Content uploaded by Aslı Vatansever
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Aslı Vatansever on Oct 30, 2022
Content may be subject to copyright.
When Marx described the emerging proletariat as vogelfrei, he was not only ana-
lyzing the origins of primitive accumulation but also pointing out something that
would come to preoccupy political philosophy for a long time: the contradictions
of formal freedom in a world of interdependencies and structural inequalities.
In the example of former serfs “suddenly dragged from their accustomed mode
of life” and “expropriated from the soil” that had hitherto been their home and
source of subsistence, two conicting elements of modern freedom converged:
liberty from being formally owned and deprivation from ownership. In other
words, freedom from feudal bondage was accompanied by a loss of existential
securities, eventually turning the “new freedmen” into “sellers of themselves”
(Marx, 2007[1890]: 761). Bourgeois historiography interpreted this transforma-
tion of rural and artisanal producers into wage-laborers as “emancipation from
serfdom and from the fetters of the guilds”; Marx drew attention to the fact that
emancipation from that did not equal liberty to (ibid., 743).
Although his sarcastic description “free as a bird” remains iconic, Marx was
neither the rst nor the last to recognize the discrepancy between the liberal
notion of freedom as mere absence of overt oppression and the degree to which
the absence of oppression can be converted into a concrete capacity to act on
one’s interests. In less contentious terms, Hegel had also acknowledged the dif-
ference between formal and substantive freedom and described the establishment
of laws as just a formal precondition of the latter, i.e., the subjective actualization
of freedom (Losurdo, 2004: 90). A much more systematic distinction was later
drawn by Isaiah Berlin in his seminal work Two Concepts of Liberty through the
formulation of positive and negative liberties – the latter understood as “freedom
from coercion,” the former as “liberty to achieve valued outcomes” (Berlin, 1969;
Bowring, 2015: 156). However, in a long line of intellectual tradition, stretching
from Hobbes’ emphasis on “the absence of external impediments” and Locke’s
interpretation of freedom as “liberty […] [from the] arbitrary will of another man”
to Hayek’s ideal theory of free market, the idea of freedom as formal protection
from external interference, detached from the social parameters of its applicability
in practice, has prevailed for the most part (Hobbes, 2008: 79–80; Locke, 2003:
110; Hayek, 1944, 1945; Lindsay, 2015: 379–380). The one-dimensional focus
Introduction
Aslı Vatansever
DOI: 10.4324/9781003256984-1
10.4324/9781003256984-1
2 Aslı Vatansever
Introduction
on a purely hypothetical ideal conguration, whereby the presence of something
(freedom) is syllogistically deduced from the absence of another factor (oppres-
sion or coercion), continues to dominate the discourse practically in all elds,
from theories of justice to contemporary debates on academic freedom.
This edited volume questions the limits of this predominant negative freedom
approach with reference to academic freedoms. It provides a diverse overview
of contemporary structural challenges which currently delimit research agendas
and knowledge dissemination in various ways, even in contexts that are seen as
the bastions of academic freedom based on the absence of overt political oppres-
sion. In that sense, this volume can be seen as a warning that the threats against
academic freedom involve subtler and more varied mechanisms than the obvious
political ones, on the one hand, and as a plea for a more inclusive denition of
academic freedom, on the other. In other words, we aim to discuss academic free-
dom beyond the mere absence of censorship and explore various socio-economic
dynamics that aect researchers’ actual capabilities as knowledge workers. These
socio-economic dynamics include the market-oriented restructuration of higher
education, the marginalization of non-protable disciplines, intersectional ine-
qualities that create very dierent career prospects among early- and mid-career
researchers, and entrenched hierarchies in the academic sector, among others.
The shocking nature and sudden extent of autocratic interventions into research
and higher education in recent times have led scholars to approach academic free-
dom rst and foremost from the perspective of human rights and political liberties
(Dutt-Ballerstadt & Battacharya eds., 2021; Euben, 2002; Inspireurope, 2020: 9;
Kinzelbach et al., 2020; Lackey eds., 2018; Beiter et al., 2016; Fish, 2014; Vrielink
et al., 2011; Quinn, 2004). Even in studies that address political and personal haz-
ards pertaining to certain research areas, the relation between job security and
scholarly autonomy remains underexamined (Mulligan & Danaher eds., 2021).
