Drawing on data showing a decline in academic freedom over the past decade, David Audretsch, Christian Fisch, Chiara Franzoni, Paul P. Momtaz and Silvio Vismara, analyse the relation of academic freedom to technological innovation, as represented by pa…
Category: academic freedom
The Possibilities of Nostalgia for Academic Freedom
The word nostalgia connects a sense return and homecoming with sadness, and was originally used in a medical sense to describe the melancholy felt by soldiers fighting away from home. In this post Mary Evans considers how nostalgia for a past academy p…
Contrary to media narratives, higher education has little impact on students’ political views
It is often taken as a given that higher education shapes the politics of students. However, drawing on evidence from the British Election Study, Tom Fryer finds students’ political attitudes do not change radically during their studies. Instead, stude…
Vice-Chancellors should welcome staff participation in the governance of their university’s international partnerships
Universities and higher education institutions in the UK have a more international profile than at any prior point in their existence. As a consequence, they face entanglement in geopolitical issues. In this post, Andreas Fulda, John Heathershaw and An…
In legislating for freedom of speech on university campuses, whose opinions will the government protect?
The Higher Education and Freedom of Speech Bill is currently moving through the committee stage in Parliament. In this post, Conor Gearty reflects on previous attempts to regulate free speech in universities and highlights potential unintended conseque…
More work is required to make academic “timescapes” worth inhabiting and to open up space for creative work
Is the problem with contemporary academia really one of constant acceleration? Ulrike Felt argues that focusing too much on acceleration overlooks a more complex phenomenon at work. What is needed is careful investigation of “time generators”, the key sites in academia that create binding temporal requirements and regulations. Many of academia’s recent reforms – to funding structures, assessment exercises, accountability […]
Universities under purdah: maintaining impartiality or restricting academic freedom?
Is purdah, intended to maintain the impartiality of the civil service, infringing on university researchers’ independence at a time when their expertise is most needed? Bob Ward explains the rules and argues that the next government should undertake a review of the guidance available, in order to ensure that purdah does not harm the public interest in the future. University […]
Fostering greater awareness of how universities operate can serve them well when their integrity comes under attack
Media stories about universities often focus on shortcomings; the routines of good teaching, solid research and maintaining high standards rarely merit attention. Moreover, universities can sometimes find themselves under attack in spite of their commitment to high standards and following correct procedures. Brian Martin relays his experience of how defending a university’s integrity can be hamstrung by confidentiality requirements or […]
The moral baseline of social media policies: Institutions and scholars need to examine practices with a critical eye
Although scholars are often encouraged to promote their research online, institutional recognition of networked scholarship often appears to be as much about control and surveillance as about integrating public scholarship into academic criteria for success. George Veletsianos argues staff members, faculty, and administrators need to work together to devise forward-thinking policies that take into account the complex realities present in networked […]
The Professor Divide at American Universities and How to Fix It — The Case for a Teaching-Intensive Tenure Track.
The casual hiring of non-permanent teaching staff is a pressing issue for universities in the U.S. and the U.K. Jennifer Ruth focuses her analysis on U.S. universities in particular and shows to what extent this now common practice is deprofessionalizing the academic profession. Creating a tenure track for full-time faculty hired and promoted on the basis of excellence in teaching would establish a […]