ACADEMIC Freedom as HUMAN RIGHT
International Online Conference
14-15-16 December 2020
This conference was prepared within the scope of the project "Bringing the Human Rights Academy to Civil Society" funded by the European Union. The content of it does not reflect the official opinion of the European Union.
Preseneters & Abstracts
András Bozóki
András Bozóki is Professor of Political Science at the Central European University (CEU) in Vienna, Austria. His research interests include comparative politics, Central Europe, democratization, hybrid regimes, political ideologies, and the role of the intellectuals. His books include Post-Communist Transition: Emerging Pluralism in Hungary (1992, 2016), Democratic Legitimacy in Post-Communist Societies (1994), Intellectuals and Politics in Central Europe (1999), The Roundtable Talks of 1989: The Genesis of Hungarian Democracy (2002), Anarchism in Hungary: Theory, History, Legacies (2006), Rolling Regime Change: The Political Role of Intellectuals in Hungary (2019) and several others. His articles appeared in Comparative Sociology, Democratization, Perspectives on Politics, East European Politics and Society, European Political Science, Taiwan Journal of Democracy, Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, Debatte: Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe, Baltic Worlds, East European Constitutional Review, Osteuropa and several others. András Bozóki was visiting professor at Columbia University, Smith College, Mount Holyoke College, Hampshire College, Nottingham University and Bologna University. He was chairman of the Hungarian Political Science Association and served as founding editor of the Hungarian Political Science Review. In 2009, he received the István Bibó Prize from the Hungarian Political Science Association.
Control of academic freedom: The case of Hungary / András Bozóki
Authoritarian and hybrid regimes aim to control freedom of expression, including academic freedom. They want to prevent the rise of a new, politically critical generation so they wish to keep control over the universities. In Hungary, the Orbán regime reorganizes state universities into “foundations” which are controlled by party loyalists. Political will and legal tricks combined, universities will not be about critical thinking but loyalty. Independent universities, like the Central European University have been silenced or forced out from the country. Research money is reorganized via new redistributive mechanisms and institutions that belong to the party-state. Professors and faculty are to be replaced by newcomers, liberal thinking is expected to be replaced by nationalist commitment. University protests, like the occupation of the University of Theatre and Film Arts by its students therefore signal the potential rise of anti-systemic opposition.
Aydın Ördek
Aydın Ördek, born in 1979. Graduated from Middle East Technical University, Department of Economics and Ankara University, Institute of Social Sciences (MS in Economics, thesis titled “Market as a Fictional and Historical Category”). Worked as research assistant in Ankara University from 2005 to 2017. In 2017 dismissed and banned from public service after military coup attempt of 2016, for signing the Peace Petition. Continues his studies PhD in economics on political economy of money. Currently affiliated to the School of Human Rights.
Meaning of Academic Freedom and Autonomy at the age of Late Corporatization
Reflecting on the meaning of academic freedom and autonomy -having more or less agreed upon and almost standardized definitions- in the present day political-social context makes it possible to suggest concrete solutions for the problem areas pointed out by these concepts. This assertion is based on the ambiguities in the standard definitions, and thus the superiority of meaning to the definition is stressed. In this address, an interpretation of academic freedom and autonomy is tried to get by the assumptions that the present political-social order is the late corporatization period of capitalism and that the teleology behind the interpretation is a free society. The transformation in the demands of academic freedom and autonomy, which are constituents of modern university ideal, with the transformation of the functions of scientific knowledge and university is discussed. It is established that the main reason for academic freedom’s gaining importance relative to academic autonomy as demand is the present level of corporatization reached. The reason for demanding academic freedom as a human right is these formally standard demand’s having got meaningless in the corporatized universities. Therefore, it is argued that for going beyond a formal right demand, the academic freedom and autonomy demand has to be fastened to a free university ideal of a free society. This is only possible with a specific association of autonomy and freedom.
Barış Ünlü
Barış Ünlü has a BA in Economics and MA in Political Science from Ankara University. He completed his PhD in Sociology at SUNY Binghamton in the spring of 2008. In February 2017, with a State of Emergency decree, he was expelled from Ankara University, where he had been employed for 17 years, for signing the Academics for Peace declaration. He is currently a Philipp Schwartz research fellow at the University of Duisburg-Essen.
