Academic Freedom as a collective right

​Academic freedom is central to the research and education conditions of the university, and yet, globally, it has been in significant decline since 2013 (Lott 2023).  This research network will build a community of scholars interested in understanding and advocating for the protection of our academic freedoms.  It will also allow space for us to collectively define the concepts and practices of academic freedoms based on our experiences as scholars, in counterpoint to externally-derived definitions that have taken dominance in the public sphere, such as that of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023.

​To build collective approaches to and understandings of academic freedoms, we ask participants to commit to attending a minimum of five seminars across the academic year. A core emphasis of the seminar series will be trust-building, as thinking through the high-stakes concepts and practices of academic freedom requires difficult conversations among people who may not agree. A second core emphasis of the seminar series will be on understanding academic freedom as a collective rather than individual right, and one experienced differentially by those in different contexts and positionalities.

​For details of the event please visit: https://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/47809/