“Globalizing the Defense of Academic Freedom”
by Robert Quinn, Executive Director, Scholars at Risk Network
Scholars at Risk (SAR) considers academic freedom from a very particular angle:
How do we create norms, cultures, practices, and narratives that provide meaningful protection to scholars performing the core functions of knowledge production (aka truth-seeking) for the public good? How do we justify the claim to academic freedom to sources of power that might offer such protection, whether the state, higher education leaders, or the public?
SAR is working to meet this challenge by globalizing the defense of academic freedom.
Globalizing the defense of academic freedom means:
-Building solidarity and inviting partners to co-create a global protection agenda
-Demanding respect for the universal dimensions of academic freedom, as a guarantee, independent of location, for the processes of truth-seeking
-Injecting global perspective and experience into the national-level defense of academic freedom.
It also means moving beyond reporting on attacks on scholars and universities to proactively develop implementation guidance and practices. This shifts us from awareness advocacy (“pay attention, this matters”) to impact advocacy (“here is what we can do about it”).
As discussed recently at the UNICA/GOAF conference at King’s College London, May 7-8, 2026, the Principles for Implementing the Right to Academic Freedom are one such mechanism. Grounding academic freedom in international human rights law (freedom of expression, right to education, and right to science) and established international higher education standards (including the 1997 UNESCO Rec.), the Principles were drafted by an international working group co-convened by SAR and have been formally recognized by a number of UN human rights mechanisms. The Principles improve protection by mapping the range of issues that contribute to the healthy, safe exercise of academic freedom for the public good, and the appendices to the Principles offer concrete guidance and a step-by-step guide to assessing the health of academic freedom at the national, system, or institutional level.
As also discussed in London, the global higher education sector is falling behind: the rate of attacks on scholars is exceeding the number of scholars finding help each year. But SAR network members and partners—including many UNICA members—are responding. We are working to apply the Principles and develop new protection strategies, new research and messaging, and ongoing solidarity-building efforts, all culminating in the upcoming 2027 SAR Global Congress, to be held June 15-17, 2027 at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece.
We are currently facing a crisis of attacks on higher education, but the crisis is also an opportunity: to globalize the defense of academic freedom. We must capture this opportunity. We must come together, work creatively, and to demand greater protection for the university, in service to the public, with autonomy and freedom to think, not just for scholars, but for everyone.