Cultural Revolution, Culture Wars and Academic Freedom
Today, in many parts of the world, extreme right-wing movements and authoritarian governments consider universities the strongholds of “cultural Marxism”, places alienated from local culture and religion. What they mean by “cultural Marxism” refers to basically two fields of study that have been expanding in and beyond universities in an almost unstoppable fashion over the last decades: critical gender/queer studies and race/ethnicity studies. These two fields grew exponentially following the world cultural revolution of 1968 in the academy. Born in parallel to the social movements of the day, the impact of these academic fields now goes beyond the academy, shaping the language of the opposition in the streets. We can easily discern this phenomenon by looking at movements such as “decolonization”, “black lives matter” and “me too”. In this sense, the current assessment of the Right is fundamentally correct: they failed to seize the expansion of the 1968 cultural revolution in the last fifty years; and today, besides the cultural hegemony it enjoys, the cultural revolution is also impacting the political sphere in a revolutionary fashion. Not surprisingly, in this age of high-stakes political chaos and uncertainty, one of the top priorities of the global right is to finally stop this cultural revolution before it is too late.
In my talk, I will present an analysis of the attacks against academic freedoms in Turkey in recent years. My analysis situates Turkey into wider and ongoing cultural and political struggles between the global right and the global left.
Cansu Akbaş Demirel
Cansu Akbaş Demirel holds her BA Degree in International Relations (IR) from Ankara University and MA Degree in IR from Ege University. She was expelled from Ege University where she was working as a research assistant, by a decree law for signing the Peace Petition. She works as a researcher at the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey (HRFT). She studies on migration, asylum and human rights and has book chapters with the title “Syrians in Turkey: Status and Government Policies” and “Syrians and ‘Others’: A Comparative Study on Legal and Social Status’ of People, Seeking Asylum in Turkey”.
Dismissals of Academics and Academic Freedom
Academics, who signed the Peace Petition, were one of the groups – dismissed from their jobs by decree laws after the emergency of state was declared. However, the academics were being exposed to rights violations since the Petition had been declared, much before their dismissals. They had been denounced by authorities, they had come under attack and threats, and their academic freedom and human rights were being violated such as the right to work, right to education etc. Dismissals of academics caused new violations of academic freedom in different ways.
Academics were dismissed not only from their posts but also from research and teaching activities. As they were obstructed, it became impossible for them to reach sources to continue their academic activities. When we take into account that producing and sharing knowledge are the prior conditions for academics to realize and improve themselves, we can assert that it is no longer possible for dismissed academics.
On the basis of the field research conducted by HRFT Academy –which consists of a group of dismissed academics- Dismissals of Academics and Academic Freedom, aims to reveal the academic loss and obstructions that dismissed academics confronted during this dismissal process and under the state of emergency.
Ertuğ Tombuş
Ertuğ Tombuş is a researcher in political science at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin and the president of the Off-University Board. Before joining HU-Berlin, he taught at Columbia University, The New School for Liberal Arts, and Western Connecticut State University. Since 2009, he has been the managing editor of Constellations: An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory.
From Solidarity to Equality: Off University and the Insistence on a Democratic Academy
In 2017, a group of academics who were purged from their institutions in Turkey and came together around the idea of democratic and egalitarian academia founded Off-University in Germany. Off-University offers researchers and students with limited opportunity to move around freely an occasion to participate in online education. Off-University aims not only to show solidarity with the at-risk scholars but also to develop strategies to protect research areas and knowledge that are under attack from authoritarian regimes or extreme right-wing political actors. Off-University’s mission is based on its commitment to peace in the world and to living together in diversity. It, therefore, seeks to develop emancipatory education-research activities that are less hierarchical and more democratic. Starting from a discussion on the principles behind the foundation of Off-University and its experience so far, the aim of this presentation is to rethink the relation between academic freedom and democracy. Off-University offers researchers and students with limited opportunity to move around freely an occasion to participate in online education. Off-University’s mission is based on its commitment to peace in the world and to living together in diversity. It, therefore, seeks to develop emancipatory education-research activities that are less hierarchical and more democratic.
