The academy as a pillar of liberal democracy: Introduction to the Opening of the Academic Year, Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, Amsterdam, September 4, 2024
(The contributions by Michael Ignatieff, Tamar de Waal and Jan Willem Duyvendak are also avaliable in Dutch, in the Dutch Review of Books’ special issue on academia and academic freedom: Academia Quo Vadis?)
Engaging with alternatives
Last Summer, NIAS organized and hosted a successful summer school and workshop titled Religion, the Radical Right and How to Respond: Analyzing for alternatives. I remember that the first time I read the proposed title, I had some reservations: is it the task of us, academics, to think about responses to the radical right? Is that not rather the task of concerned citizens, social movements and political parties? Should we engage ourselves with ‘alternatives’, as the workshop title suggested? How ‘political’ should our role be? Obviously, it was not only the summer school that prompted these questions, but also developments in the world ‘out there’ – a world full of violence, hatred, atrocities and ongoing wars.
How to be engaged in a troubled world
I think that for academics the question is not whether ‘to be or not to be political’, but how to be engaged scholars in a troubled world. We should reflect on the question how the ‘political’ and the ‘academic’ worlds relate to each other. In doing so, we should neither assume that ‘all scholarship is always already political’, nor the reverse, that ‘scholarship should be non-political’. Rather we should ask: How to engage? When are we to ‘speak out’? And how should we speak out? And who make up this ‘we’? Should institutions take position, or individual scholars? And should ‘we’ speak out about governments, academic institutions, or about individual scholars just as well? Obviously, all institutions for higher education have struggled with these questions in the previous and this academic year.
Jan Willem DuyvendakWe should ask: How to engage? When are we to ‘speak out’? And how should we speak out? And who make up this ‘we’?
After the events of October 7, 2023, NIAS published a ‘statement on statements’ on its website declaring that “To secure a safe space for our community of fellows, NIAS refrains from any public response to conflict, injustice or disaster as such. We will, however, speak out publicly if they are directed against or directly affect the academic mission we stand for.”
When to speak out
Although we clearly wanted to limit our public interventions, in early June 2024 we felt obliged to speak out against the ‘scholasticide’ that was and is occurring in Gaza and published a follow-up statement:
“As a research institute we choose not to issue general political statements, although we obviously condemn all violence against civilians. We are specifically concerned with situations in which academic freedoms are under threat, including those that have followed upon the atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7th and the Israeli war in Gaza, in particular the scholasticide or total devastation of the academic infrastructure in Gaza. NIAS aims to grant equal freedoms and rights to all researchers, whatever their nationality or affiliation. In March this year we have therefore extended our Safe Haven Fellowship Program to all scholars at risk, including those affected by the war in Gaza.”
We felt we should speak out against obvious and specific threats to academic freedoms, such as in the case of Gaza. Since we posted our statement, an increasing number of Dutch academic institutions –the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) among them – appear to be moving towards the position that individual scholars will never be boycotted on the basis of their nationality but that this might be quite different for institutions in countries that are involved in scholasticide.
Jan Willem DuyvendakWe felt we should speak out against obvious and specific threats to academic freedoms, such as in the case of Gaza.
I would consider it a great leap forward if this position were to become the default at all Dutch universities and national research institutions, such as the NWO and the KNAW. But even if that were to happen, discussion would not end. For, should we only speak out when academia is threatened? Or, should we – without over-engaging all over again – also consider to speak out or show solidarity when other pillars of liberal democracy are threatened? Is it ‘academia for academia’, or do we actually have a broader responsibility and should we actively ally with the judiciary, the free press and NGOs?
Solidarity between pillars
Michael Ignatieff has made some very interesting observations regarding the necessity to forge alliances among institutions – among what Dutch sociologist Kees Schuyt has called the ‘buttresses of society’. Schuyt has emphasized that the answer to increasing diversity and societal cleavages is not to ask for shared norms and values – to not ask that people should agree. Rather, we should be able to deal with differences because we have strong institutions that keep society together.
