On academic freedom in the time of symbolic liberalism: Reflections on the debate

Abstract

This article responds to seven scholarly commentaries on my original piece, Societal Polarization, Academic Freedom, and the Promise of Dialogical Sociology. I engage with key critiques through four themes: conceptual frameworks, contestation of data, societal intolerance, and Zionism, concluding with a call to confront increasing societal intolerance. I defend the utility of terms like cancel culture and symbolic liberalism, the latter describing actors who espouse liberal values while practicing political illiberalism. I clarify that my critique does not equate the Left and Right, but interrogates how self-identified liberals may also restrict academic freedom. In response to concerns about empirical foundations, I reaffirm that academic freedom is facing a modest but meaningful decline, citing expert indices and disinvitation data. I attribute this erosion not only to state policies or populism, but also to bureaucratic and student-led overreach driven by ‘safetyism’ and therapeutic culture. The proliferation of victim-centered identity politics has fragmented dialogue and heightened self-censorship. I discuss the Gaza war and gender-critical feminism as illustrative case studies where both conservatives and symbolic liberals have curtailed academic freedom. I argue that critiques of Israeli state policy – especially amid actions characterized by major organizations as genocidal – should not be conflated with antisemitism. Finally, I call for a renewed commitment to dialogical sociology, emphasizing principled engagement over cancellation. Universities must remain spaces for critical debate and reasoned dissent, especially amid rising societal polarization, authoritarian populism, and performative liberalism that suppresses genuine pluralism under the guise of moral certainty.

I am truly honored to receive critical reflections from seven prominent scholars on my article (Hanafi, 2025b). My sincere thanks go to Abdie Kazemipur (2025), Dina Kiwan (2025), Gisèle Sapiro (2025), John Roberts (2025), José Esteban Castro (2025), Patrick Baert (2025), and Zeina Al Azmeh (2025). Their thoughtful comments are invaluable in furthering my ongoing research on academic freedom and societal polarization.

While there are points of contention, the underlying commonalities between my article with the commentaries are, in my view, more substantial. Given the space constraints, I will engage selectively with their insights by organizing my response into four key areas, concluding with a reflection on how to confront societal intolerance.

Conceptual framework

Some commentators expressed skepticism regarding my use of the term cancel culture, particularly given its appropriation by right-wing discourse. However, a central objective of my article is to challenge the binary framing of cancel culture as a phenomenon exclusive to the Left. Rather, I argue that intolerance of opposing views, public shaming, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty are features observable across the political spectrum. As Kazemipur (2025) aptly states: ‘Those on the left, or those who consider themselves liberal … need to start criticizing the “cancel culture” and to try to take this critique out of the monopoly of the conservatives on the right’. This mirrors my intent precisely.

The article is part of a broader inquiry into what I term symbolic liberalism – a mode in which actors espouse classical liberal values while practicing political illiberalism. This contradiction is central to my analysis. I wish to reassure Sapiro (2025) that my critique does not rest on creating a false equivalence between the Left and the Right. Rather, I examine a particular subset of liberals who undermine the very principles they claim to uphold.

Roberts (2025) challenges the novelty of the term symbolic liberalism, suggesting that liberalism has always been symbolic. He also contests my use of the term ‘identity politics’. However, what I critique is not identity politics per se, but rather its recent excessive forms. Historically, identity was often rooted in broad affiliations – such as nationality, social class, or religion – that encompassed diverse populations. In contrast, contemporary identity politics tends to revolve around narrower subcultural markers, such as race, sexual orientation, or even lifestyle practices like dietary choices. These identities are frequently constructed in opposition to internal ‘others’ and are framed through discourses of victimhood and trauma, which are increasingly subjected to judicialization. In this climate of victimized identity politics, the proliferation of ‘safe spaces’ for each identity group has fragmented society into isolated silos. Minor interpersonal conflicts, especially where a power differential is perceived, may now prompt demands for mediated encounters or third-party supervision. Within this context, ‘rights talk’ emerges as the dominant paradigm, reinforcing a victim-centered and excessively litigious orientation toward identity.

That said, I concur with Roberts that not all forms of identity politics – particularly hybrid or tactical political parties – are inherently problematic. My critique is more specifically aimed at certain populist formations that operate outside the traditional left–right spectrum and instrumentalize identity politics in ways that deepen polarization.

In response to editorial suggestions from Dialogues in Sociology, I elaborated further on the defining characteristics of symbolic liberalism in the revised version of my article and linked it to my 2023 presidential address at the ISA World Congress (Hanafi, 2023). For a more detailed elaboration, I refer readers to my forthcoming book, Against Symbolic Liberalism: A Plea for Dialogical Sociology (Hanafi, 2025a), where I argue that liberalism, while paying lip service to equality and social justice, often wields cultural hegemony of the conception of the good in ways that marginalize dissent and inhibit reasonable pluralism.

