Michael Ignatieff: The Geopolitics of Academic Freedom

• In Event: Democratic Backsliding and Academic Freedom I: A Macro-Perspective

Abstract

These days higher education is politically isolated: attacked as bastions of elite privilege and castigated as the protected domain of arrogant experts. Universities cannot afford to let populist political forces turn these feelings to their own electoral benefit. Universities need to stand up for themselves and take their case to the public. Free universities are critical to the survival of democracy itself. Free institutions nourish free thought and free thought winnows the kernel of knowledge from the chaff of falsehood. Without knowledge, based in patient verification and self-questioning, democracies are flying blind. At a time when the authority of knowledge in public debate is questioned as never before, universities need to stand up for their role as critical custodians of what societies, through experimentation and trial and error, actually know. Central European University has been defending the principle of academic freedom and institutional autonomy throughout its twenty-six-year history in Budapest. In 2017, our dispute with the Hungarian government over whether we could remain in Budapest became a global cause celebre. More than 500 prominent US and European academics, including more than twenty Nobel Laureates, signed an open letter to support CEU. Political leaders across Europe have voiced their support and thousands marched in the streets of Budapest in defense of CEU and academic freedom. CEU’s struggle is not over, but the story is worth summarizing briefly because of the light it sheds on the pressures that academic freedom faces even in nominally democratic societies in the 21st century.

Author

• Michael Ignatieff, Central European University