On Tuesday 4 February, the European University Association (EUA) published a position paper entitled “How universities can protect and promote academic freedom”.
Faced with what it sees as growing pressure against academic freedom and institutional autonomy, the EUA is sounding the alarm and formulating a set of fundamental principles that demonstrate the correlation between universities and civil society organisations on the one hand, and the defence of this freedom on the other.
These guidelines are intended to support and strengthen the efforts of university leaders, academics and university communities.
And with good reason, as the EUA’s Deputy Secretary General put it in a press release: “It is within universities themselves that the seeds of academic freedom take root. While policy makers have a significant responsibility to uphold academic freedom, its protection cannot be left to public authorities alone”.
The EUA is calling on its members across Europe to commit to developing and implementing their own institutional guidelines and policies.
The document: https://aeur.eu/f/fco (Original version in French by Nithya Paquiry)