Castro (2025) rightly locates polarization and the crisis of liberal democracy within the broader structure of capitalism, drawing on Marshall's insight that capitalism and citizenship rights are inherently at odds. I concur but propose that recent forms of polarization take on new, aggravating characteristics that warrant further analysis.

Roberts (2025) suggests a macro-level analysis focused on liberalism itself or on struggles between hegemonic and counter-hegemonic groups, while Al Azmeh (2025) urges attention to micro-level emotional and contextual factors shaping scholars’ positions. Both perspectives are vital. My own position seeks to bridge these levels through a meso-level sociological analysis of academic freedom in the time of symbolic liberalism.

While I acknowledge the serious threat posed by the populist right, I also contend that violations of political liberalism by self-professed liberals have contributed significantly to this phenomenon. This critique underpins both the article and the book.

Contestation of data

Kiwan (2025) questions the empirical basis for my conclusion that academic freedom is in decline in liberal democracies, notably the US and the UK. She cites the Academic Freedom Index (AFI) by V-Dem and notes that I did not engage with it fully. In fact, I explicitly reference V-Dem's data. One can go to their last report, ¹ including Figure 8 (p. 9), which charts a decline in academic freedom in the US, the UK, and Germany, among other democratic countries, in the last decade (2014–2024).

While AFI relies on expert opinion – which introduces subjectivity – survey methodology literature often prioritizes objective indicators, as I have discussed elsewhere (Hanafi and Arvanitis, 2016: 25–31). Thus, AFI expert-based evaluations must be supplemented with additional data sources, such as databases documenting disinvitations, investigations, suspensions, and dismissals. While we both agree that not all disinvitations indicate intolerance, I believe a closer examination would reveal the extent and seriousness of the challenges to academic freedom. Kazemipur (2025), for instance, provides a vivid illustration of one such disinvitation incident. The question is not about the ideological leanings of data collectors but the substance of the evidence. To dismiss data because of its origin is itself symptomatic of the polarized climate I critique.

Importantly, what is new is not only the (modest) decline in academic freedom, but the intensification of administrative and student-led interventions: over-judicialization of codes of conduct, police evictions of peaceful student encampments, and lack of moral deliberations that dissolve nuanced debate. These practices are evident across the ideological spectrum.

Baert (2025) rightly notes the multifactorial nature of drivers of decline in academic freedom. Neoliberalism is one such factor – particularly its influence on Higher Education. These neoliberal-driven processes have fostered trends of individualization and psychologization, leading to the infantilization of students – who are increasingly treated as clients to be satisfied at any cost. Even DEI has evolved into a multi-billion-dollar industry involving bureaucrats, trainers, and lawyers. This dynamic, particularly evident among administrators operating within new managerial regimes (and who are often not academics themselves), reflects what has been termed a ‘culture of safetyism’. It is situated within a broader ‘therapeutic turn’ in Western academic contexts, characterized by a heightened aversion to risk – a theme that Kiwan (2023) insightfully explores in her important book on academic freedom. ²

Societal intolerance

My core explanatory framework attributes the erosion of academic freedom to an expanding climate of societal intolerance. Beyond the numerous references cited in my article, I invite Kiwan to consult recent work on self-censorship and silencing in Germany (Carlson and Settle, 2022; Menzner and Traunmüller, 2023) and in Sweden the 2023 ESO report. ³ Similar dynamics are evident in the US and Canada, as noted respectively by Baert (2025) and Kazemipur (2025). This issue concerns primarily faculty rather than students. Roberts (2025) refers to the UK's 2023 National Student Survey (NSS), which indicates that an overwhelming majority of students feel free to express themselves. However, it remains to be seen whether recent crackdowns on campus encampments and related developments in US universities will lead to a decline in such perceptions of expressive freedom.

Kiwan (2025) also challenges my framing of the right–left divide. While I agree that this is not the sole explanatory variable, I employ it to highlight how liberal actors may also violate academic freedom norms. This nuance is often overlooked in indices such as V-Dem, which attribute academic repression primarily to anti-pluralist parties at the ballot box. I extend this by documenting how the acceptable range of intellectual positions is narrowing, as Baert (2025) aptly puts it, and how the scope of what is deemed morally reprehensible is expanding. The work of Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart (Norris, 2020; Norris and Inglehart, 2019), which I draw upon, supports this analysis, by connecting cancel culture and cultural clashes to broader societal polarization, using robust, longitudinal data of the World Value Surveys.

