SCAS Talks Spotlight - Episode 12

Academic Freedom - part 2/2025

Published: 18 December 2025

Summary
The second part of SCAS Talks Spotlight on "A Week on Academic Freedom" explores the critical link between academic freedom and democratic societies. Featuring insights from Biao Xiang, the episode discusses the "dual loop model" for securing research through public engagement. Experts highlight threats in Asia, differentiating between explicit attacks like censorship and covert erosions through mechanisms such as changing the syllabus and school text books, and through marketization. The conversation underscores the global and transnational nature of these challenges. SCAS Long-term Fellows Alisse Waterston and Michael Watts emphasize the vital role of Institutes for Advanced Study in studying threats, fostering solidarity, and protecting the "freedom to learn" for students. The podcast concludes with a call for academics to recognize subtle infringements and actively defend academic freedom, urging those in privileged positions to lead the way.

Keywords
Academic freedom, democracy, student protests, Institutes for Advanced Study, political interference

Transcript of the Episode

Biao Xiang 00:09
The dual loop model is to say we will build a popular alliance. We make our research meaningful and useful for the public, and the public will in turn endorse our work or criticize and more commonly raise more real life questions for us to follow. If we build such a popular alliance, immediately I feel that type of research will be much more secure.

Natalie von der Lehr 00:45
Welcome back to SCAS Talks Spotlight, this time focusing on the event "A Week on Academic Freedom" held in Uppsala in October 2025. This is the second part in this mini-series, and you can jump in right here, or go back and listen to the first part first. In the previous episode we heard more about the current situation regarding academic freedom in the US and Europe, and heard more about the current threats from seemingly small infringements to full blown attacks. But academic freedom does not only concern academia, but also democratic societies as a whole. Studies have shown that a decrease of academic freedom often precedes the dismantling of democratic societies. In this episode, we will look more into the connection between academic freedom and democracy, get an outlook on Asia and hear the thoughts of some SCAS fellows. We start off with Biao Xiang, director of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany, and he tells us more on what he calls the dual loop model between academia and society.

Biao Xiang 01:53
So this is a way to describe the type of research that I wish to do. The dual loop consists of two loops, two circles. There a small loop is academic circle discussion, and the a big loop is a more public, open discussion. And a small loop discussion, in my mind, is just like a carpenter's workshop. When a group of academics come together, bend their heads together and thinking technical questions how we should define a term more precisely and trace a history of particular ideas and in order to describe something more accurately and effectively. But this small loop is only part of research, and the more substantive part of research, you know, what kind of subject matters we should examine, what kind of research questions we should follow, and what kind of problematique at the moment we should respond that has to emerge from the big loop in the public discussion. So my metaphor is kind of a group of carpenters. You talk to each other about the techniques of making furniture, but you do not make furniture for each other. You make furniture for the public, and the furniture has to travel back into the world, into someone's life, and shape their life, hopefully will help their life. And if we think of the academic world is writing articles for each other to demonstrate to our peers that we are clever or we are qualified, etc. Anyway, the people like carpenters would find this rather strange. Why do you make furniture for each other rather than make furniture for the larger world?

Natalie von der Lehr 03:49
And how would this dual loop model then, how does that relate to academic freedom, which is the topic of this week, and also this podcast episode?

Biao Xiang 03:58
Yes, I think that actually really give us a very strong basis to protect a basic academic freedom. And number one, you can say what is a freedom? And there is one basic formal or you can say negative freedom, meaning formal policies that leave you alone, don't interfere what you do. So you can choose your topic, you publish article, etc. But we should not forget the real freedom that you have resources, you have the actual capacities to conceive a research question and carry out in a way that you want and therefore will have real world impact, therefore you will be free to build something, is equally important. If we don't have this more substantive and positive sense of freedom - actually, as we see today, the more formal freedom can easily be taken away because the formal freedom is given by policies, given by law, given by authorities - but as a positive freedom is our hands, what we can build, how we can use a freedom for. So the dual loop model is to say we will build a popular alliance. We make our research meaningful and useful for the public, and we constantly feel that what we say is echoed by the public, and the public will, in turn, endorse our work or criticize - that is a very important form of engagement, criticism itself is engagement - and more commonly, raise more real life questions for us to follow. If we build such a popular alliance, if we have this kind of very lively that can force relation between the public and the research. Immediately, I feel that type of research will be much more secure. It's much harder to imagine any authorities can be arbitrarily just, you know, cut fund or close down this type of research. I mean, they can still do, but even they do for the researchers who are deeply publicly engaged, I think they will be much less fearful even their formal research grant is removed. But if there's still genuine public demand for his or her analysis, he or she will still have very meaningful intellectual life. So that is what we want to fight for.

