Last week, the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study (SCAS) participated in a workshop on academic freedom in Cambridge held under the umbrella of the North Sea Dialogues collaboration between SCAS and the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) at the University of Cambridge. The workshop was organized together with the Academic Freedoms Research Network and brought together researchers working on questions related to academic freedom from several institutions, including Uppsala University, alongside a large group of early-career researchers participating through the British Academy’s Early Career Researcher Network.

Bringing together scholars and early-career researchers from different disciplinary and national contexts, the workshop explored how academic freedom is shaped not only by legal protections and institutional structures, but also by the broader conditions under which academic life unfolds.

The day began with speculative and collaborative exercises inviting participants to reflect on contemporary threats to academic freedom. Discussions highlighted a wide range of interconnected pressures, including increasing dependence on external funding, accelerating demands for academic productivity, social media dynamics, self-censorship, institutional governance structures and inequalities in access to knowledge production.

Rather than approaching academic freedom solely as a legal or policy issue, many discussions focused on how broader structural transformations affect the lived experience of academic work. Through speculative fiction exercises, participants explored imagined futures of academic life shaped by precarity, mistrust, bureaucratic pressure and changing conditions for collaboration and inquiry.

Several panel discussions addressed how academic freedom relates to wider societal and institutional developments. Discussions on artificial intelligence emphasized the growing importance of trust within higher education, particularly in relation to teaching, assessment and qualitative forms of inquiry. Participants reflected on how cycles of AI-generated work, detection software and verification processes risk reshaping educational environments around suspicion rather than learning.

Comparative perspectives from Sweden and the United States highlighted the relationship between academic freedom and public trust in universities. Discussions addressed how universities are increasingly shaped by expectations of societal relevance, managerial governance and competition, while also facing declining public trust in certain contexts. Several participants emphasized that universities may need to act more collectively and in greater solidarity if they are to resist increasing political and institutional pressures on academic freedom.

Discussions concerning Sweden focused particularly on the relationship between universities and the state. Participants reflected on the Swedish university system, in which universities formally operate as public authorities, and discussed how academic freedom depends not only on legal frameworks but also on academic norms, institutional culture and the willingness of universities and scholars to articulate and defend core academic values publicly.

Other contributions brought perspectives from contexts marked by war, displacement and political repression. Discussions drawing on experiences from Sudan and Turkey highlighted how academic freedom is experienced unevenly across different political and social contexts. Participants reflected on displacement, attacks on universities and the vulnerability of scholars under conditions of conflict and repression, while also emphasizing the role of solidarity, memory and intellectual community in sustaining academic life beyond institutional structures alone.

Across the workshop, a recurring theme emerged: academic freedom depends not only on formal protections, but on broader social, institutional and cultural conditions, including trust, solidarity, public legitimacy and the capacity of universities to sustain spaces for critical reflection and open dialogue.

The workshop forms part of the continuing North Sea Dialogues collaboration between SCAS and CRASSH, which seeks to create spaces for interdisciplinary and international dialogue on the changing conditions of research, higher education and knowledge production.