Modern Authoritarian and Hybrid Regimes and the Threat to Academic Freedom

Join the webinar on the academic freedom and the independence of universities in producing knowledge in most authoritarian or hybrid post-Soviet countries (Russia, Belarus, and the Central Asian states), Turkey, China, Iran, and self-designated illiberal countries.

In recent years, academic freedom and the independence of universities in producing knowledge and criticism has come under attack in most authoritarian or hybrid post-Soviet countries (Russia, Belarus, and the Central Asian states), Turkey, China, Iran, and self-designated illiberal countries in Eastern Europe. The governments of these countries disseminate and apply similar practices and methods to limit the space for academic freedom, including introducing censorship, prohibiting criticism of the government, and outlining taboo topics for research. Using various tools and tactics, these regimes put pressure and attack academics from the humanities, social and political sciences.

Moreover, the authorities of authoritarian, hybrid and illiberal countries undermine academic freedom and the institutional autonomy of universities using the strategy of withdrawing licenses from universities and even threatening them with closure in order to achieve control over educational and academic institutions. In conjunction with this focus on authoritarian, hybrid and illiberal regimes, we will also consider the growing infringement on academic freedom in democratic states through censorship of dissenting opinions, the decline in shared governance and efforts by authoritarian states like China to control the narrative on their countries within democratic countries.

The GPS, the Faculty of Culture and Society, with RUCARR and the Rethinking Democracy research platform (REDEM), University of Malmö and Center for Baltic and East European Studies (CBEES), Södertörn University plans to organize an international interdisciplinary symposium on the title of “Modern Authoritarian and Hybrid Regimes and the Threat to Academic Freedom”. Topic to be considered will include:

• What is the situation regarding academic freedom and autonomy of universities in authoritarian and non-liberal countries?
  
• How do accreditation and censorship policies affect the closure of educational and research institutions?
• How does the legacy of the Soviet academic system affect academic freedom in modern post-Soviet countries?
• To what extent do regimes adopt similar practices by cultivating pro-government academics and using bloggers and “trolls” to denigrate and discredit the activities of dissenting researchers and university professors?
• How do regimes use practices, including dismissals, blacklists, surveillance, blackmail, prosecution with espionage charges, death threats, pressure on family members and imprisonment, to restrict academic freedom?
• How are campaigns against academic freedom linked to broader patterns of authoritarian governance?
• How is Covid-19 affecting the situation with academic freedom?
• What can democratic states do to support academic freedoms in countries where they are under pressure, including within democracies themselves?
• How has the internationalization of higher education enabled authoritarian states to effectively “transnationalize” everyday forms of censorship and political repression to students and faculty both at home and abroad?