Conference Agenda

In many European countries but also beyond, there has been an ongoing debate with respect to the state of academic freedom today. While there have been many voices to criticize the political suppression and attacks on academics and on universities (Ignatieff 2018, AFI 2022), it has also been pointed out that there is a threat of academic freedom “from within” the university (Furedi 2016). The diagnosis presented in this context is very diverse: Some authors bemoan emotional correctness, the usage of trigger warnings or a growing conformity within academia (Furedi 2017, Williams 2016). Others emphasize more strongly the changing political and economic situation of universities: the imperilment of shared governance due to the growing power of governing boards and university presidents, the increasing privatization, as well as the attack on unions (Reichman 2021). To mention one more interpretation, recent contributions have emphasized how academic freedom is interwoven with discrimination and suppression. Dutt-Ballerstadt et al. (2021) have argued, for example, that the reference to civility has been used to silence and discipline marginalized voices of academia.

A literature review of the past years shows that the debates on academic freedom – the conditions, the state, as well as limiting factoes – are very complex. There are different phenomena and different interpretative approaches in use. Furthermore, the discours on academic freedom is highly controversial. In other words, it is a field of polarizing views in the way that certain agents or views are held responsible for the demise of academic freedom. Williams (2016), e.g. has attributed the demise of academic freedom to critical and post-structural theory. Others have made the progression of academic fields, more conretely: education, psychology, and gender studies, responsible for the antiacademic discourse in the universities (Kaldewey 2017). In order to understand the current situation of academic freedom, it is important to understand how the debate of academic freedom is structured.

In this paper, I will investigate how contributions in this area makes use of particular (educational-)philosophical themes and arguments in order to provide a generalizing frame for the interpretation of academic freedom. Concerning the above-mentioned publication of Williams, it is interesting to reconstruct how the link between critical theory and the loss of academic freedom is made. Similarly, it will be analyzed how other philosophical voices from the liberal tradition are taken up (Mill’s “marketplace of ideas”, Kant’s idea of Enlightenment, or Habermas’ compelling power of the better argument).

After having given an overview of the current academic debate on academic freedom (I.), the paper focuses on the philosophical motives and how they are interwoven in the interpretative scheme concerning the state of academic freedom. Are they used as way out, as cure, as promise or as the source of the problem? (II.) While my intension is to delineate where the educational-philosophical frames fall short in giving a legitimate account of academic freedom, the overall aim is to generally detect the limits that specific philosophical traditions have (III.). In the final part of the paper I will comment on how these detected limits can be productive for Bildung in the university.

Post-truth can be defined as an assertion of ideological supremacy by which to try to persuade someone about something no matter the available evidence (McIntyre, 2018; Frankfurt, 2006 and 2005). Knowing what the truth is may cause a rift in opinions, but it should not stop mattering. We, both individually and collectively, should care for and about truths and the search for them (Thoilliez, 2022). And when it comes to keeping up with University life, academic freedom becomes extremely relevant (Beaud, 2021): caring for the freedom academics need to fulfil our duty of seeking and communicating truths to the best of our abilities.

In her book La faiblesse du vrai. Ce que la post-vérité fait à notre monde commun, Myriam Revault d’Allonnes (2018) offers a profound examination of the advent of the post-truth regime, from the urgency of gaining awareness of the nature and scope of the phenomenon in order to deflect its ethical and political effects. As Revault d’Allonnes (2018) notes, post-truth goes far beyond the deconstruction begun by the “masters of suspicion”: Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud. These three critical philosophers did not do away with the distinction between true and false; rather, they objected to the absolute and false nature of the truth understood as a universal norm. In contrast, post-truth refers to a grey area in which we no longer know if things are true or false. This is much more problematic than simlpy lying. In totalitarian systems, the combination of ideology and terror results in the systematic and consistent construction of a set of falsehoods that end up replacing reality. In contrast, in our democracies, the danger resides in the tendency toward the relativism of “anything goes”. Therefore, we can question fact-based truths, historical truths, events, what happened. Post-truth separates the facts from their objective reality in order to transform them into contingent opinions that anyone can hold as true. This situation undermines our ability to live together in a common world and makes education in our campuses extremely difficult to accomplish.

The post-truth scenario and its impact on how states of opinion are generated have spread and increased exponentially through technologies that give us new, multiple, and simultaneous ways to communicate and share information. The possibilities of thinking with, of, and about that information diminish as loops of likes and unlikes, loves and unloves, follows and unfollows increase. As Patrick Troude-Chastenet (2018) notes, for the fake news business model to work, it takes large intermediary platforms such as search engines (Google), social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram), and advertising networks (Google Ads). To a great extent, this makes them “if not political accomplices, at least economic collaborators with the fake news industry, because in the end, they are its main beneficiaries” (p. 94). And either way, the proliferation of data made available from numerous sources has not brought about the promised land of a democracy made stronger by well informed publics and freer citizens. Instead, we have a progressive suspension of practices of thinking. As Seymour (2020) states, social networks have turned into a space that provides is with a continuous stream mixing news, opinions, and entertainment that informs our day-to-day life, opening us up to a recreation of the (problematic) public sphere, or perhaps shutting us up into it.

Who deserves credit for multiple authorship published educational research? Often those who ‘deserve credit’ are attributed the title of author/s in publications. The aim of this presentation is to question the idea of the authorship in a context of measurement and performativity. The issue of authorship does not only focus on who the authors are, but also on who the first or last author is amongst a group of authors in a multiple authorship publication. This is an ethical and a justice issue, as authorship of publications often entails powerful and positionality decisions about the authorship order. Kwok (2005) argued for the so-called ‘White Bull’ effect, that senior researchers coercively assert themselves with first authorship credit, where junior researchers are abused and bullied by unscrupulous senior collaborators. Also, it has also been observed that junior or less powerfully academics can also be unfavourably impacted by the Matthew effect (Merton, 1973) where co-authors with an already established status tend to gain disproportionate credit.

Efforts are in place, such as the international standard for authorship (the Vancouver protocol) defined by the International Council of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE 2009), to aim to establish protocols in authorship publications. While the protocol originated in the bio-medical sciences in 1978, it is now applied across all academic disciplines such the social sciences and education. Several have noted the limitations of the Vancouver protocol and provided critique for it. This presentation adds another critical voice to the already available critique.

This presentation will rely on the philosophical readings of Jean-Luc Nancy to question the ‘subject of authorship’. Central to Nancy’s work was his critique of the idea of a distinct, singular individual. As he argued in Being Singular Plural (2000), a singular being is a ‘contradiction in terms.’ Nancy takes a different position from that of Descartes and argues for the ‘we’. ‘We’ is not a secondary term in relation to the ‘I’, but rather it precedes individuality. ‘Being,’ Nancy (2000) writes, ‘cannot be anything but being-with-one-another, circulating with and as the with of this singularly plural coexistence… with is at the heart of Being’ (emphasis in original, p.87). It is thus a relational being that Nancy is arguing for, and community at the heart of this being.

The above paragraph gives indications of how Nancy’s work helps us question the idea of multiple authorship, where the tension between the individual author (for example the first author) and the collective (multiple authorship) is put to question. What does it mean to talk of a ‘first author’ is a community of authors? What is the relationship between the authors in developing research and publishing it? If ‘we’ precedes the ‘I’, how can we talk of a first or last author? These all contribute to question the ethics and justice of multiple authorship. This presentation will also ask if educational research brings a uniqueness to the conversation of multiple authorship. Given the uniqueness of what education is, does this effect the I/We and community relationship that Nancy argues for?

Given the performative cultures that many academics globally work in, the focus of the presentation has relevance for a European/international dimension.