While it may be argued that the current rise of authoritarianism has played an addi-
tional role in this one-dimensional focus, it is clear that the negative denition of
academic freedom has long been prevalent (Saunders, 1998). A similar approach
was already prevalent in classic works in this eld, such as Conrad Russell’s
Academic Freedom (1993) or Richard Hofstadter’s Academic Freedom in the Age
of College (1996), which primarily deal with the governmental interventions in
academic freedom or the university’s historical responsibility to foster and defend
marginalized ideas, respectively. After all, the main legal framework regarding
academic freedom, as dened by the CESCR (UN Committee on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights) and on which the most frequently deployed academic
freedom indexes are based, narrows academic freedom down to “the protection of
researchers from undue inuence” on their various functions (CESCR, 2020: 3–4;
Kinzelbach, 2020). An exception in this regard has been the approach represented
by the American Association of University Professors (henceforth AAUP) with
its explicit emphasis on the centrality of academic job security in maintaining
academic freedoms. However, while the AAUP openly acknowledges corporati-
zation of higher education as one of the main threats against academic freedom
Introduction 3
in contemporary university and emphasizes the role of tenure in safeguarding
academic freedoms, its rst comprehensive statement on academic freedom from
1915 also implies a negative approach to academic freedom to the extent it con-
ceptualizes it as freedom from interference in teaching, research, and expression/
action (Mann, 2017: 3). At this point, one might also question the roots of the idea
of tenure and its uneasy relationship with the idea of “freedom as capacity to act,”
as it developed in conjunction with the nation-state-oriented modern research
university after the German (Humboldtian) model (Clark, 2006). In view of the
legal restrictions on the tenured academic sta’s political and collective actions
in many contexts, one might argue that, by tying the academic sta to the state
through a civil servant status, the tenure-oriented form of academic freedom actu-
ally deprives them of their right to organize collectively. In that sense, freedom,
when conceptualized in the negative sense and understood as state protection,
seems to demand conformity in exchange for security.
Our aim in this edited volume is certainly not to relativize or downplay the
gravity of political oppression in a growing number of countries, but rather to
expand our understanding of academic freedom to respond more eectively to
current challenges. For this purpose, we stick to a capability approach toward
academic freedom, inspired by Amartya Sen’s positive and subject-oriented con-
ception of freedom understood as a set of actual capabilities and opportunities to
realize formal freedoms (Amer, 2021: 91). Accordingly, we argue that, while for-
mal academic freedom as absence of authoritarian intervention into research and
teaching is a prerequisite, what is more crucial for maintaining critical knowledge
production is the power and opportunity “to give content to freedom” through
infrastructural support, job security, and adequate career prospects for academic
workers (cf. Knight, 1967: 790). The overdependence on external funding and the
ensuing rise in project-based work compel a growing majority of academic work-
ers to accept forced mobility between institutions and places every few months or
years, to work on research agendas that are dictated by market incentives or sen-
iors’ interests rather than their own long-term intellectual pursuits, to refrain from
collective action, and to put up with various forms of workplace misconduct in
order not to mess up career chances. Under these circumstances, we highly doubt
that formal academic freedoms can be eectively translated into actual capabili-
ties in the current academic climate (Vatansever, 2022; Childress, 2019; Donskis
et al., 2019; Brienza, 2016). After all, quite in the spirit of Marx and not dissimilar
to Sen, we view freedom as a socially conditioned phenomenon, often only realiz-
able collectively and as a derivative of a set of concrete socio-economic possibili-
ties (cf. Bowring, 2015: 156; Prendergast, 2005: 1147).
With this focus on capabilities, we intend to overcome two shortcomings that
we have been able to detect as resulting from the prevalent negative freedom
approach outlined previously. One of those shortcomings is marked by a hyper-
metropic view, the other by a myopic one. What we call the “hypermetropic
view” partly reects the entrenched Eurocentrism of the epistemological and
political paradigm we continue to operate within. By focusing only on political
4 Aslı Vatansever
factors and reducing academic freedom to independence from state censorship
and oppression allows the academic freedom discourse to deal with only what
is happening afar, i.e., in the periphery of the world economy that also happens
to constitute the periphery of the global academia. More subtle mechanisms that
restrict researchers’ capabilities, including the increasing inuence of third-party
funders and market incentives on research agendas and curricula, the pervasive
outsourcing of teaching, and academic labor market regulations aiming at a fur-
ther casualization of academic work, are often completely ignored in this view.
Consequently, whether the mere absence of an immediate threat of political per-
secution automatically guarantees liberty in deciding over research agendas and
curricula or access to necessary time and funding for scientic endeavors remains
conveniently underexamined in this approach (Kölemen & Vatansever, 2020).
The contributions in this volume address the invisible boundaries set by these
structural constraints in more detail and from various perspectives. We join our
contributors in their argument that those understated mechanisms undermine the
foundations of higher education and research maybe in a slower and sneakier but
comparably destructive way as overt political oppression in the long run.
