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University of Lincoln Research Showcase: Academic Freedom
Academics, through their knowledge, keep governments, as it were, on their mettle.
Academics can question government policy directly.
And in that sense academic freedom is a freedom not of the few but for the many, in so far as it encompasses everyone.
Professor Terence Karran, Professor of Higher Education Policy at the University of Lincoln.
As part of my research I undertook a comparative study of the protection of academic freedom,
and of its four elements:
Freedom to teach, freedom of research, tenure and also university autonomy
in each of the states of the European Union.
My findings were that certain particular countries, interestingly enough ex-Communist countries,
protect academic freedom because they rewrote their consitutions.
At the very bottom of the list, unfortunately, with nil points, was the United Kingdom.
And just above that, Denmark.
My research was published, then picked up in the Danish press.
As a result, the Danish Education Minister Helge Sander, came under increased criticism within parliament,
for the fact that academic freedom was not protected in law.
The Danish Universities Professional Association made an appeal to UNESCO.
As a result of this, eventually, the Danish government was forced to have an external evaluation of the law
and that evaluation indicated the law shoud be changed and, finally, the law was indeed changed.
The change of law was only slight but it was nevertheless definitive,
in that it indicated that academics should have much more freedom to determine the areas
in which they undertake research.
It wasn't as much as the Danish University Lecturers Professional Association would have liked.
But it was, they admitted, a step in the correct direction.
On the basis of this research, which has now spanned four different articles,
I wrote a very credible bid for funding from the European Union for a Marie Curie Incoming International Fellow.
I have a colleague coming from the University of Ghana, who's going to spend two years here
looking at academic freedom in the African states.
In addition, I've obtained another grant from the same source for an intra-European Fellow,
who is coming from the University of Munich, to study academic freedom in Europe.
He'll be looking at the difference between the de jure and the de facto protection of
academic freedom in all the EU states.