I regret that some commentators did not engage with the case studies I presented – particularly the genocidal war in Gaza and the repression of gender-critical feminism. The Gaza case illustrates how both symbolic liberals and conservatives have undermined academic freedom, albeit in different ways. The second case involves tensions within feminist movements, where gender-critical voices – often from the Left – are marginalized by more dominant strands. This reveals intra-progressive power asymmetries. Kiwan (2025) emphasizes the importance of analyzing power structures. I agree – and ask: who is being fired, silenced, or denied publication today? Scholars such as Kathleen Stock, Helen Joyce, and Kiwan's own colleague at the University of Birmingham, whom she wrote about in her book, all represent a pattern that demands attention. The issue is not those who denied basic rights of LGBTQ+ but a conflict between LGB right claims and T (Trans) ones. ⁴ We all agree that academic freedom is not absolute, and it is not without factoring in DEI (being, of course, problematized) and looking to context and history, but effectively because I see all that, I ask respondents and others to look at such cases. Avoiding these examples perpetuates the illusion that symbolic liberals are immune to violating academic freedom.

Despite searching widely, I found almost no academic debate on Gaza in European and American universities, except those organized by students’ clubs. In France, the Ministry of Higher Education has issued a directive prohibiting such discussions. This silence is troubling.

Zionism

Sapiro (2025) rightly highlights how diverse the various strands of Zionism are in its long trajectory. I have spent considerable time engaged in track two diplomacy during the golden age of the Oslo peace process, working closely with individuals who identified as liberal Zionists. Over time, I observed a discernible shift in their orientation – from genuine liberal engagement to what I term symbolic liberalism. In response to Sapiro (2025) and Baert (2025), I argue that these actors moved away from dialogical efforts with Palestinians – efforts aimed at imagining coexistence through one-state, two-state, or confederation-based solutions – towards a discourse increasingly centered on unilateral Israeli security concerns. My aim is to offer an alternative lens: the atrocities committed in Gaza, which leading human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have characterized as genocide or, at minimum, gross war crimes; the ongoing colonial practices in the West Bank; and the entrenchment of apartheid structures – these phenomena cannot be attributed solely to the rise of religious or Right-wing Zionism. Symbolic liberal Zionism has also played a significant role in the last two decades. These developments cannot be adequately explained by invoking the atrocities of 7 October, as Baert (2025) appears to imply. The Gaza ghetto has been under Israeli siege since 2007. Since 2005, the Israeli violence has taken an increasingly cruel turn, challenging all international, humanitarian, and human rights laws. Israeli casualty numbers have become so minimal, while the number of murdered Palestinians has become massive, laying the groundwork for the Israeli colonial project's intention on launching a genocidal war.

Moreover, while Baert references the Presidential Task Force on Combating Anti-Semitism and Anti-Israel Bias, it is important to distinguish between legitimate critique of state policies and hate speech. Criticism of Israel – particularly in the context where the Army and settlers are implicated in actions that have been described by major international human rights organizations as constituting genocide in Gaza and ongoing colonization of the West Bank (where Hamas has no operational presence) – cannot be summarily labeled either Anti-Semitism or Anti-Israel hate speech. I would encourage Baert to consider why no comparable institutional investigation has been given to documenting or addressing anti-Palestinian bias, despite its prevalence in political discourse and some academic environments.

If a durable peace is our shared objective, as I trust it is for Sapiro, Baert, and myself, then understanding the degeneration of liberal Zionism is essential.

Conclusion: Confronting societal intolerance

In my article (Hanafi, 2025b), I call for a shift toward dialogical sociology – a mode of inquiry that embraces critical engagement rather than cancellation. I appreciate Sapiro's (2020) call to confront symbolic violence in classical works without erasing them. Similarly, Al–Azmeh's (2025) insight that dialogue may falter not from hatred, but from emotional rupture, is deeply resonant. Baert (2025) likewise invites us to open ourselves to those with whom we fundamentally disagree.

Whether we call this phenomenon cancel culture, cultural warfare, or ‘stigmatizing discourses’ (as Sapiro prefers), it is a real and pressing problem. The re-election of Trump in the United States, alongside the rise of ‘petit Trumps’ and symbolic liberals in many other countries, and the normalization of the graphic broadcasting of the genocide in Gaza, underscore the urgency of restoring spaces for reasoned and principled debate on our university campuses. More than ever, Higher Education institutions must serve as arenas for critical engagement, where complex and contentious issues can be addressed without fear or suppression.