Furthermore, the hypermetropic Eurocentrism of the contemporary academic
freedom debates imply a highly compartmentalized picture of the contemporary
world, ignoring systemic interdependencies to a great extent. The global division
of labor is based on an unequal exchange of commodities and services between
dierent parts of the globe, which also predetermines the methods of labor coer-
cion in each functional part of the global economy. The structural logic of labor
coercion is thus spatially segregated: it follows relatively peaceful methods of
manufacturing consent in the core and violent methods of oppression, including
military coups and massive human rights abuses, in the periphery (Wallerstein
2000[1974]: 85–89). The sphere of scientic production is certainly not exempt
from this functional systemic divide expressed in spatial terms. In fact, the quali-
tative diversity in the distribution of political and economic risks that we wit-
ness in dierent academic environments stems from that very spatial segregation.
Consequently, this volume departs from the argument that political oppression in
the periphery and economic precarization in the core are the two sides of the same
structural coin and they are ultimately interrelated. They both represent methods
of disempowerment and, eventually, de-subjectivation. Moreover, in most cases,
political interventions and market mechanisms proceed jointly, whereby regime-
critical and/or subaltern degree and research programs are eliminated based on
lack-of-productivity arguments. This has been the case in Australia, Germany,
Hungary, the UK, and the US especially during the pandemic, to name a few
examples from the leading scientic countries with relatively high (or in some
cases even above the OECD average) levels of gross domestic expenditure on
research and development (OECD, 2022; Fischetti & Coleborne, 2020).
The second shortcoming we detected in the extant discourse on academic
freedom stems from the myopic association of academic workers with the tradi-
tional gure of tenured professor. This view is reected in the way the concept of
Introduction 5
academic freedom is still closely tied with tenure in most contexts (Huer, 1991:
8). Consequently, questions related to knowledge production and dissemination
are often considered within the parochial bubble of a traditional conception of
academic profession as a secure, unilinear career path tied to a civil servant sta-
tus. Let us state bluntly that this type of academic career is vanishing: it does
not constitute the predominant mode of career trajectory in the leading scientic
countries; it certainly does not reect the experience of the majority of academic
workers anymore (Bäker, 2015; OECD, 2021: 17; Pankin & Weiss, 2011: 3;
Donoghue, 2008). As stated previously, there is much to unpack and problema-
tize about the concept of academic freedom in the form of tenure, for tenure was
invented to provide state protection, and not collective/political/activist freedom,
to the academic sta. However, with the systematic decline of tenured positions or
the rise of temporary employment in academia, another problem arises. With the
majority consisting of contingent faculty, sticking to the tenure-oriented concept
of academic freedom boils down to a selective protection for the privileged few.
In a situation, where state ocialdom is statistically unattainable for the majority
of the PhD holders, the concept of academic freedom attached to an increasingly
rare state-protected employment status simply becomes obsolete. If we are going
to insist on this statist idea of academic freedom, we must rst insist on the states’
duty to provide a sucient number of tenured vacancies to the existing oversup-
ply of PhD holders, so that the entire academic labor force can enjoy the type of
academic freedom guaranteed by tenure. Otherwise, our egalitarian and collectiv-
ist sermons in the classroom won’t mean a thing, as we keep reproducing elitism
and inequality through selective academic freedom among our own ranks.
Currently, in all the countries of the Global North mentioned in this volume,
the faculty majority increasingly consists of contingent workers. In the UK, legal
tenure was eliminated in 1988, but recent PhD graduates could technically obtain
permanent positions in the form of teaching-only or research-only contracts
(Enders, 2015). However, over the last years, atypical contracts, that is, xed-
term contracts for research-only sta and zero-hours and hourly paid contracts
for teaching-only sta, have become more and more common. According to the
University and College Union’s estimates, currently, 44% of teaching-only sta
and 68% of research-only sta are on xed-term contracts, 3545 academics in
teaching are employed on zero-hours contracts, and 41% of teaching-only sta
is employed on hourly paid contracts (UCU, 2021). In the US, the number of
non-tenured sta with no contractual or legal job security has increased by 259%
among full-time and 286% among part-time faculty between 1979 and 2011
(Murray, 2019: 236). Currently, 75.5% of college faculty (i.e., 1.3 out of 1.8 mil-
lion faculty members) are o the tenure track, with over 50% of these being part-
time, i.e., “adjunct” lecturers (https://www .newfacultymajority .info /facts -about
-adjuncts/). In Germany, civil servant status and permanent positions exist only
for full professors at state universities, which make up barely 8% of the entire
academic workforce, whereas 92% is on xed-term contracts (BMBF, 2021: 111).
