Abstract
Turkish university students demonstrate against Turkey’s Higher Education Council on the anniversary of its formation, Istanbul University, 6 November 2007
Credit: Fatih Saribas/Reuters
When the space for academic freedom shrinks, wider society suffers. As Thomas Docherty points out in a damning piece on the impact of the cuts in the UK, it is a freedom that is essential for exploring ideas that may challenge the status quo. Once academics become subservient to the state, whether through direct intimidation or the more subtle demands of funding, democracy itself is threatened: ‘the university … is an institution that will give an emergent democratic society its various identities, arguments and openness to future possibilities’.
In the UK, as Docherty demonstrates, academia has been progressively fenced in over the past 30 years: from the first demands for ‘value for money’, to the decision to make the higher education funding body accountable to government and the devastating withdrawal of funding from the arts, humanities and social sciences two years ago [pp46-54].
Elsewhere in the world, from Iraq to Belarus, there are other tactics to control academia. In Turkey, any scholar who goes near taboo topics (which include the Armenian genocide and the Kurds) risks their career and even their liberty. Maureen Freely examines the roots of academic censorship, which go back to the coup in 1980 and the founding of the Higher Education Council, whose members are appointed by the president. Academics are required to instil the ‘national, moral, humanitarian, spiritual and cultural values of the Turkish nation’. Students and lecturers are fighting back against the current climate of intimidation in the face of prosecution and arrests [pp56-65].
In Thailand, academics are at the forefront of a recent challenge to a notorious chill on free speech: lèse majesté, which criminalises any insult to the king. A brave group of scholars led by Worachet Pakeerut – who has faced assault for daring to address the issue – has presented a draft amendment to the law in parliament. Since it is a law that goes to the heart of political struggle in Thailand, reform would mark a major sea change.
Index also explores the changing face of academic publishing in this issue, as two researchers from different fields of scholarship put the case for open access: the availability of research can save lives as well as advance knowledge [pp115-126].
This autumn will be an important moment for press freedom in the UK, as the Leveson Inquiry into the culture, practices and ethics of the media prepares to publish its report and the defamation bill goes through its final stages – marking the end of a three-year campaign in which Index has played a leading role with its partners English PEN and Sense about Science. Five leading players outline their hopes and expectations of Leveson in this issue and Mark Henderson revisits the pivotal role played by the science geeks in the libel reform campaign. We’re also delighted to publish former Index editor Andrew Graham-Yooll’s report on recent revelations about Argentina’s dirty war and Malu Halasa on her remarkable exhibition on Syrian artists’ response to the uprising. In our continuing celebration of Index’s 40th, we’re republishing an interview with Harold Pinter about his controversial poem on the Gulf War, and an essay by Arthur Miller first published in 1978.
This is my last issue as editor. It’s been a privilege to edit a magazine with such a remarkable literary and political heritage, and to work with so many talented and courageous writers over the last five years. May it flourish for at least another 40.