Füsun Üstel
Füsun Üstel completed her undergraduate education at Ankara University, Faculty of Political Science. In 1980-81, she attended the graduate program at Johns Hopkins University in Bologna, Italy. In 1982, she became a research assistant at Istanbul University Faculty of Economics. She received her doctorate from AÜSBF in 1987. She worked as a lecturer at Istanbul, Marmara and Galatasaray Universities between 1982 and 2017. Her researches on nationalism, identity and citizenship and cultural policy issues have been published in academic journals. In 2017 she retired from Galatasaray University. She has been sentenced to two and a half months of imprisonment for signing the peace petition “We will not be party to this crime!”
Don’t you Dare!: Burning Subjects in the Universities
The statement of the French minister of Interior Darmanin, accusing the universities of islamo-gauchisme in October 2020 in the aftermath of the decapitation of a history and geography teacher Samuel Patty, generated tension which split the academy into two antagonistic groups. A text signed by more than 2000 academics in reaction to The Manifesto of One Hundred produced and signed by scholars from different political views who gave their support to the minister brought in a heated discussion some delicate issues, such as republicanism and laicité, freedom of thought and expression, freedom of research and autonomy of universities. Meanwhile with some media organs and right-wing milieus, endorsing the statement made by the minister in person, scholars working on issues like ethnicity, gender or intersectionality which were subjects “imported” were criticized for making concessions to communautarism, separatism and islamic terror. The fact that these debates and controversies came out in a period of a law draft (Projet de loi sur la programmation de la recherche-LPPR) which will finalize the neoliberal transformation of the universities is not a mere accident.
In Turkey also some scholars have passed through a similar experience. A process which began with the criminalization of research areas and researchers, and went on with the targeting of Academics for Peace and the purge of scholars by government decrees can be explained by the neoliberal transformation of universities and the consolidation of the security state.
This presentation will discuss, in a comparative approach the cases of Turkish and French universities facing a neoliberal transformation and a securitization policy that aims to neutralize the universities as a space of free speech and critical thinking.
Hasan Faruk Alpkaya
Hasan Faruk Alpkaya was born in 1959. He graduated from Ankara University Faculty of Political Sciences in 1985. He completed his master’s degree at Istanbul University in 1988. He received his doctorate degree from Ankara University in 2007. He worked as an assistant and lecturer at Ankara University between 1992-2017. He was removed from his post at university on January 6, 2017, by Decree Law No. 679. He became a founding member of the Board of Directors of ÖES in 1994. He served as Organization Secretary and General Secretary at ÖES headquarters in different periods.
ÖES and Academic Freedom
ÖES (Academic Staff Syndicate) was established in 1994 as a professional union pioneered by a group of assistants and composed of faculty members from various levels. The union joined Eğitim-Sen in the same year after the Law on Public Servants’ Unions and Collective Bargaining enacted in 2001 to regulate industry unionism. ÖES, during its short life, carried out a legal struggle for its existence against the university administration and strived for improving the professional, economic and social rights of the academic staff, in particular focusing on the wages. At the same time, the union joined the Public Employees Unions Platform established by other public employees’ unions and the Democracy Platform established by unions, professional organizations and non-governmental organizations in the country, and tried to contribute to the struggle in the fields of economic, social and political rights throughout the country.
The biggest internal debate experienced by ÖES during the establishment process was over the concept of “academic freedom”. The article of the statute regulating the aims of the union was arranged by the assistants who drafted the charter, based on the Lima Declaration, in the form of academic freedom, institutional autonomy and as an inevitable result of this autonomy, democratic management. Senior professors opposed this, defending the concept of “scientific and administrative autonomy” and “elected boards and elected rectors”, which were included in the 1961 Constitution but were abolished by the 1982 constitution, and even wanted to add the concept of “financial autonomy” to it. This debate was overcome by consensus in the first General Assembly of ÖES, the Lima Declaration was accepted as the main document guiding the organization’s work, but the understanding in the declaration never dominated the union.