Statistically, only about 5% of PhD holders can expect to achieve tenure (DGB,
6 Aslı Vatansever
2020: 37). In Denmark, civil servant status is now being gradually eliminated
(EACEA, 2022). Austerity policies causing a continuous 2% annual decrease in
basic funding, combined with a steady increase in PhDs since mid-2000s, have
led to a signicant rise in temporary positions, including PhDs, postdocs, non-
tenured assistant professors, or teaching fellows, which are called “external lec-
turers” in Denmark and whose proportion within the entire academic labor force
is estimated around 50% to 70% (Hirslund et al., 2018: 3). In Italy, the three-tiered
structure, featuring two professorial positions, namely professore ordinario (full
professor) and professore associato (associate professor), and a researcher posi-
tion (ricercatore = researcher), used to consist of permanent or “tenured” posi-
tions. The Gelmini reform from 2010 (Law 240/2010), however, substituted the
tenured position of ricercatore with temporary positions, introduced more com-
petitive recruitment schemes for professoriates (Teichler et al., 2013: 50), and
reduced the number of permanent positions by 25% (Hirslund et al., 2018: 11).
According to the Association of Doctors and Postdocs (ADI), currently more than
half of the entire academic sta is on xed-term contracts (68.428 workers on
xed-term, 47.561 on permanent positions) (Acconcia, 2020: 195).
This new faculty majority reportedly suers from unpaid overwork, self-
exploitation, exclusion from social benets, lack of infrastructural and institu-
tional support, exclusion from institutional decision-making mechanisms, and
in many cases vulnerability to workplace misconduct and sexual harassment
(Fazackerley, 2021; Ivancheva, 2018; Gee, 2017; Boris et al., 2015; Busso &
Rivetti, 2014). Under these circumstances, we think it’s urgent to ask what is left
of academic freedom even in the countries hitherto seen as the bastion of it – or
to what extent the predominant conception of academic freedom is feasible in
the face of the changing composition of academic labor force. This edited vol-
ume discusses these questions in three parts. The rst part contains an overview
of the neoliberal restructuration of universities in view of the transformation of
academic employment relations in three leading scientic countries, which cur-
rently have the highest percentages of contingent faculty, namely Germany, the
US, and the UK. In Chapter 1, Britta Ohm tackles the sources of institutional
power and interdependencies in German universities. For this purpose, she takes
the reader on a journey, tracking the historical evolution of an academic artifact
whose symbolic power way exceeds its practical utility: the Chair. Through the
symbolism of the Chair, Ohm illustrates the history of “academic (un)freedom” in
Germany as a derivative of the quasi-feudal privileges of a small (and now even
more shrinking) tenured cadre. This tenured stratum seems also relatively resist-
ant to demographic change due to the clientelist nature of academic employment
relations in Germany. The entrenched hierarchies of the German academic sys-
tem, combined with the neoliberal regulations to stimulate competition and rapid
sta turnover in the name of innovation, have now contrived a distinctly toxic
environment, which, according to Ohm, is detrimental to knowledge production
and also contradictory to the progressive content of the curriculum in humanities
and social sciences.
Introduction 7
In Chapter 2, Lisa Cerami explores the historical emergence of tenure as a
safeguard to academic freedom and job security in the United States. She argues
that the American Association of University Professor’s (AAUP) initial promo-
tion of tenure as the primary tool to protect academic freedom is rooted in persist-
ing claims of exceptionality of the academic profession. In view of the increasing
unattainability of tenure for a growing number of academic professionals, but
also considering the increased vulnerability of both the tenured and non-tenured
academic workforce in the face of the pandemic, Cerami questions whether ideo-
logical conceits like a middle-class “public good” as well as meritocratic indi-
vidualism potentially relegate tenure as an obsolete tool for academic labor justice
in the 21st century.
In Chapter 3, Colin Cameron provides a critical account of the prot-oriented
popularization and subsequent decline of Disability Studies as a subaltern discipline
at UK universities. Reecting on the instrumentalization of the discipline from the
perspective of a disabled activist and scholar, Cameron explores Disability Studies’
emergence from and its relationship to the disabled people’s movement. Against
the backdrop of the latter’s long-lasting ght to have disability recognized as a
social justice issue rather than as a matter of personal tragedy and the crucial role
of Disability Studies in contributing to that type of awareness, Cameron’s analysis
reveals the hazards of the commodication of critical subaltern disciplines.
Part 2 discusses the ethical and individual toll of precarity on researchers.
