Description
The governmental attacks against higher education institutions and communities in the contexts of Hungary and Turkey have attracted considerable public and media attention since 2016. In this presentation we would like to unpack and interrogate hegemonic conceptions of academic freedom that have been adopted in the mainstream analyses of these attacks while at the same time challenge the orientalist formulations that single out these contexts as exceptionally authoritarian. We propose to bring central attention to academic labour and knowledge production dynamics in order to re-think and reflect on academic freedom critically. After briefly reviewing the key events in each country case (attacks against the Academics for Peace initiative in Turkey and Central European University in Hungary) we shall introduce the onset of capitalist restructuring of higher education systems in both countries within a longer temporal frame that underpin the dynamics of governmental attacks from the mid-2010s onwards. We will conclude with critical reflections on manifestations of bottom-up struggles as well as possibilities and limits of future resistance more broadly.The presentation is based on a joint article “Marketisation of Academia and Authoritarian Governments”
| Period | 17 May 2021 |
|---|---|
| Event title | Postcape workshop sessions Spring 2021 |
| Event type | Workshop |
| Location | Tampere, FinlandShow on map |