İnan Özdemir Taştan
İnan Özdemir Taştan is a Peace Academic who was dismissed from her post at Ankara University in 2017 with a State of Emergency decree for signing a petition entitled “We will not be a party of this crime!” She received her PhD in 2013 writing her thesis on the rhetoric of radical left movements in Turkey in the 1970s. After completing her PhD, she offered courses on public relations, rhetoric and research methods. She has taken part in several research projects focusing on political campaigns and media. Her recent publications have focused especially on the electoral speeches of political leaders, their perception of democracy; the increasing religionization of politics in Turkey; political debates on Syrian immigration and radical media and resistance. She is currently Barbro Klein Fellow at Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study and working on the discursive strategies of “slanted” media in the justification and legitimation of government policies in Turkey.
Universities’ “State of Emergency” in Turkey: Climate of Fear, Self-censorship and Shrinking Research Areas
Although academic freedom is generally defined as the ability of academicians and students to act freely in research, education, and publishing activities without feeling any pressure, academic autonomy, job security, and social rights should also be considered as important components of this freedom. Looking from this broad definition, one can observe that universities have never been totally free in Turkey. This situation got worse during the last State of Emergency (SoE) period of 2016-2018, which brought with severe restrictions on academic freedom like the closure of various universities, dismissals of thousands of academics from public service, widespread administrative investigations, the abolition of the elections of university rectors etc. To reveal the effects of these restrictions on universities, Human Rights School conducted a large-scale survey (422 questionnaires and 28 in-depth interviews) with academicians and graduate students in 54 universities from 13 provinces. The results reveal that academics try to carry out their scientific activities under the concern of life safety and job security and in an environment where mobbing is quite common. Similar pressure was voiced by graduate students too. The most obvious consequence of this pressure is increasing fear and self-censorship among academics and students. Self-censorship is very common in all domains of the academic field (lectures, research, publications, and academic events such as conferences) and during the SoE, the study of subjects that are contrary to the mainstream political and ideological sensitivities in Turkey could only be carried out with reservations and encountered with various pressures. These study areas are at the risk of shrinking and even “closure”.
Jeffrey C. Goldfarb
Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, the Michael E. Gellert Professor of Sociology at the New School for Social Research, is the founder and publisher of the online magazine Public Seminar and the convener of the Democracy Seminar, first developed in the 1980s as an exchange between oppositionist groups in Central Europe and the United States, and in 2018 reconvened as a “World Wide Committee of Democratic Correspondence.” Goldfarb is the author of dozens of articles and eight books, including Reinventing Political Culture: The Power of Culture versus the Culture of Power (2012), The Politics of Small Things: The Power of the Powerless in Dark Times (2006) Civility and Subversion: The Intellectual in Democratic Society (1996), and On Cultural Freedom: The Exploration of Public Life in Poland and America (1982). His contribution to the conference, builds upon the sociological findings of these four texts.
Academic Freedom: A Sociological Definition and A Consideration of its Democratic Promise
In this presentation, I will present a conceptual framework for defining academic freedom and considering its role in supporting democracy, and I will apply this framework to the situation in the United States.
I will consider academic freedom as a specific instantiation of cultural freedom, a key component of which is relative institutional autonomy from the chief steering mechanism of the social order, from market calculation and political command. This then will be applied to the possibility of academics, as intellectuals, contributing to and supporting democratic movements and governance. It will be argued their primary democratic role is to enable talk among citizens, both on the grand political stage and in small groups. Such talk can have immediate political results: inform and guide immediate political action, for example opposing a dictator, or a clear and present social or political injustice. And such talk also can inform long term changes in the social order. I will examine the terrain and form of such talk and action, what I call “the politics of small things,” and its possible deep and long-term consequences, i.e. the possibility of configuring and re-configuring the relationship between power and culture, i.e. political culture.
The conceptual framework will be used to reflect upon the challenges of academic freedom in the United States and their possible implications for defending democracy in America at the time of the pandemic, economic and political crisis. I will consider the attacks on universities by the political right and left, the marketization and bureaucratization of academic life, as well as the confusion of the vocations of politics, science and business.