Drawing on three examples from the European Higher Education Area (EHEA)
that have seen an upsurge in both academic job insecurity and resistance against it
over the course of the last two decades, namely Portugal, Italy, and Denmark, the
contributors broach the dilemmas and risks of academic labor activism in times
of casualized academic work. In Chapter 4, departing from the corporatization of
higher education in Portugal over the last decades, Ana Ferreira argues that the
fragile positioning of non-tenured researchers at the postdoc level generates hyper-
competition and self-exploitation, and eventually undermines academic freedom.
While these issues have been partially addressed in the literature, her study presents
the rst evidence-based analysis of how researchers’ occupational trajectories and
resistance practices (or the lack thereof) are being shaped by their interpretations
of academia’s neoliberalization, based on data drawn from a mixed-method online
survey with 1328 precarious post-doctoral researchers in Portugal. Ferreira’s
groundbreaking ndings indicate that the majority of the post-doctoral researchers
tend to build a sensemaking discourse that justies their chosen occupational path
and the consequent urge to maintain competitive distinction, revealing at the same
time a structurally conditioned reluctance to take active action.
Similarly, in Chapter 5, Giuseppe Acconcia analyzes the eects of academic
precarization on research ethics and academic freedoms, focusing on the Italian
case. Comparing previous ndings from several empirical studies on academic
labor force in Italy, Acconcia detects a decline in research and work ethics in aca-
demia under the impact of increased contingency. Furthermore, he draws atten-
tion to the negative impact of recent higher education policies on academic labor
8 Aslı Vatansever
relations at the national level, including the new Recruitment Law (Draft Law
2285, 2021) currently discussed in the Italian Parliament. In the meantime, his
analysis puts the restructuration of higher education in Italy in a broader per-
spective and examines the relationship between job insecurity and the relatively
undemocratic procedures of researcher recruitment within Italian academia.
In Chapter 6, Dan Vesalainen Hirslund provides insight into the Scandinavian
context by drawing on the Danish public university system. Departing from a lack
of political initiative to address the growing academic precarity, Hirslund ascribes
this “political myopia” to a lack of awareness on how the social parameters of
career progression intersect with hierarchies of academic employment. He argues
that, under the current circumstances, even if academic freedom is not necessarily
being curtailed via violent methods in Denmark, it is being rendered invisible by
an institutionalized political economy marked by intersectional inequalities and
decreased autonomy.
Part 3 deals with the intersection of political and economic precarities and
explores the new forms of border control and economically conditioned migra-
tions within the EU and the UK. In Chapter 7, Sanaz Raji discusses how border-
ing processes within UK higher education transforms the nature of the university.
Raji’s analysis aims at understanding how migrant students and both academic
and non-academic sta experience the interlinkages between marketized higher
education and surveillance associated with border regimes within universities
in the UK. Based on preliminary data collected by Unis Resist Border Controls
(URBC), Raji provides insight into the treatment of migrant sta and students
during the pandemic. In view of the increasing number of students facing pov-
erty or risk of poverty as a result of hostile policies and inadequate support from
their universities, or international students facing visa curtailments and deporta-
tion, Raji explores the role of border policies and neoliberal higher education
regulations in aggravating precarity. By exploring the interconnections between
marketized higher education and border controls in the UK, Sanaz Raji’s analysis
illuminates some particular threats that the international students and university
sta face in the leading scientic countries of the Global North.
In Chapter 8, Georgiana Turculet turns the gaze toward career mobility across
academic systems of the Global North and identies among precarious academ-
ics a tendency to get “stuck in movement” in an attempt to meet the demands of
the hyper-competitive academic labor markets. Turculet argues that this type of
semi-forced mobility eventually leads to a decrease in terms of willpower and
autonomy, which can be compared to the eects of other types of forced or eco-
nomically conditioned migration among disadvantaged groups. Following from
there, she raises a number of normative questions linked to being “stuck in move-
ment,” indirectly problematizing open borders theories for ignoring the moral and
social dilemmas of trans-border migrations that push an increasing number of
contingent academics towards the margins of both academia and society.
