There is plenty happening in HE this week, particularly as much of the HE sector begin openly publishing their Green Paper responses. Wonkhe has usefully collected formal responses, flagging what seems to be the most popular concerns from the responses.
Other events include the grants to loans controversy, which has now led to Parliament required to debate the issue through a the success of a formal petition. Of course the main concern is how the change will impact students, particularly from poorer backgrounds.
However, what is of interest today is much more disconcerting. Spiked published their Free Speech University rankings, which explores the state of free speech in UK HEIs. The survey claims that results showed out of 115 HEIs, 90% censor speech. The survey is purely student-focused, so in fact it does not consider academic freedom but rather policies and actions only relevant to student speech and conduct. The information is collected by the Freedom of Information act, which of course is under debate as various top UK universities fight for exemption from, claiming that it puts them at a disadvantage in the higher education market.
Freedom of Speech, radicalisation, Freedom of Information Act, the Banning culture – all these issues can be argued in so many ways under different contexts, it is hard to make sense of it all. Interestingly, sometimes it takes an event so extreme to pull academics back to their principles: this week’s issue is Turkey.
Scholars of UK and international HEIs have come together to speak out against the way that the Government has targeted Turkish academics for signing an anti-war petition, the “We will not be a party to this crime” petition. The Government denounced the academics and accused them of ‘propagandising for a terrorist organisation’, the PKK, and insulting the Turkish Nation – both illegal. Many academics are now being prosecuted in a sort of witch hunt. What is interesting about these stories, which are increasingly drawing attention to the global HE community, is that these sorts of situations are core to global HE’s internationalisation agenda. But how we deal with it is so sensitive, and political. It forms a part of the censorship/banning/freedom of information/freedom of speech discussion. It highlights our values and our responsibilities – or what we as academics think they are – and put them into a context which is beyond what we feel (predominantly in the West) should be absolute rights versus what it really means to embrace global cultures. It also draws on the question of what responsibilities we have as global HE representatives, scholars, or academics: do we have a duty to speak up in such occasions?
The environment we find ourselves in politically must open the way for discussion in terms of where we place ourselves as a global HE community: how will our responses shape global HE, internationalisation, partnerships, and the future role of HEIs in governance? These are important questions to consider.