Jewher İlham
Jewher Ilham graduated with a B.A from Indiana University in political science, Near Eastern languages and cultures, and Central Eurasian studies in 2019. As an advocate for her imprisoned father, she testified before the U.S. Congress, wrote op-eds in the New York Times, received numerous awards worldwide on behalf of her father. In 2015, she recounted her experiences in her book A Uyghur’s Fight to Free Her Father (University of New Orleans Press) She was invited to be the key speaker at 2019 Ministerial to advance religious freedom hosted by Pompeo, the Secretary of State. She was also invited to the White House to speak to the President on the Uyghur issue. Following that, she had the opportunity to speak at the UN general assembly on the atrocities the Chinese government is committing on the Uyghurs. In December 2019, Jewher accepted the Sakharov Price on behalf of her father and urged the European Parliament to take a stand and hold the Chinese government accountable. In 2020, she was invited to be the key speaker at the Geneva summit to discuss the Uyghur plight. She is currently working at the Worker’s Rights Consortium as an associate/Project to Combat Forced Labor while assisting on a documentary film about Uyghurs.
From Lecture Hall to Prison Cell: The Threat to Academic Freedom for the Uyghurs
According to experts and researchers, it is estimated that there are over 1-1.8 million Uyghurs that have been sent to reeducation camps or Forced Labour centers as part of government’s so called “poverty alleviation” efforts. The Chinese government claims that these camps and training centers are for vocational training. The detainees include scholars, intellectuals, and medical doctors, who not only have their academic freedom taken away from them, but they are also forced to work in low-wage factories. Those people do not need job training nor should they be pulled away from their libraries, lecture halls, or classrooms to be put into a prison.
Joan W. Scott
Joan Scott received her Ph.D. in History from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She has taught at several universities, including Brown University, where she was the founding director of the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women. She is now professor emerita in the school of social sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study where she has been a member of the faculty since 1985.
Joan Scott’s works have challenged the foundations of conventional historical practice, including the nature of historical evidence and historical experience. She has been an active member of the committee on academic freedom and tenure of the American Association of University Professors since 1993. A collection of essays based on that experience was published in 2019: Knowledge, Power and Academic Freedom. Joan Scott is the founding editor of the journal, History of the Present: A Journal of Critical History. Known best, perhaps, for her classic 1986 article “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis”. She has also written on French feminisms, politics and history. The Politics of the Veil (2007) has been translated into a number of languages including Turkish. A collection of her essays has also been published in Turkish translation, Feminist Tarihin Peşinde (2013, İstanbul: bgst Yayınları).
Moushumi Basu
Moushumi Basu, Associate Professor at the Centre for International Politics, Organization and Disarmament, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Her research interests lie in the areas of human rights and development. She is presently the Secretary of the Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachers Association.
Academic Freedom in Question on University Campuses in India
The university as a site of learning in contemporary India is witnessing an insidious transformation that does not bode well for academics and their right to engage freely with the world of ideas. In a country where generations have been taught by rote to mouth the famous lines penned by Tagore – ‘where the mind is without fear and the head is held high, where knowledge is free…’- there has been a clampdown on academic freedom and thought on university campuses across India since the Right-wing Government of Modi came to power in 2014. My presentation would therefore focus on several such cases of attack on the right to freedom of thought and expression within the academic setting of universities, and the construction of a counter narrative leading to delegitimization and criminalization of thought in a manner that is not just dangerous but disastrous as well, for the academia as a whole.
Onur Can Taştan
Onur Can Taştan completed his PhD in Labor Economics and Industrial Relations in 2016. He gave courses on social policy and social movements at the Department of Labor Economics and Industrial Relations at Ankara University/Faculty of Political Science, where he worked as a research assistant for ten years. He was one of the signatories of the petition entitled “We Will Not Be a Party to This Crime” and was dismissed from public service with a state of emergency decree on September 1, 2016. Between 2017 and 2019, he worked as a non-resident postdoctoral researcher in the Sociology Department of Göttingen University. There he taught undergraduate and graduate courses on labor relations and social policy in Turkey. He continues his research on the challenges for the unionization of academic staff in Turkey and Sweden in the Department of Political Science at Uppsala University, where he works as a visiting researcher.