Natalie von der Lehr 06:39
At the moment, the USA is in the spotlight when talking about academic freedom, and we have already heard a lot more about that in the previous episode. But what about other parts of the world? Two current scholars at SCAS tell us more about the situation in Asia.

Sahana Ghosh 06:54
I'm Sahana Ghosh. I'm an assistant professor of anthropology at the National University of Singapore, and I work on South Asia.

Navnita Chadha Behera 07:04
I'm Navnita Chadha Behera, I'm a professor at Department of Political Science in University of Delhi, and I teach international relations with special focus on South Asia and on international relations theory.

Natalie von der Lehr 07:17
And at the moment, you're both fellows here at SCAS.

Sahana Ghosh 07:20
That's right.

Natalie von der Lehr 07:21
Could you give me a quick overview of the situation in your region, and if there are any key things that you would like to point out that are happening in regards to academic freedom?

Navnita Chadha Behera 07:32
I think the awareness about issues relating to academic freedom has grown in, I would say, past half a decade or more. If you were to look at the global reports, like Scholars at Risk or Academic Freedom Index, you would see that these regions are sliding down. That's the overall sort of macro picture that you get. And then, of course, there are specificities in different countries, and it could be done in several ways. If you're in a university space, the governance of the university structure, that is one mechanism where people who are at the receiving end, or people who are the stakeholders, who are expressing their opinion in terms of what really are the challenges to academic freedom. Then, of course, there is the larger societal environment where this issue is also gaining sort of ground. There is an interesting debate going on, but it can have very real life consequences, both adverse, mostly adverse, actually, for several stakeholders, and that is a cause for worry, I would say.

Sahana Ghosh 08:42
We should think about attacks on academic freedom in terms of the ways in which those attacks work. Some of the ways, maybe it's helpful to think of it in terms of very explicit, overt attacks, which is often what gets the most amount of attention, and indeed are often the most obvious, even violent examples. What classes one can teach, what kind of research one can do or publish on. Campus, speech, what kinds of events you can have on campus, what kinds of speakers you can invite. And every day brings new headlines, news headlines of yet another instance when all of these, on all of these grounds, there has been some very overt attack. So for example, in one of the biggest, leading national universities in India, long standing departmental seminar series invited speakers event was suddenly canceled by the university administration, and the seminar convener resigned in protest, saying that if I cannot ensure the autonomy of this research and academic space, I will not participate in inviting colleagues and fellow scholars. You know, this is just this one drop in the ocean. There's kinds of overt attacks, and they're obviously super important, and we tend to fixate on them. But then there is alongside, you know, whole range, a whole spectrum of more, what I would describe as covert attacks, or covert ways in which the space for democratic debate, for actually disagreement, for having different points of views being discussed and credibly kind of investigated and engaged on their own terms, are just being eroded. And there it's not just sort of state attacks on institutions such as universities, but a much more widespread social, let's say, skepticism of universities, of scholarship, of academic knowledge production. And this we see - again this is a very global phenomenon, the anger against what is seen as elite expertise, so academic, specialized knowledge production being itself seen as something elite and undesirable, right? So it's completely turning on its head. What is the value of knowledge production in society? We then get sort of a vigilantism, a social vigilantism against the right to academic freedom itself.

Natalie von der Lehr 11:27
You mentioned some of the attacks on academic freedom in your region. Is there anything else, any other examples that you can mention?

Navnita Chadha Behera 11:35
You know what Sahana was saying was that examples that make it to the newspapers are, of course, the most violent ones, but often the examples that do not make it to the newspapers are sometimes more effective. And it could be very simple things like what syllabus is to be taught. That is not a headline that is likely to make it to the newspapers, but through the university governance structures, it would be made clear as to what can be taught or what cannot be taught. You know, what goes into the school textbooks? I remember, I'm going back to almost like 90s example, if I were to give you one. In Pakistan, there's a very famous historian, K K Aziz, who wrote, like, a whole range of books on what was wrong with the Pakistani history textbooks, you know. And then he made it, serialized it into a newspaper. But the response was not there from the society. Sometimes people, out of sheer sense of neglect, look away, and sometimes people react the opposite, the in a violent manner - why is this in the textbook? So there is then attempt to sort of rewrite those textbooks, of those histories. Now, these are the kind of examples which would not make it to the newspaper headlines. But if you're talking about academic freedom, then these are very potent instruments with a lasting impact. You know, sometimes over generations. It's it's the subtle, the invisible, which can be a very powerful way. And in order to come to terms with the gravity of the challenges that academic freedom is facing in these regions, you got to look in between the lines to get an idea as to what really is going on over there.