All these analyses reveal a surprising picture of labor devaluation, accompa-
nied by a deliberate suppression of labor issues in the university context, despite
Introduction 9
strongly preserved formal freedoms. They force the reader to question the limits
of academic freedom and to rethink it within the context of changing labor rela-
tions. But most importantly, the contributions contained in this volume compel us
all to shift away from illusions of exceptionality, as reected in a specic type of
freedom granted in the form of academic tenure, and to start thinking of academ-
ics as a segment of the working class. Not only the modern research university
itself, but also the existing conception of academic freedom as a derivative of
tenure was rooted in the Humboldtian idea of university (Clark, 2006). As such,
it has been based on an obsolete idea of the academic as a civil servant, whose
occupational existence was organically tied to the state and whose professional
subjectivity was thus shaped by the interests of the state. From this perspective,
the civil servant status can even be argued to have deprived academics of certain
rights that a regular worker might theoretically have, such as the right to organ-
ize collective action. That has been the case and continues to be the case for the
shrinking tenured minority in Germany, where tenured professors are legally pro-
hibited from going on a strike (Jacobs & Payandeh, 2019; Gallas, 2018). Thus,
academic freedom in the form of state protection through tenure often came with
strings attached: it provided security in exchange for substantive freedom. It was
freedom at the expense of depoliticizing the knowledge producing labor force and
subduing knowledge production to raison d’état.
Now that public funding has been steadily replaced by external funding in the
sphere of research and higher education for the last few decades, the civil servant
status, along with the formal academic freedoms it implies, gradually leaves the
stage to a new type of academic subjectivity: free from the fetters of state ocial-
dom but also deprived of the rights and privileges that it contained – the worker-
academic, free as a bird. As Wallerstein remarked more than two decades ago,
the modern world-system is in a crisis – we are indeed witnessing “the demise
of a historical system, parallel to the demise of Europe’s feudal system ve to
six hundred years ago” (Wallerstein, 1999: 132). At this conjuncture, not only
the mechanisms of labor devaluation intensify, as can be seen in the way even
the hitherto secure and stable career paths, including the academic profession,
are being increasingly precarized. But the predominant epistemological structures
that have shaped the way we interpret the social world, and the parameters of
knowledge production, also become open to debate. In this moment when “the
old world is dying and a new one is struggling to be born,” in this interregnum,
lies perhaps the possibility for an expanded understanding of academic freedom
(Gramsci, 1999: 556). An idea of academic freedom decoupled from both the
state and the market – and one that defends the right for critical knowledge pro-
duction against the bondages of both.
References
Acconcia G (2020) Academic labor in Italy: Politicizing precarity. In: Roth R and
Vatansever A (eds) Scientic Freedom under Attack. Political Oppression, Structural
10 Aslı Vatansever
Challenges, and Intellectual Resistance in Modern and Contemporary History.
Frankfurt: Campus, pp.191–199.
Amer F (2021) Sen’s conception of freedom and a conjecture on embodiment. Theoria
68(1): 87–112. https://doi .org /10 .3167 /th .2021 .6816604.
Bäker A (2015) Non-tenured post-doctoral researchers’ job mobility and research output:
An analysis of the role of research discipline, department size, and co-authors. Research
Policy 44(2015): 634–650.
Beiter KD, Karran T, Appiagyei-Atua K (2016) Yearning to belong: Finding a ‘Home’
for the right to academic freedom in the U.N. Human Rights covenants. Intercultural
Human Rights Law Review 11 (2016): 107–190.
Berlin I (1969) Two Concepts of Liberty. In Four Essays on Liberty. Oxford: Oxford
UP, pp. 118–172. Available at https://cactus .utahtech .edu /green /B _Readings /I _Berlin
%20Two %20Concpets %20of %20Liberty .pdf.
BMBF – Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (2021) Bundesbericht
wissenschaftlicher Nachwuchs (BuWiN) 2021. Statistische Daten und
Forschungsbefunde zu Promovierenden und Promovierten in Deutschland. Available
at: https://www .buwin .de /dateien /buwin -2021 .pdf.
Boris E, Wladaver-Morgan S, Dawson ST (2015) Perspectives on contingent labor:
Adjuncts, temporary contracts, and the feminization of labor. Perspectives on History—
The Newsmagazine of the American Historical Association. Available at: https://
www .historians .org /publications -and -directories /perspectives -on -history /may -2015 /
perspectives -on -contingent -labor.
Bowring F (2015) Negative and positive freedom: Lessons from, and to, sociology.
Sociology 49(1): 156–171.
Brienza C (2016) Degrees of (self-)exploitation: Learning to labor in the Neoliberal
University. Journal of Historical Sociology 29(1): 92–111. https://doi .org /10 .1111 /johs
.12119.
Busso S, Rivetti P (2014) What’s love got to do with it? Precarious academic labor forces and
the role of passion in Italian universities. Recherches Socioloques et Anthropologiques
45(2): 15–37.
CESCR (2020) General comment no. 25 (2020) on science and economic, social and
cultural rights (article 15 (1) (b), (2), (3) and (4) of the International Covenant on
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights). 30 April 2020. Available at: https://documents
-dds -ny .un .org /doc /UNDOC /GEN /G20 /108 /12 /PDF /G2010812 .pdf ?OpenElement.
