On December 13, a conference on the topic of displacement, forced migration and reparation was unable to go ahead at the University of Sussex after a group of pro-Palestine student activists disrupted it and occupied the room it was going to take place in. While the protesters had every right to express their views peacefully, they crossed a line by infringing on others’ rights to participate in and benefit from academic discourse. More importantly, the university failed in its duty to secure the academic freedom of its staff and visiting speakers.

The concept of academic freedom — more limited in scope than free speech but meriting an enhanced level of protection — is predicated on the distinctive status of the university as a community whose telos is the pursuit of truth and knowledge. As the Kalven report from the University of Chicago eloquently states, a university’s mission requires “an extraordinary environment of freedom of inquiry” and independence from political pressures in order to encourage the widest possible intellectual diversity within its community. Academic freedom encompasses the freedom of scholars to investigate, publish, and teach in accordance with their intellectual convictions and, properly codified, ensures that academics can present controversial or unpopular opinions without fear of censorship or retaliation. 

The idea of academic freedom originally developed to protect universities against interference by the Church and the State. Protection of academic freedom of scholars went hand-in-hand with ensuring the autonomy of academic institutions from these powerful external forces. However, the greatest current threats to academic freedom in liberal democracies come from within academia: censorious colleagues and students, ideologically-loaded training imposed from above, university managers who fail to take a stand against cancel-culture. 

Academic freedom should rightly be viewed as an individual right; it enables academics to pursue and share knowledge, even when that challenges prevailing norms or ideologies, or upsets people within their own institutions. Universities in England have a legal duty — under the Education (No. 2) Act 1986 and the Education Reform Act 1988 — to take reasonably practicable steps to ensure that freedom of speech and academic freedom within the law are secured for their members, students and visiting speakers. This duty, in so far as it requires universities to ensure security for academic conferences being held on campus, applies regardless of the views, nationalities or employing institutions of the speakers or organisers.

The protest at Sussex was driven by the conference’s collaboration with the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, allegedly involved in international law violations. However, the involvement of the Hebrew University in sponsoring or co-organising the event is immaterial to the academic freedom rights of the individuals attending or speaking at the conference. Academic freedom belongs to individual scholars, not institutions, and the cancellation of an event undermines the ability of individuals to engage in intellectual exchange — both as speakers and as listeners. 

Threats to academic freedom can arise from any point on the political spectrum. Just as the pro-Palestine protesters at Sussex violated the principle by disrupting the event, pro-Israel groups have also attempted to suppress academic speech. For instance, a month before the incident at Sussex, some demanded the cancellation of upcoming lectures by the UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese at London universities on grounds of her allegedly antisemitic statements. While these events ultimately went ahead, their potential cancellation would have represented a similarly egregious violation of academic freedom. 

The two cases above highlight the importance of viewpoint-neutral advocacy for academic freedom. Greg Lukianoff, the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) — a leading free speech organisation based in America — has written about how “the heart of darkness is viewpoint or opinion discrimination”. Singling out certain points of view for academic censorship while protecting other viewpoints on the same topic — academic freedom for me but not for thee — is uniquely harmful to intellectual diversity and the pursuit of truth and knowledge. Those who employ convoluted arguments to single out a specific event or viewpoint as beyond the bounds of academic freedom are usually engaged in motivated reasoning.

Universities must reaffirm their commitment to academic freedom by ensuring that all voices can be heard

The issue of academic boycotts further illustrates the nuances of academic freedom. Academic freedom is fundamentally a negative liberty; it grants individual academics the right to decide which scholars and institutions they wish to engage with and whom they wish to avoid. Robert Shibley from FIRE argues that scholars must have the autonomy to exercise such judgement even if some actions might not always align with the broader interests of open inquiry. However, as Shibley goes on to add:

The academic boycotts of primary concern arise when individual academic institutions, their subdivisions, or professional organizations enact systematic boycotts to which their members are expected or required to adhere, or that impede individual scholars from engaging with boycotted counterparts. Indeed, these systematic boycotts themselves interfere with the individual rights of faculty to decide which peers to engage or avoid.

In other words, each scholar has the right to make their own ethical decisions and to peacefully advocate for or against partnerships or boycotts. But this right does not extend to using coercive means to impose their own ethical limits in a way that infringes others academic freedom.

Universities must reaffirm their commitment to academic freedom by ensuring that all voices can be heard, even — and especially — when those voices express unpopular or controversial ideas or opinions. For the constitution of knowledge, we need the wide end of the epistemic funnel to accept numerous ideas and propositions for scrutiny by the reality-based community. We need to engage with ideas through words and reasoning, not through coercion or violence. Only by upholding these principles can we ensure the continued progress of knowledge and the pursuit of truth in higher education.

However, without real enforcement mechanisms, university senior managers lack sufficient incentive to follow the law on securing free speech and academic freedom. The landmark Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act (HEFSA), passed by the previous government in May 2023, attempted to remedy this situation by bringing in for the first time accessible and effective mechanisms for the enforcement of universities’ free speech duties. One of the new Labour government’s earliest decisions in power was to stop the commencement of these key provisions of HEFSA, six days before they were due to come into force. 

An open letter sent to the Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson on December 17, signed by over 450 academics, students, and free speech campaigners, calls upon the Government to implement HEFSA in full and without delay. The letter concludes:

There is no justice without access to justice. Creating liability risk for universities that ignore their free speech duties is the most effective way to ensure that free speech is always factored in, substantively, when making decisions. The inaction of the government on this issue is causing real harm to academics and students.

Just so. Without robust and enforceable legislation like HEFSA, violations of academic freedom such as the incident at Sussex will likely continue unabated.