Sahana Ghosh 13:23
While, of course, there is a lot for us to gain from being in conversation and comparing instances and experience. In my view, one very important aspect or dimension of attacks on academic freedom is that they are not nationally, territorially bound. Actually, many of these, you know, what we may say happening in India or in Pakistan or in Bangladesh are actually global and very transnational phenomena, right? So authoritarianism or the context of supremacist projects in a place is not territorially bound to the borders of that nation, right. In today's digitally mediated and highly transnational world, these are very, very global and transnational phenomena, and we must grasp that dimension of the attacks on freedom. And related to that, often discussions of the new liberalization of academia are often actually not connected to discussions of academic freedom. But I want to submit, and I want to suggest that they're actually very, very connected. You know, the marketization, the commodification of education globally, has resulted in the view of you know, the view of the Global South as a space where regions like Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, as spaces where there's been a huge rise, a democratization of education. Look at the number of universities. Look at the numbers of you know, people now having access to higher education. But the entrance of private, often foreign actors, into education market is absolutely directly connected to the defunding of public universities and creating extremely hierarchical kinds of access to education, and hierarchies of the kind of education. So much more professionalized, vocational, job oriented degrees are preferred and supported and resourced over domains, perhaps of education that are more devoted to basic, foundational disciplines or critical thought scholarship, right? So I think these, these are some of the ways in which we should think about the global, transnational dimensions of these attacks.

Navnita Chadha Behera 15:52
I'll give you an example from India. In the school textbooks recently, the entire Mughal history, for example, was being kind of removed or minimized. If I were to go to US, the whole idea of race or critical race studies is being removed from the school curriculum because the current regime in power feels that that reflects badly on our history. So in a way, it's like whitewashing, literally, the history. So anything that reflects poorly on us even now needs to be retrospectively removed. It's a global phenomenon. As she said, it's happening everywhere. It comes up in different manifestations. And of course, that's where the local specificities matter. You know, as to what is relevant to, you know, sort of what context that really does make a difference, but in terms of strategies, in terms of implications, in terms of players, again, going back to what Sahana was saying was in terms of the access to education, a country like India, education was always considered to be a public good. And because it is considered to be a public good, the state has really invested in providing education to all. But now, when the privatization sort of comes in, already there are conversations going on. How would it impact on the marginalized sectors which are more vulnerable, which, let's say, don't have the wherewithal to send their children to good universities, private good universities. It's, again, a phenomenon which is globally linked, because we are witnessing all foreign universities wanting to come and set up campuses in Asian countries. Which, in a way, you know, if it was just exchange, it would be a very good move. But then it also has ramifications that go lot beyond then just providing choice to students, which is what neoliberalism would talk about, you know, giving the choice to students. Yeah, but, you know, is the choice a real choice? That questions need to be debated, because the linkages are all playing out in ways that I think there's a lot more understanding in the public domain that is required than what exists today.

Natalie von der Lehr 18:05
It's an intertwined system, really.

Navnita Chadha Behera 18:07
It really is.

Sahana Ghosh 18:08
Absolutely.

Natalie von der Lehr 18:08
What can you do to promote and protect academic freedom?

Sahana Ghosh 18:13
Of course, on this topic, we spend a lot of time talking about how bleak everything is, and indeed they are. It would be wrong of us to give you the impression that it's a done deal or the, you know, ship has sunk, even though it does feel like that on many days. But actually, to the contrary, there are huge struggles at all scales, you know, big and small across these societies, to counter the kinds of attacks. To fight for preserving the classroom, to fight for preserving student politics on campus. You know, of course, this is terrifying to the very sort of powers that fear this spirit. In South Asia, we've seen two student led revolutions in the last couple years. They're being called the Gen Z revolutions, right? That would not have even been possible had there not been existing movements of all kinds, led by students, supported with teachers, professors, drawing in broad civil society actors. In lots of parts, we see those kinds of movements, big and small, that are fighting to protect universities, that are fighting to protect the right to information, the right to education and the right to be knowledge producers in their own societies.

