Deterritorialising academic freedom when realising the global university
October 21, 2007 at 8:02 pm 4 comments
Professor Kris Olds, University of Wisconsin Madison
This paper can be downloaded from http://www.wun.ac.uk/theglobaluniversity/workshop.html
Entry filed under: 07-11-14-Papers, Background. Tags: .
1.
Ian Wei | October 23, 2007 at 5:21 pm
Thank you for a very stimulating paper. I particularly enjoyed the reference to ‘some administrative entrepreneurs curiously disengaged from the regional (area studies) units within their own universities’. This raises the question of who negotiates on behalf of universities with governments which might be inclined to see academic freedom as a threat. Are they competent to assess the significance of academic freedom in their own institutions, never mind elsewhere? Do they draw upon the expertise of those members of their own institutions who should be able to offer the most insight?
2.
Adam Nelson | October 29, 2007 at 2:28 pm
This paper raises important questions about the negotiations of “core” academic values in the context of international exchange and transnational governance in higher education. (The issue of academic freedom also surfaces briefly in Ka Ho Mok’s paper, with respect to the “Robert Chung Affair” and the “Amendment of Basic Law” in Hong Kong (10) and the belief that it will be “hard for Chinese universities to become world-class without academic freedom and university freedom” (12).)
On the historical front, I’d note that, in the sixteenth century, many universities founded in the wake of the Protestant Reformation afforded academic freedom but simultaneously (and perhaps paradoxically from a modern perspective) insisted on confessional/sectarian conformity among scholars. A new book treats this subject well: Thomas Albert Howard, Protestant Theology and the Making of the Modern German University (Oxford, 2006).
On the American side, it might be helpful to note that, while Richard Ely won a victory for academic freedom at the University of Wisconsin in 1894, other cases from this era turned out differently, including the cases of E. Benjamin Andrews at Brown, E.A. Ross at Stanford, Scott Nearing at the University of Pennsylvania, and many others. We might like to believe that “it is clearly the case that academic freedom has enabled world-class universities to become research powerhouses,” but sometimes American universities became research powerhouses despite obstacles to academic freedom. (Recent work by University of Illinois professor Timothy Cain on the history of academic freedom at the University of Michigan questions the link between academic freedom and public support for the university—and, hence, funding and research productivity. At various times in the past, the American public has not sided with academic freedom.)
Kris Olds asks “What responsibilities do globalising universities have to facilitate learning about new forms of academic freedom?” We might also ask (1) what power do globalising universities have to insist on certain forms of academic freedom? (2) where does academic freedom rank in their list of priorities as they set up global partnerships—that is, how much “freedom” are they willing to give up to achieve other goals? and (3) how can we best clarify what these universities “lose” if they lose in negotiations over academic freedom?
3.
Joanna Al-Youssef | November 6, 2007 at 10:53 pm
This is a very interesting, thought-provoking paper. Not being anywhere near the area of academic freedom, I find it also very informing. One question that comes to mind is: how important is ‘context’ when talking about academic freedom? How ‘flexible’ can universities be in relation to academic freedom when deciding to operate in a different context? And what are some of the impacts generated by venturing abroad, as mentioned in the paper? How do these impacts contribute to the understanding of academic freedom? The paper also raises questions regarding cultural issues. I see the ‘deterritorialisation’ of academic freedom as yet another opportunity where two cultures meet and negotiate their practices. The question is, what makes this a happy (or unhappy) encounter? Why do some fail (as in the example of “the University of Warwick pulling out of a prospective deal (in 2005) to establish a comprehensive university in Singapore, and the unexpected closure of the campus of the University of New South Wales (UNSW Asia) after only three months of operations in 2007″? Are these cases at all related to academic freedom? Or is it just the Universities’ agendas vs. those of the host government? What also interests me is how much power, if any, individuals, particularly academics, have and the role they play in shaping the meaning of academic freedom within their institutions.
4.
Professor Rosemary Deem | November 11, 2007 at 3:06 pm
Kris Olds provides a critical and thought provoking paper on notions of academic freedom when western universities seek collaboration with or new campuses in regions like East Asia which may have rather different conceptions of academic freedom. Wang Yibing does not really touch on this in his paper on the internationalisation roadmap for China’s higher education, although Ka Ho Mok does discuss academic freedom in relation to the corporatisation of universities and also iraises the question of the possible limits of academic freedom when academics are under institutional pressures to publish quickly and frequently. There are a lot of challenges to the integrity of academic work in a citation and impact- factor world of league tables and these are not confined to East Asian university systems. For example: where does plagiarism end and academic freedom begin; do overt research management and national systems of research evaluation impinge on academics’ right to choose their own research topics, mode of work and funding; what are the rights of doctoral students to publish their work without including their supervisor’s name on the paper; to what extent if any does academic freedom encourage data falsification; what happens to peer review when research is funded by pharmaceutical or other large companies (I have just come back from a conference run by the Canadian Association of University Teachers in Ottawa on the integrity of academic work, where isues about the slanted research findings about drugs in studies funded by multi national companies and the financial interests of universities in pursuing such companies’ money was a major thread of disucssion)? I don’t think we can assume that academic freedom is always a positive thing or that we are better at protecting it in the West than in other parts of the world.