Struggles Against Authoritarianism and Neoliberal Reform at the Universities in Turkey: The Case of Eğitim-Sen
The massive purge of hundreds of critical academics, notably Peace Academics, during the state of emergency in Turkey is not the only result of the recent authoritarian turn in the higher education system. Many crucial elements of the neoliberal reform agenda, which could not be completed before due to academics and students’ resistance, were implemented in this period either through emergency decrees or legal changes. Hence, recent developments in Turkey’s higher education system provide a good opportunity to discuss the relations between authoritarianism, academic freedoms, and neoliberal reform. In this study, I will discuss these relations through the struggles of academic staff who were organized in Eğitim-Sen (Education and Science Workers’ Union) between the mid-2000s and 2016. One reason that makes the case of Eğitim-Sen proper for such a discussion is that it is a combative union that has led or supported the most crucial struggles against the assaults towards academic freedoms and the neoliberal reform agenda in higher education. Additionally, almost all of the Peace Academics dismissed from state universities were members of Eğitim-Sen, and most of them led or took part in the resistance organized by Eğitim-Sen against various components of neoliberal transformation during the period under consideration. Eğitim-Sen was the major combative organization in this period with its centrally coordinated campaigns and the initiatives created by its members at the workplace level. The development of these struggles in various phases that coincided with neoliberal reform attempts, the problems they focused on, and the reactions of the government and university administrations to these struggles provide a fertile ground not only for understanding the basic features of the authoritarian transformation in higher education in Turkey but also for discussing the relations between authoritarianism, academic freedoms, and neoliberalism.
Ozan Değer
Ozan Değer, PhD completed his master with a thesis “The Cooperation of Jurisdiction between the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights” and received his doctoral degree under the title of “An International Crime at the Borderline of Sovereignty: Piracy.” Due to being an “Academic for Peace”, he was expelled through the decree-law no 672 on 1 September 2016 from the Faculty of Political Science at Ankara University where he had worked since 3 January 2006. His interests are public law, human rights, international criminal justice, political crimes and political philosophy. He published three books named as “The Jurisdiction between the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights within the Jus Publicum Europeaum (in Turkish)”, “İsmail Beşikçi (Eds. with Barış Ünlü) (in Turkish)”, “Judging the Enemy (Ed.) (in Turkish)” and many scientific/academic articles and reports. He has been the executive of the workshops “the International Protection of Human Rights” and “International Criminal Justice” in the School of Human Rights (Ankara) founded in January 2018.
Human Rights as a Discipline in the Academy of Turkey
This paper focuses on scientific knowledge, academic freedom, the right to the truth and freedom of speech as the indivisible elements of academic universalism as the latter is exposed to the oppression of the political power legitimating its attacks through the discourse of domestic and national. The result thus has been the suppression of academic freedom as human rights and the adoption of the rights as a metaphor of enemy. In this regard, the paper aims to historically analyse human rights as a concept and norm in the academy of Turkey—in what contents, how and when they were (not be able to be) studied— in terms of causal relations. The first part casts light on the idea of human rights and the regime of basic rights and freedom shaped as for that ideal and further discusses the universal nature of academic freedom as a human right relying on the ideal framework. The second part critically scrutinises “the literature of the Development of Human Rights” based on the historical construct of Turkish nationalism on the basis of statist political imaginary, which otherwise might be dealt with as a genuine problematic in itself. In the second part thus reveals that the “Turkish” academy’s encountering human rights had in fact coincided with the membership of UN and the formation of civil society, focusing on the period of 1969-1980 when the first human rights studies were initiated. The last part examines the 12 September coup when the human rights were totally suspended and the later gradual development until the period of JDP and thus problematizes the relationship of the academy in Turkey with human rights regarding the academy’s hypocrisy based on the double standard in the context of the Kurdish question throughout the 1990s. The last part also takes a close-up look into the restructuring character of the academy by further questioning the uneven relationship between the academy and human rights under the light of judicial cases and processes given the JDP’s 16 years fluctuating period between the Ankara criteria in 2002 and the state of emergency regime starting out in 2016.Özgür Bozdoğan
Özgür Bozdoğan, was born in 1969, in Adana. Following his undergraduate education in the Division of English Language Teaching of Hacettepe University, he had his MA degree from the Division of English Language Teaching Department of Gazi University. He has been teaching in the state schools since 1991, namely in the cities of Ankara, Çankırı and Çorum. In addition to being the workplace representative in several schools he worked at, he was also the Sungurlu District Head of Eğitim-Sen for one term. He was the head of Ankara No.2 Branch Office of Eğitim-Sen for three terms. In 2017, he was elected to the Executive Board of Eğitim-Sen and he was the Secretariat of General Graduate and Education in Eğitim-Sen between 2017-2020.