In this respect, the recent motion by VVD MP Bente Becker is not only a low point because it calls for the selective monitoring of the norms and values of a specific and sizeable segment of the Dutch population, but also because the obsession with shared norms and values is problematic in itself: we do not all have to share the same substantive norms and values in order to live together peacefully. The quality of our institutions, of all pillars of liberal democracy, is of far greater significance for this.
Looking for allies beyond academia is partly motivated by self-interest (because we can’t effectively defend ourselves), partly by a shared interest in protecting civic liberties. Should academia, then, along with the free press, the judiciary and organizations of civil society, adopt the NATO-doctrine that “an attack on one of us will be considered an attack on all of us”? I think we should.
Looking for allies beyond academia
Obviously, these are not abstract questions but very real and pressing ones, since authoritarianism is on the rise and democracy is under fire in many countries, including in the Netherlands. We now have a coalition government dominated by a radical right party – a party which has relentlessly attacked the free press, fully (dis)qualified academia as ‘woke’, and accused the judiciary of being politically biased towards the ‘Left’.
Jan Willem DuyvendakShould we only speak out when academia is threatened?
It will be clear where NIAS stands on these matters in the abstract – we cannot isolate ourselves in the ivory tower. But how to go about the ‘when’ and the ‘how’? Don’t we run the risk of having to speak out continuously, in the face of uninterrupted threats? How do we limit ourselves, based on which criteria or considerations?
And how to ally? My suggestion would be, first, by respecting the specificities of the various spheres of liberal democracy – for example to understand the differences between academic freedom on the one hand and freedom of speech on the other; and, second, by acknowledging their mutual dependency – research in the social sciences and humanities will never flourish in an autocratic system; the media in turn cannot do their job without researchers protected by academic freedoms.
Mutual dependency
It turns out that the theme of the summer school was actually very topical and the title fully justified: we have to think about alternatives to the radical right, since it embodies a big threat to academic freedoms as well as other liberties. But all the same time, we should be self-critical and open to discussing our own role while doing so, living up to the highest standards of academic freedom and integrity.
Jan Willem Duyvendak‘Woke’ is first and foremost a product of anti-‘woke’
In that vein, let me say a few concluding words about ‘woke’ – if only because Ignatieff regards it as a threat equal to the rise of the radical right. In our trade book Academic freedoms in the Netherlands: What is at stake? (in Dutch; 2023) various authors argue convincingly that the frame ‘woke’ is first and foremost a product of anti-‘woke’ trying to disqualify things it does not like. Such as academic attention to gender and sexuality, ‘race’ and ethnicity, and so on.
Building coalitions
At the same time, it is also true that the priority of some colleagues, and certainly of some radical students, sometimes seems to be to confirm their own right(eousness). In doing so, they wrongly assume that academia is about ‘opinions’ and being right, rather than thorough research into assumptions (including one’s own!) and being open to possible refutation. This penchant for opinions can lead to a far-reaching politicization of science – at an intersection where self-restraint, as outlined above, is urgently required. Moreover, not respecting the boundaries between academia and society is also risky: interventions from academia towards politics will irrevocably lead to a response from politicians towards science.
So, whilst speaking out and building coalitions, we should always be mindful that it is no coincidence that Ignatieff’s own Central European University and even before that the Collegium Budapest (the then Hungarian Institute for Advanced Study) were sacrificed on the altar of Orbán’s autocracy. Authoritarian leaders do not like to be contradicted, and places for freethinkers are always first in line to be tackled. Therefore, let us all, from our respective pillars of liberal democracy, work ceaselessly to protect our own and others.
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Read the versions translated and edited into Dutch of the contributions by Michael Ignatieff, Tamar de Waal and Jan Willem Duyvendak at the NIAS Opening Academic Year 2024-2025 this week in de Nederlandse Boekengids.
