voices
Index around the world – An update on Index’s latest work
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”END NOTE” css=”.vc_custom_1481880278935{margin-right: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;border-bottom-width: 1px !important;padding-top: 15px !important;padding-bottom: 15px !important;border-bottom-color: #455560 !important;border-bottom-style: solid !important;}”][vc_column_text]
Battle of the bots – Vicky Baker reports on the fake social media accounts trying to silence online protest
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”SUBSCRIBE” css=”.vc_custom_1481736449684{margin-right: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;border-bottom-width: 1px !important;padding-bottom: 15px !important;border-bottom-color: #455560 !important;border-bottom-style: solid !important;}”][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship magazine was started in 1972 and remains the only global magazine dedicated to free expression. Past contributors include Samuel Beckett, Gabriel García Marquéz, Nadine Gordimer, Arthur Miller, Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, and many more.[/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”76572″ img_size=”full”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]In print or online. Order a print edition here or take out a digital subscription via Exact Editions.
Copies are also available at the BFI, the Serpentine Gallery, MagCulture, (London), News from Nowhere (Liverpool), Home (Manchester), Calton Books (Glasgow) and on Amazon. Each magazine sale helps Index on Censorship continue its fight for free expression worldwide.
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12 Feb 2014 | Academic Freedom, News and features, Politics and Society, Religion and Culture, United Kingdom
1. The Flying Spaghetti Monster
The poster, used by the London South Bank University’s atheist society, was banned by student union officials (Image: DavidPWFreeborn/Twitter)
In the most recent incident of student-orchestrated censorship, a poster promoting a university society, which depicts God from Michelangelo’s famous Creation of Adam as a flying spaghetti monster, has been banned from public view.
Members of London South Bank University’s atheist society put up the poster last week as part of a freshers’ fair stall; it was later reportedly removed by student union officials for being “religiously offensive”, with the society’s stall taken down the following day.
The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster has been used by atheists as a satirical way of criticising beliefs in a supreme being, first appearing in American schools in 2005. The anti-religious statement has since caught on at British universities.
2. ‘Jesus and Mo’ t-shirts
Members of the London School of Economics atheist society were told to cover up their t-shirts depicting the cartoon ‘Jesus and Mo’ during a freshers’ fair. (Image: AuthorJ&M/Twitter)
Another atheist society, another fresher’s fair, and another case of a university smothering the free speech of its students. This time, members of the London School of Economic SU Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Student Society were banned from wearing t-shirts depicting images from the controversial ‘Jesus and Mo’ cartoons in October 2013.
According to members of the society passers-by had complained to SU staff about their t-shirts and several pieces of literature. They were told by a member of the LSE Legal and Compliance Team and Head of Security said that the t-shirts could be considered “harassment”, as it could “offend others” by creating an “offensive environment”. The t-shirts were unwillingly covered up.
In response to the fiasco the creators of the cartoon produced a new comic strip. The university also made a public apology in December.
3. Robin Thicke’s Blurred lines
Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines song has been banned in at least 20 student unions after it was released in March 2013. (Image: George Weinstein/Demotix)
First it was the University of Edinburgh, then Leeds University followed suit. Now, around 20 university student unions across the UK have banned the playing of Robin Thicke’s song Blurred Lines .The chart-topping hit, featuring Pharrell Williams, T.I., and an original music video deemed too risqué for YouTube, has been accused of being “rapey” and includes the lyrics “Talk about getting blasted, I hate these blurred lines, I know you want it, but you’re a good girl, the way you grab me, must want to get nasty.”
The Guardian might be on the right track with their claims of Blurred Lines being the most controversial song of the decade but should universities really be allowed to dictate what their students listen to?
4. People
George Galloway attends an anti-war rally in 2011 (Image: Paul soso/Demotix)
It’s not just posters and protests that have been banned by universities- in some instances people, usually those scheduled to speak at a university-held event, have been informed it would not be acceptable for them to participate. For instance, an invitation for MP George Galloway to speak at an event by the University of Chester Debating Society was revoked by the student union under the National Union of Students’ No Platform policy . Galloway had recently been involved in several controversial incidents, including refusing to debate with an Israeli Oxford University student during a panel discussion panel as well as referring to the Julian Assange rape allegations as merely “bad sexual etiquette”.
Several other speakers have been denied attendance to university lectures and debates.
5. Student protest at London universities
Students defy the protest ban imposed by the University of London to speak out against the privatisation of university support services. (Photo: Peter Marshall/Demotix)
Although not a ban implemented by a student union, as of December 2013 at least four London-based universities have banned student protests on campuses for six months. The offending universities- University College London, the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), Birkbeck and the London School of Economics- announced that any students found holding sit-in protests in an area of Holborn, which includes a student union and the buildings of SOAS and Birkbeck, would face imprisonment.
The injunction on student protests by the University of London was passed by the High Court in-light of violent clashes between students, disputing the proposed privatisation of university support services, and police at the beginning of December.
UPDATE: London South Bank University have issued an apology for removing the South Bank Atheists Society’s posters of Flying Spaghetti Monster. Full story at the British Humanist Association
This article was posted on February 12, 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