Navnita Chadha Behera 19:47
I remember there was an instance a couple of years ago where university professors were taking classes in the lawns. Just as a mark of sort of standing up in favor of wanting to have an open conversation. You know, just that it's not that they were teaching anything different or revolutionary, but just the idea that the conversation must go on, that the democratic debate must go on and invite the contrarian opinions as well. The idea of the debate itself must not die. And I think that's where the direct knowledge producers sort of play a role. The larger ecosystem is that people sort of to realize that there isn't a direct linkage that society at large still feels in terms of what knowledge production does to the character of a society. And that debate is, I think, still not as robust as perhaps it should be. That if the knowledge production isn't happening in a free and informed manner, how does that impact on the polity, on the society, on the economy, on the being, you know, on the very sort of soul of your country and your society. I think that awareness and that debate, there needs to be a lot more than what is happening.

Natalie von der Lehr 21:11
Many scholars do silence themselves out of fear of endangering their careers. In authoritarian regimes, those who dissent can face suspension or even imprisonment. A simple act like signing a petition for minority civil rights can lead to severe personal and professional consequences. One person who has personal experience of this is İnan Özdemir Taştan, affiliated EUME Fellow at the Forum Transregionale Studien in Berlin and former Barbro Klein Fellow at SCAS. She came to SCAS after having been suspended from her position at Ankara University for several years.

İnan Özdemir Taştan 21:52
So for me, this one year in SCAS was, of course, a kind of academic heaven that I could continue my work freely. But what I would like to also mention that the other perspective that SCAS gave to me. So for me, what is really valuable for this advanced study organizations, or collegiums, is that they are bringing together all around the world, really brilliant academics from different disciplines. It was really interesting and opened my perspective about academia to have these interactions. And the second thing is, I really give importance, and also changed my life, is that coming from the underprivileged or disadvantaged parts of the world, for us, the accessibility is really a kind of problem. And being such a prestigious place here with so brilliant academics was a really great chance for me, and I think really affected my academic career with new networks, new skills, new perspectives. So it's really important to have a kind of fund or fellowship in these organizations for disadvantaged part of society or geographies.

Natalie von der Lehr 23:26
There's a clear call for action to protect academic freedom. Two of the long term fellows at SCAS discuss how Institutes for Advanced Studies can contribute.

Alisse Waterston 23:35
Hello, I'm Alisse Waterston. I am presidential scholar and professor emerita - means I just retired recently - from the City University of New York, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and I'm a cultural anthropologist, and I've been at SCAS now for about six years as a Long-term Fellow.

Michael Watts 23:55
Hi. My name is Michael Watts. I also am an emeritus. I taught at the University of California, Berkeley for over 40 years, and I'm currently associated with the University of Chicago. Like Alisse I came to SCAS originally, actually as a fellow, and then became a Non-resident Long-term Fellow.

Natalie von der Lehr 24:17
How can you as long term fellows at SCAS support academic freedom? And in the larger perspective, also than what can SCAS do, or the Institutes for Advanced Study?

Alisse Waterston 24:28
I'm going to start with what can SCAS do. I think it's really important, and this week here discussing academic freedom and threats to academic freedom, make it clear that academic freedom is under threat around the globe. I think there's opportunity for SCAS to be prepared by studying what's happening in various places and take these as a cautionary tale that this might be relevant here as well. Now SCAS is already interdisciplinary, and SCAS is also involved in a network. And I think it would be really important for SCAS to work collaboratively within that network to address this, these issues, and I think that they are already engaged in that. But I think it would be really important to have SCAS and the network of Institutes, think about what the underlying assumptions are that drive the principles of academic freedom for these Institutes. So be very explicit within your own selves about what are your assumptions, what are the norms, what are your understandings that then give rise to a principle or definition of academic freedom. And also looking very honestly at the Institutes that are involved in the network for ways in which some may and or may not be complicit with some of the threats. Because we have to recognize that the academy is also complicit in certain ways. And so likewise, some of the Institutes may be complicit with some of the threats to academic freedom. So be very clear about that. I think that would be important. And then, instead of succumbing, by means of, you know, anticipatory obedience to what might come this way, to be prepared with a solidarity approach, working in collaboration and in community. So those would be my suggestions. And as a long term fellow, you know, we have traditionally provided the director of SCAS, Christina Garsten, strategic advice, and we can continue to do that, because this is an ongoing process. And so as we look at proposals that come to SCAS through different fellowships, we can examine them with the lens towards, you know, how significant these projects are to ensure that this place remain a robust Institute for advancing, producing and disseminating knowledge.

