With contributions from six leading scientific countries of the Global
North and from the general European Higher Education Area, this book
questions the predominant view on academic freedom and pleads for a
holistic approach.
While academic freedom has been a top agenda point for the global
scientific community in recent years, the public and academic discourse
has often been marked by a negative interpretation of the term
understood merely as exemption from state intervention and censorship.
The contributions in this edited volume demonstrate, however, that this
is not where the story ends: the ability to exercise academic freedom
not only involves the freedom of expression in its abstract sense but
should involve the capability to determine research agendas and
curricula independently from market pressures or threats of career
sabotage, and to resist workplace misconduct without fear of losing
future career chances.
Providing a differentiated picture of contemporary structural limits to
academic freedom in advanced democracies, this volume will be of great
interest for not only scholars of higher education, but for the entire
academic community.