Academic Freedom and Illiberal Democracy

With a welcome by NIAS Director Antoine Buyse, the performance Whispered Dreams by Fariborz Karimi and a conversation with the members of the NIAS Theme Group on Academic Freedoms in Context – Sari Hanafi, Kimberly Wehle, Tamar de Waal and Vicky Kosta – moderated by Marcia Luyten.

One of the most visible and consequential manifestations of democratic systems under increasing stress is the growing political and social pressure on so-called countervailing institutions. These institutions seek and speak truth, often helping us to imagine and develop alternative ways of seeing and doing things. Academia is such an institution, as are journalism and the arts. Their freedoms are essential pillars of liberal democracy and are protected under international human rights law.

While academic, artistic and journalistic freedoms are often discussed separately, they are deeply interconnected. Not only are the pressures brought to bear on them largely the same, pressures on one also often reinforce vulnerabilities in the others – particularly in contexts of political polarisation, disinformation, institutional erosion and rapid technological change. At the same time, responses to such developments remain fragmented across disciplines, sectors and national contexts. These pressures, how institutions deal with them, and how to make them and the democratic societies they serve more robust is what this year’s NIAS Theme Group on Academic Freedom in Context is set to research – and discuss on stage.

Sari Hanafi will argue, however, that academia, the arts, and journalism need to take crucial steps if they want to be able to successfully weather the storm. In making liberal democracy more robust, what challenges lie ahead for these key democratic institutions?

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During the opening, theatre maker Fariborz Karimi will present the performance Whispered Dreams, created with writer and actress Mona Ahmadi, his close friend and long-time artistic collaborator in Tehran.

The work began with an exchange of letters and texts between Amsterdam and Tehran, through which the two revisit their friendship, artistic collaboration and lived experiences. Working together across this distance is not simply a practical challenge: it becomes part of the performance itself, shaping what can be said, shown and shared.

At the heart of Whispered Dreams are friendship and self-censorship. Through text, sound, music, video and audience interaction, Karimi and Ahmadi explore how self-censorship enters creative and personal life, and how friendship can create a space of trust in which imposed boundaries can be questioned. Playing with absence and presence, and with what is live and what is mediated, the performance asks how people can remain connected – and continue imagining and creating together – when circumstances constrain what is possible.

Whispered Dreams by Fariborz Karimi, is presented with the support of the Fringe Festival.

What happens when the institutions meant to sustain democracy begin to falter? Members of the NIAS Theme Group Academic Freedoms in Context examine the pressures on academic, journalistic and artistic freedom from different but connected perspectives. Why have courts, political institutions, universities and the media struggled to uphold democratic norms? How can liberalism undermine itself when social justice and genuine pluralism are neglected? What responsibilities do scholars have beyond producing knowledge, when democratic institutions come under pressure? And how do commercialisation and academic capitalism affect academic freedom as a fundamental right, and what can we learn by comparing freedom of science with freedom of the arts and the press? A timely conversation about the institutions, values and forms of responsibility needed to keep democratic freedoms alive.