External Pressure on Universities and Academic Freedom

The purpose of this article is to give an account of how the values and organizational arrangements sustaining academic freedom and institutional autonomy may be affected by external pressure on academic research. The first part of the article seeks to clarify the concepts of academic freedom and institutional autonomy that guide our argument. The second part deals with external pressures on universities and introduces some distinctions that may help us tell the difference between external pressures that may be beneficial and those that may be harmful to academic research. The third part focuses on how organizational changes in research institutions have affected their ability to handle external pressures. It discusses how changes in leadership and internal decision making have affected the capacity of institutions to resist or deflect harmful effects of pressures. The fourth part analyses the role of public policies and how they may sustain or jeopardize academic freedom, before drawing a prescriptive conclusion about its defence under democratic and authoritarian political conditions.