Michael Watts 27:08
One of the striking things about listening to the various talks this week, was that they were both specific and different. How this played itself out in Turkey was not the same as Bangladesh. And at the same time, it also showed that there were striking commonalities. The playbook of the authoritarians was remarkably similar. The timing might be slightly different, the configuration of things that they were doing vis a vis the judiciary, closing down academic freedom, harassing students. They were different in their own specificities, but there were patterns here that were immediately identifiable. So I think from that, there's a key role that SCAS played this week, but should continue to play, so that we can all learn from each other about the specific types of ways in which this assault on universities is both playing itself out, the tactical mistakes that might be made or the strategies that work. As Alisse was just saying, the solidarities that can be built across space and time and so on. So I think Advanced Studies Institutes are wonderfully placed in that regard. They're a type of clearing house, at one level. They bring together, through their fellows, through their events, such as the academic freedom week, groups of people that can learn from one another and prepare for a future. And also to, and this will be my second point, to also identify things that are not being done, that should be done, that SCAS can play a role in. And one that just emerged today in our discussions is the question of students, undergraduates, in particular, who have been very active around Gaza, and yet there's at least in the US, from my vantage point, very little that's been happening around their engagement with questions of academic freedom, and for them, the freedom to learn. And I think that's largely because most students don't necessarily think about that stuff, but they should. And I think there's an enormous amount of work to be done here, pedagogical work, but also, again, a role that SCAS can play, is to think about ways in which it can highlight that. Even think about developing curricula, even think about sort of workshops and modules that could move across space, across the world, to different campuses that could fulfill that function. And I just think that SCAS in particular, but Advanced Institutes in general, are beautifully positioned to do that.

Alisse Waterston 29:57
Exactly. And I think in terms of the students and the undergraduate students maybe especially, is that, at least in the United States, my experience is that they're very confused, and they're yearning, maybe not necessarily, to take a course or a module on what is academic freedom. And they wouldn't say it in those terms necessarily, but they know that the topics that they're interested in are now being banned, the books that they may want to read are being banned. Their topics and subject matter of research and writing are being prohibited, and that their professors are also seem to be silenced and self silencing. They may not have that language, and they may not know, oh, my professor is self silencing, but they know that things are going on in the world and in their own lives. They're seeing what's happening in their neighborhoods or adjacent neighborhoods, and we, I think, as scholars, as teachers, have a responsibility to make the connections for them, for the students. And then I think you'll see more of the resistance that Michael was referring to, that the freedom to learn is too much of an abstraction when it's said in those words, but if they could understand more fully that their ability to absorb knowledge and understanding and language and analytic tools, all of that, that that's under threat, I think we would see a backlash from the students, and that they would stand up and say "no way". And they also need it to be together though, collectively. So I think a coalition of students and professors would be awesome.

Natalie von der Lehr 31:43
The young and the old. Anything else that you want to share?

Alisse Waterston 31:46
There are a lot of reasons to be afraid at this time, but I think that those of us who can, who are in positions of privilege, in terms of our social location and so forth, need to overcome those fears and stand up and be the leaders. Retired folks we can go ahead and without fear, because what are they going to do to us? And I think it's important for us to lead the way in contesting what we're seeing is going on.

Natalie von der Lehr 32:16
In this second episode in our series SCAS Talk Spotlight on "A Week on Academic Freedom", you have heard more about the connection between academic freedom and democracy, also about the situation in Asia and the thoughts of some SCAS fellows. The previous part in this mini series focused on the US and Europe. I hope you gained some food for thought and, more importantly, for action. Bring academic freedom on the agenda by making it a conversation topic at lunch or the coffee break. Invite a speaker to your department, and most importantly, learn to recognize even the small things that might be a prelude to bigger changes. If you want to dive deeper into the topic of academic freedom, you might want to listen to some previous episodes of SCAS Talks, for example, Linda Wedlin on "A governance dimension of academic freedom", the SCAS Talks Spotlight on A Week on Academic Freedom from 2023, İnan Özdemir Taştan on "Threats on media, academic freedom and democracy in the post truth era" and Alisse Waterston on "Search of light in dark times". You can find SCAS Talks on podbean, Spotify, Apple podcasts and most podcast apps. In our regular series, I talk to present and former fellows of SCAS - tune in if you are not a listener already. My name is Natalie von der Lehr, and I would like to thank Biao Xiang, Sahana Ghosh, Navnita Chadha Behera, İnan Özdemir Taştan, Alisse Waterston and Michael Watts for talking to me in this episode. A heartfelt thanks also to all the speakers during the week for sharing your knowledge and perspectives. And last but not least, thanks to you for listening. Take care and bye for now.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai