Private funding threatens academic freedom
Academic freedom is under attack; scientists are less and less able to research what they consider important. The culprit is not so much wokism, but the economization of science. Money determines what is worth investigating.
Picture: Type tank
There are no signs that there is a structural restriction of freedom of scientific practice in the Netherlands.' Thus the reaction of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) in 2018 to the motion of then VVD MPs Pieter Duisenberg and Karin Straus. They had asked for an investigation into political monotony and self-censorship within science. So nothing wrong? That's too quick a conclusion. The same KNAW writes in its report three years later Academic freedom in the Netherlands that this freedom is less and less self-evident.
What threatens that freedom? In newspapers you stumble across articles that mention wokism as the culprit. And then we are talking, for example, about students who demand a more representative reading list or call for decolonialization of the curriculum. Thijs Lijster has to sigh. Not from the students, but from the fuss about it. At the beginning of October 2022, the assistant professor of art and cultural philosophy at the University of Groningen published a counter-reaction opinion piece in NRC. When asked, he explains: “Wokism as a threat to academic freedom is greatly exaggerated.” He himself sometimes has similar discussions with his students. “I don't see it as threatening at all. It is a reason for me to take a critical look at why I include certain texts in my syllabus.”
Old white men
Willem Halffman, researcher at the Institute for Science in Society of Radboud University, fully agrees with him. “Remarks from students about my history of biology lectures made me take a closer look. Indeed, I have done too little to find good counterexamples of old white men with beards.” He sees the criticism of students as a broadening of freedom. “You shouldn't immediately pillory teachers for a comment. But a debate in which you, as reasonable people, look together to see if you can take it a step further – that is part of a university.”
Flat earthers cannot invoke academic freedom
Academic freedom means you can research what you find relevant and freely share research results without fear of reprisal. On some incidents*Léonie de Jonge was threatened because of her research into right-wing extremism, Roland Pierik after his plea for mandatory child vaccinations and Nadia Bouras because of her research into migration policy. To provide assistance to scientists in the event of threats, intimidation and hate reactions, the platform ScienceSafe launched. Scientists who feel unsafe can call an emergency number 24 hours a day and receive help from lawyers and safety experts. Violations of academic freedom are on the rise worldwide, according to the latest monitoring report from the Scholars at Risk network. SAR reports 391 incidents in 65 countries in academic year 2021-2022. And then it concerns, for example, Russian students and researchers who are threatened because of criticism of the Ukraine war, the exclusion of women from Afghan universities by the Taliban and bomb threats on “black” universities in the US. SAR calls on all countries and universities to denounce this violence against scientists. Everyone should be free to think, ask questions and share ideas.” after the Netherlands has no gross violations thereof. Incidentally, it is about freedom in bondage. Art philosopher and literary scholar Carmen van Bruggen, lecturer at the Amsterdam School of the Arts, published the book Academic freedom: history and current affairs in 2020. She points to the difference with freedom of expression. “Academic freedom does not mean that you can say anything, because you have to adhere to academic standards, such as a verifiable research design and peer review.” Or as Thijs Lijster puts it: “Flat earthers cannot invoke academic freedom.”
Neutral
Moreover, the 2021 report of the International Science Council on which Halffman contributed explicitly links academic freedom to social responsibility. “It has long been said that those two things are at odds. You had to leave scientists alone, so that science could remain neutral. That no longer suffices. As a scientist, you have an important social role and responsibility.”
That was also the message in Thrush's opinion piece: scientists don't view the world from a helicopter, but are themselves part of that world. He explains: “You have to be aware of your own position, then you can better fulfill your role as a scientist.” Van Bruggen adds: “Every researcher makes choices. For example, what do you consider male and female? And how do you define a variable like ethnicity? You don't just discover as a scientist, you also make. And you have to be aware of that.”
The private sector is gaining increasing control over the research agenda
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According to the KNAW and the interviewees, the real threat to academic freedom is not wokism or incidental intimidation, but the excessive economization of research. Researchers are increasingly dependent on external funding and are therefore at the mercy of lenders who mainly look at economic benefits. “The private sector is gaining more and more control over the research agenda, which means that academic freedom is at stake,” says Lijster. The government nevertheless encourages this public-private partnership and is jubilant about the knowledge economy. As the then Minister of Economic Affairs Maxime Verhagen put it in 2011: “knowledge, skills, cash.”
This narrows social relevance to economic relevance. Therefore, Lijster is much happier with the National Science Agenda, which does focus on the contribution of research to social issues. “As long as we keep an eye on the fact that there are also scientific fields that address such questions more indirectly. Moreover, you cannot always predict what might be useful in five or ten years.”
spectacle
In addition to external, there is increasingly internal pressure. Universities have become managers who judge employees on the number of publications and their place in rankings. “The university makes choices in this regard, for example that an article in a Dutch-language journal is worth fewer points,” says Van Bruggen. And take the publication bias. Research with positive effects is more likely to be published than research that shows no effects. “In this way you drive scientists towards the spectacle, while it is actually useful to know that an approach does not work, for example.”
Halfman nods. In the Academic Manifesto that he published in 2015 together with Hans Radder (Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at VU), they already criticized the university's degeneration into a publication factory. “This increasingly threatens the normal functioning of and self-correction by scientists,” says Halffman. "When there's so much pressure to come up with new stuff, there's no time or space to think about what you've done, to check and repeat things to make sure it's right before you publish it."
Own research time
Fortunately, there is some light on the horizon. This is how NWO, ZonMw and Universities of the Netherlands (formerly VSNU) are going with the new Recognition & Appreciation policy - what else doesn't quite get off the ground - Scientists are no longer judged solely on the number of publications, but also look at whether someone teaches well or provides social services.
There are also increasing calls for unfettered research funding, to be paid directly by the government to the universities. The KNAW has already advocated rolling grants, own working capital, for (some) permanent researchers. And with WOinActie, Halffmann advocates paid research time for every researcher. “This creates oxygen to just do your job instead of constantly chasing after the new hype for which there is money. And in this way, people who teach can be given space to also do research.”