Childress H (2019) The Adjunct Underclass. How America’s Colleges Betrayed Their
Faculty, Their Students, and Their Mission. Chicago, IL and London: The University
of Chicago Press.
Clark W (2006) Academic Charisma and the Origins of the Research University. Chicago,
IL and London: The University of Chicago Press.
DGB (2020) DGB-Hochschulreport: Arbeit und Beschäftigung an Hochschulen und
Forschungseinrichtungen. Expansion und Wettbewerb im Spiegel der amtlichen
Statistik. Available at: https://www .dgb .de.
Donoghue F (2008) The Last Professors. The Corporate University and the Fate of
Humanities. New York: Fordham University Press.
Donskis L, Sabelis I, Kamsteeg F, Wels H (2019) Academia in Crisis. The Rise and Risk of
Neoliberal Education in Europe. Leiden: Brill.
Dutt-Ballerstadt R, Bhattacharya K (eds) (2021) Civility, Free Speech, and Academic
Freedom in Higher Education: Faculty on the Margins. London: Routledge.
Introduction 11
EACEA (European Education and Culture Executive Agency) (2022) Denmark - Conditions
of service for academic sta working in higher education. Available at: https://eacea
.ec .europa .eu /national -policies /eurydice /content /conditions -service -academic -sta
-working -higher -education -20 _en.
Enders J (2015) Explainer: How Europe does academic tenure. The Conversation, June 29,
2015. Available at: https://theconversation .com /explainer -how -europe -does -academic
-tenure -43362.
Euben DR (2002) Academic Freedom of Professors and Institutions: The Current Legal
Landscape. American Association of University Professors (AAUP). Available at:
https://www .aaup .org /issues /academic -freedom /professors -and -institutions.
Fazackerley A (2021) ‘My students never knew’. The lecturer who lived in a tent. The
Guardian. October 30, 2021. Available at: https://www .theguardian .com /education
/2021 /oct /30 /my -students -never -knew -the -lecturer -who -lived -in -a -tent.
Fischetti J, Coleborne C (2020) The government’s funding changes are meddling with
the purpose of universities. The Conversation, June 22, 2020. Available at: https://
theconversation .com /the -governments -funding -changes -are -meddling -with -the
-purpose -of -universities -141133.
Fish S (2014) Versions of Academic Freedom. From Professionalism to Revolution.
Chicago, IL and London: University of Chicago Press.
Gallas A (2018) Precarious academic labor in Germany: Termed contracts and a new
Berufsverbot. Global Labour Journal 9(1): 92–102.
Gee A (2017) Facing poverty, academics turn to sex work and sleeping in cars. The
Guardian, September 28, 2017. Available at: https://www .theguardian .com /us -news
/2017 /sep /28 /adjunct -professors -homeless -sex -work -academia -poverty.
Gramsci A (1999) Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Hoare Q, Smith GN (transl. &
ed.). London: Elec Book.
Hayek F (1944) The Road to Serfdom. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Hayek F (1945) The use of knowledge in society. American Economic Review 35(4):
519–530. http://links .jstor .org /sici ?sici =0002 -8282 %28194509 %2935 %3A4 %3C519
%3ATUOKIS %3E2 .0 .CO %3B2 -1.
Hirslund DV, Davies SR, Monka M (2018) Report on National Meeting for Temporarily
Employed Researchers. Temporarily Employed Researchers Forum, Dansk
Magisterforening. Available at: https://dm .dk /media /12351 /report _national _meeting .pdf.
Hobbes T (2008) Leviathan, or, the Matter, Forme and Power of a Commonwealth
Ecclesiasticall and Civil. New York: Touchstone.
Hofstadter R (1996) Academic Freedom in the Age of College. London: Routledge.
Huer J (1991) Tenure for Socrates. A Story in the Betrayal of the American Professor. New
York: Bergin & Garvey.
Inspireurope (2020) Researchers at Risk: Mapping Europe’s Response. Report of the
Inspireurope Project. Brussels: European University Association.
Ivancheva M (2018) Enough outsourcing of precarity. Dialogues, Cultural Anthropology.
Available at: https://culanth .org /eldsights /1345 -enough -outsourcing -of -precarity.
Jacobs M, Payandeh M (2019) The ban on strike action by career civil servants under the
German Basic Law: How the Federal Constitutional Court constitutionally immunized
the German legal order against the European Convention on Human Rights. German
Law Journal 21: 223–239. https://doi .org /10 .1017 /glj .2020 .11.