Eğitim-Sen in the Struggle for Academic Freedoms
It is clear that there is a direct relationship between academic freedom and the political conditions in Turkey and the world. Political governments tend to establish their own hegemony in the field of higher education and thus perpetuate their power. For this to happen, academic freedoms must be restricted or completely abolished. Turkey, in different periods of history, has witnessed several times these initiatives. Academic freedoms were restricted, scientists were purged from universities and universities were tried to be turned into the backyard of political powers. Although the liquidations in question are tried to be implemented with different methods according to the seasonal characteristics, the aim is the same in essence; to create universities subject to political power. While sometimes scientists are dismissed from universities with law decrees, sometimes the contracts of academicians are not extended or their jobs are terminated with showcase investigations.
Recently, in Turkey, especially after the 15th of July, the political power dismissed a large number of academics from universities. On the other hand, with the legislative changes it made, the political power aims to abolish academic freedoms completely. It should be emphasized that a struggle against all these attempts and practices of political power continues against all kinds of obstacles and difficulties. One of the most important goals of this struggle is to protect and develop academic freedoms. It is not possible to talk about the university that is isolated from academic freedoms being a university in real terms. Many groups continue their struggle for academic freedoms. One of the most important subjects struggling in this field is Eğitim-Sen. Eğitim-Sen, while fighting for the rights of Academics for Peace, also strives for the removal of barriers and borders to academic freedom. In the presentation to be made, it will be tried to explain how this struggle is continued in different areas by our trade union.
Ülkü Doğanay
Ülkü Doğanay, after receiving her BA from Ankara University Faculty of Communication in 1993, received master’s degree in Political Science from the Middle East Technical University and a PhD from Ankara University, Department of Political Science and Public Administration. During her PhD studies, upon gaining a scholarship from Turkish Academy of Sciences she worked at the French Press Institute of Paris II University. In 2009, she became Associate Professor in the field of Political Life and Institutions, and in 2014 she is appointed as a full professor at the Faculty of Communication of Ankara University where she worked between 1994 and 2017. In February 2017 she is purged with an emergency decree of law and banned from public service, for signing the “Academics for Peace Petition”.
In May 2019 she is appointed as a remote scholar at the Department of Public Policy of University of Connecticut. Currently she is teaching at Off University and Human Rights School. She is a member of Ankara Solidarity Academy and she is working as the coordinator of the Promoting Gender Equality via the Network of Solidarity Academies Project that is runned by Ankara Solidarity Academy and Birarada Association and supported by the EU.
Being a Human Rights Academic During the State of Emergency
This paper is based on the findings of a study conducted by the Human Rights School. The aim of this study was to reveal the kind of impact that the state of emergency (SoE), which was in effect between 21 July 2016 and 19 June 2018, had on academic studies in the field of human rights in Turkey and the kinds of consequences that the pressures had on the field. The research was carried out in the second half of 2018 and the first half of 2019.
Within the scope of the research, 103 face-to-face surveys and 20 semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted. In total, 79 faculty and 44 graduate students studying in the fields of human rights at public and private universities with human rights centres located in Ankara, İstanbul, İzmir, Diyarbakır and Konya provinces were included in the sample. The scholars working in various departments notably at faculties of law and those who had conducted or have been conducting studies and research on human rights at the faculties of economics and administrative sciences, faculties of humanities and faculties of communication etc. were included in the sample.
The main conclusion drawn from the field research is that academic freedoms suffered significant damages during and after the SoE. Although academics experienced the SoE in different ways depending on the university and their subject of study, the worries about the employment security and the protection of their personal rights have become stronger than usual. One of the most obvious effects of SoE on academic freedoms is that it has increased self-censorship; it forced academics to practice partially or completely self-censorship in their courses, studies, theses and publication.