Conference report by Daniel Palm research fellow, team leader of “Decolonization” team within the Academics Facing Autocracy Program.
The Academics Facing Autocracy program presented and discussed the outcomes of its work realized throughout the year 2023. Starting from the understanding that abstract notions of academic freedom and university autonomy lend little protection from contemporary attacks on academia under illiberalism, researchers and educators from various regions of the world collaborated to devise new modalities for teaching and research in higher education. The conference put two points of central interest in the discussion under closer scrutiny. Thursday allowed for the inspection on the status quo of higher education under autocracy – soft and hard. It invited speakers from different context to elaborate on their experiences of autocratizing academia under illiberal rule, the possibilities of responding to pressures from within academic institutions, and the consequences of seeking exile.
In the first panel, the contours of academia under illiberalism were sketched from different perspectives and firsthand experiences. Zoltan Adam reflected on the recent developments that led to his ouster at the Corvinus University after a student failed to pass exams successfully, having his parents interfere who also sit on the university’s board. Irina Dubrow reported from Poland that besides austerity and restrictions in academia, the Polish government also funded generously new research institutions producing outputs friendly to the PIS line. The violent nature of autocratic attacks in Azerbaijan was then briefly presented by Turkay Gasimova, pointing out that the constant insecurity produced by repression is a key feature of autocracies attacking academia. Zoltan Ginelli illustrated the precarity in academic ranks that may turn especially visible for young scholars interested in pursuing an academic career under autocracy. Daniel Palm added a perspective from Nicaragua, where academia is under control of anti-imperialist regimes of knowledge production that enforce exclusivity on the grounds of political loyalty to the Sandinista government, with violent practices overtaking informal one after student protests in 2018.
Possible strategies to respond to academic attacks from within academia were the topic of the second panel. Daniel Deak offered a concise summary of the discussion and the (non)actions taken by representatives of researchers resisting the government takeover of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, targeted to save as much of the status quo as possible. Marton Zaszkaliczky highlighted the difficulties of maintaining a positive outlook into the future under the normalization of illiberal politics reigning on Hungarian academia. Eszter Kirs countered that one fruitful and further to explore strategy would be to involve students into the resistance against illiberalism from within the universities. Cris Shore reported about developments in the United Kingdom, where the jargon of quality assurance has undermined university autonomy at universities and proposed to deconstruct the neoliberal reign on higher education.
The difficulties in maintaining academic careers after forced migration were of interest to the first working group of the Academic facing Autocracy program presenting in the third and last panel on Thursday. Their ongoing survey among scholars at risk and scholars at risk program managers seeks to learn about the trajectories of the program’s impact on scholars that needed to leave their home countries. Oleksandr Shtokvych gave insights into the everyday goings of a scholars at risk program that seeks to find demand-tailored solutions for academics transferring to new host institutions. Though the program has helped to relocate scholars at risk successfully, doubts remain in the sustainability of a relocated scholar’s career paths. Philip Fedchin reflected on the possible modes of operations for the Smolny Beyond Borders college that needed to relocate from St. Petersburg to Berlin in 2022. The research on the impact and possible improvement to programs supporting scholars at risk will explore the factors that will render them more successful by 2024.
On the second day, the first panel presented different hybrid programs that operate in response to illiberalism reigning on academia. The Invisible University for Ukraine (IUFU) provides online classes depicting current topics of interest to students in and outside of Ukraine. Summer and Winter schools allow for in-person meetings to build on the online experience. Like IUFU, also the Ukrainian Global University invites scholars and students from outside of Ukraine to collaborate with academics in Ukraine to collaborate and offer classes. Their hope is that alumni will commit to work within Ukraine to rebuild the country. The Berlin based Off-University was founded by emigrant scholars after the purge in Turkey 2017 but since then expanded its offer to provide classes for students in autocratic regimes anonymously in a safer digital space. The University of New Europe offers more unconventional modalities in higher education, experimenting with informal networks and mentorship to create new spaces for higher education. In response to the ousting of the Central European University from Hungary, the CEU Istvan Bibo Free University was founded to offer classes and alternative public debates, using CEU premises in Budapest. All projects agreed that besides online classes, the in-person aspect of learning is indispensable.
The second working group of the Academics Facing Autocracy program presented the outcomes of its work on a curriculum that reflects critically the developments within the region. Students exposed to illiberal narratives on national history that increasingly take hold in academia and public spaces need to be enabled to critically reflect and document memory politics. A memory lab with different digital activities allowing for interventions into illiberal narratives and a solid foundation to understand the concepts and variations of memory politics taught in four modules covering activities and readings was presented and discussed as a suiting response to illiberal memory politics.
As the third working group presenting, this panel focused on the pedagogical implications of decolonizing Central Eastern Europe. It argued that the region provided ample possibilities on how to understand colonialization as more than a process limited to transatlantic region, providing examples how colonialization could also be driven by actors so far ignored by theories on “settler colonialism.” Besides Soviet imperialism, also other neo-colonial projects driven by autocrats today could be identified. To make students aware of the specificities and similarities of neo-colonial knowledge production in the region, a student-project-driven teaching framework was introduced. Five areas for specialization allow for the application of the foundational readings in a first teaching phase.
The fourth and last working group presenting offered a comprehensive overview of the status quo in teaching democracy at universities in Central Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Their findings showed a lack of contemporary teaching material and concepts to stress the value and vulnerability of democracy in nearly all countries under observation. In response, the group designed a curriculum with activities that not only discuss but also explore democratic practices. Violetta Zentai responded to the work as discussant and highlighted, among other points, the changes in the horizon of experiences by students today which would need to be reflected also in a curriculum seeking to address the demographics in the region. The second discussant, Thiago Amparo, explored the need for legal frameworks that ought to be part of a curriculum on democratic resilience.
Finally, reflections on the ways forward in providing critical higher education in illiberal times were shared by representatives of the Open Society University Network (OSUN) and the CEU. Taking stock of existing programs and teaching methods, the panel dived into best practices in teaching, which addresses social and epistemological inequalities. With regard to the systemic attacks and targeted policies of autocracy to cut back higher education as a space for critical reflection, however, open questions remained. A central one would be how far programs and projects as presented throughout the conference should not only operate in reaction to attacks on academia, but also seek to learn lessons from the last episodes to prevent further ones.
The Academics Facing Autocracy program certainly is committed to a progressive stance, but negative repercussions of such an initiative could be underestimated. The answer might be found in researching more strategically the options for establishing a critical space in higher education to understand illiberal dynamics better. The developed proto-curricula presented by the working groups could play a central role in such an “engaged scholarship” project.
