By David Robinson
In June, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education, Farida Shaheed, submitted her annual report to the UN Human Rights Council. For the first time, it focused on academic freedom. It’s an important document that should be required reading for anyone concerned about the topic.
Full disclosure — I was asked by our global union federation, Education International, to participate in several expert meetings with the Special Rapporteur as she prepared her report. Those discussions and debates helped identify common themes and concerns across the globe that shaped the final product.
The report adopts an expansive definition of academic freedom that broadly mirrors CAUT’s policy and is reflected in much of our collective agreement language in Canada. Academic freedom is understood as: “the freedom to access, disseminate and produce information; to think freely; and develop, express, apply and engage with a diversity of knowledge within or related to one’s expertise or field of study, regardless of whether it takes place inside the academic community (‘intramural expression’) or outside the academic community, including with the public (‘extramural expression’).”
I have some quibbles with the limitation of the exercise of academic freedom just to one’s academic discipline. For CAUT, “extramural” academic freedom isn’t just a matter of academics speaking publicly on matters within their area of expertise. Rather, it refers to expression that is not necessarily related to an academic’s scholarly expertise or institutional obligations. In CAUT’s policy statement, extramural academic freedom is defined as the right of academic staff “not to be hindered or impeded in exercising their civil rights as individuals including the right to contribute to social change through free expression of opinion on matters of public interest.”
This is an important distinction because in many regions of the world today, academics are facing intimidation, harassment, repression, imprisonment and even death for exercising their extramural academic freedom. And historically, some of the most noted academic freedom cases have involved academics who were targeted and dismissed not because of what they taught in their classrooms or published in scholarly journals, but because of their political and social activism.
Leaving aside these differences, I find the Special Rapporteur’s report most compelling when it turns to considering ways that academic freedom can be more strongly protected internationally. Ms. Shaheed proposes planting academic freedom firmly in international human rights law.
Currently, academic freedom is not explicitly mentioned in international human rights treaties, but the report suggests it could be legally grounded in several provisions, particularly those relating to the rights to education, to take part in cultural life, and to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress. It may also be linked to the right to freedom of opinion and expression, including the right to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds as provided in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
However, asserting academic freedom as a human right raises some questions. Human rights, by their nature, are universal. By contrast, CAUT has long asserted that academic freedom is a professional and employment-related right, limited to those who occupy an academic position.
The danger could be that by universalizing academic freedom, it’s specific application to the academic job could be diluted. If academic freedom is everywhere, is it anywhere?
Despite these hesitations, the Special Rapporteur should be commended for kickstarting an important discussion about how academic freedom could be better protected in international law. Given the growing number of violations worldwide, building a stronger international legal foundation for academic freedom is an urgent task.