Let’s Discuss Intellectual and Academic Freedom, Part 2

by Janet Salmons, Ph.D., Research Community Manager for Sage Research Methods Community

---

To explore the ways current pressures influence decisions, I invited the editor and contributors to a special issue of Qualitative Inquiry, “Higher Education in the Time of Trump and Beyond: Resistance and Critique” to join in an online roundtable discussion. You can watch this lively roundtable discussion with Marc Spooner, editor, Leslie Williams and Sandy Grande, Bryant Keith Alexander, and Michelle Fine. Since Williams, Grande, Alexander, and Fine are all based in the US, we decided to host a second roundtable with researchers from around the world.

Questions we considered include:

Let’s define key terms: Academic freedom refers to the freedom to read and teach, research and write about any topic or problem without fear of reprisal and without jeopardizing your career. Intellectual freedom is more far-reaching, signifying the freedom to be curious and inquisitive, to ask hard questions, and discuss challenging, perhaps provocative topics.

• What academic/intellectual freedom issues have implications for research/researchers in your institution/community/culture? (In other words, what are you experiencing, observing, studying about constraints on academic freedom?) How can or should we be studying or acting on threats to academic freedom?

• What is the university’s role? What is the role of faculty?

• What do you recommend to researchers and research supervisors?

Of course, this discussion isn’t meant to be representative. As it is, some Sage Research Methods Community readers reside in countries that regulate speech so tightly they can’t participate in such public discussions! We offer this video in the hope that it will spur discussions in your team, department, institution, and/or disciplinary communities and associations. If you would like to share your insights or experiences, please contact me.

---

---

Participants in the discussion:

Marc Spooner (Canada) is Professor on the Faculty of Education at the University of Regina. He edited this special issue: “Higher Education in the Time of Trump and Beyond: Resistance and Critique” Qualitative Inquiry, 29(3–4), 407–409. https://doi.org/10.1177/10778004221131018. You can read his book, Dissident Knowledge in Higher Education (2018), available open-access.

Nicole Brown, Ph.D. (UK) and Áine McAllister (UK) Nicole has contributed to several Sage Research Methods Community projects focused on creative methods and research journaling. She is the Head of Research Ethics and Integrity in the University College of London’s Department of Culture, Communication and Media. Áine works is in the same department at UCL as Academic Head of Learning and Teaching and Lecturer in Languages in Education and in Refugee Education. Within that context she’s developed expertise in relation to decolonisation and interculturality, which she engages in through poetic inquiry and ethnopoetics. They collaborated on this Qualitative Inquiry article: “Competition and Collaboration in Higher Education: An (Auto)Ethnographic Poetic Inquiry.”

Natalia Reinoso Chavez (Colombia) is an independent researcher and lecturer at the Medicine Faculty of the Universidad de la Sabana in Bogotá, Colombia. Natalia was a presenter for a Sage Research Methods Community webinar about research ethics, with a follow-up post. Out of this project we developed a friendly collaboration.

Consuelo Chapela (Mexico) is a medical doctor and Research Professor at Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Xochimilco (UAM-X) Research área: Health and Society. She collaborated on the Qualitative Inquiry article, “Double Blow to Scientific Research and Academic Freedom in Latinoamerica: Debt, Then Flames" (2020). Request the full article here.

---

More Sage Research Methods Community Posts about Academic Freedom