Kinzelbach K (ed.) (2020) Researching Academic Freedom. Guidelines and Sample Case
Studies. Center for Human Rights Erlangen-Nürnberg – Interdisziplinäres Zentrum
12 Aslı Vatansever
der FAU (CHREN). Available at: https://www .gppi .net /media /Kinzelbach _2020
_Researching _Academic _Freedom -Book .pdf.
Kinzelbach K, Saliba I, Spannagel J, Quinn R (2020) Free Universities. Putting the
Academic Freedom Index into Action. Global Public Policy Institute. Available at:
https://www .gppi .net /media /KinzelbachEtAl _2020 _Free _Universities .pdf.
Knight FH (1967) Laissez faire: Pro and con. Journal of Political Economy 75: 782–795.
Kölemen A, Vatansever A (2020) Reections on exile and academic precarity: Discussing
at the margins of academia. European Journal of Turkish Studies 30(2020). https://doi
.org /10 .4000 /ejts .6646.
Lackey J (ed) (2018) Academic Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lindsay P (2015) Polanyi, Hayek, and the impossibility of libertarian ideal theory. Polity
47(3): 376–396. Available at: https://www .jstor .org /stable /24540290.
Locke J (2003) Two Treatises of Government: And a Letter Concerning Toleration. New
Haven, CN: Yale UP.
Losurdo D (2004) Hegel and the Freedom of Moderns. Durham, NC and London: Duke
UP.
Mann JD (2017) Intellectual freedom, academic freedom, and the academic librarian.
AAUP Journal of Academic Freedom 2017. Available at: https://www .aaup .org /sites
/default /les /Mann .pdf.
Marx K (2007[1890]) Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Ökonomie – Band 1: Der
Produktionsprozeß des Kapitals. 38th edition. Berlin: Dietz.
Mulligan DH, Danaher PA (eds) (2021) Researchers at Risk: Precarity, Jeopardy and
Uncertainty in Academia. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.
Murray DS (2019) The precarious new faculty majority: Communication and instruction
research and contingent labor in higher education. Communication Education 68:
235–245.
OECD (2021) Reducing the Precarity of Academic Research Careers. OECD Science,
Technology and Industry Policy Papers, May 2021, No. 113. Available at: https://www
.oecd .org /publications /reducing -the -precarity -of -academic -research -careers -0f8bd468
-en .htm.
OECD (2022) Gross Domestic Spending on R&D (Indicator). https://doi .org /10 .1787 /
d8b068b4 -en (accessed 17 February 2022).
Pankin R, Weiss C (2011) Part-time faculty in higher education: A selected annotated
bibliography. Sociology Department Faculty Publications 1. Available at: https://
digitalcommons .providence .edu /sociology _fac /1.
Prendergast R (2005) The concept of freedom and its relation to economic development –
A critical appreciation of the work of Amartya Sen. Cambridge Journal of Economics
29(6): 1145–1170.
Quinn R (2004) Defending ‘Dangerous’ minds. Reections on the work of the Scholars at
Risk Network. Items & Issues – Social Science Research Council 5(1–2). Available at:
https://web .archive .org /web /20100626011312 /http:/ /www .ssrc .org /workspace /images /
crm /new _publication _3/ %7B5cebcead -2d60 -de11 -bd80 -001cc477ec70 %7D .pdf.
Russell C (1993) Academic Freedom. London: Routledge.
Saunders JH (1998) Academic freedom and human rights: A neglected perspective.
International Higher Education 13: 2–3. Available at: https://ejournals .bc .edu /index
.php /ihe /article /view /6452 /5676.
Teichler U, Arimoto A, Cummings WK (2013) The Changing Academic Profession: Major
Findings of a Comparative Survey. Dordrecht, Heidelberg, New York and London:
Springer.
Introduction 13
UCU (2021) Precarious work in higher education. Insecure contracts and how they
have changed over time: A report by University and College Union. October
2021 update. Available at: https://www .ucu .org .uk /media /10899 /Precarious -work -in
-higher -education -May -20 /pdf /ucu _he -precarity -report _may20 .pdf.
Vatansever A (2022) The making of the academic precariat: Labor activism and collective
identity-formation among precarious researchers in Germany. Work, Employment
and Society. SAGE. Available at: https://journals .sagepub .com /doi /abs /10 .1177
/09500170211069830.
Vrielink J, Lemmens P, Parmentier S (2011) Academic freedom as a fundamental right.
Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences 13 (2011): 117–141.
Wallerstein I (ed) (2000[1974]) The rise and future demise of the world capitalist system:
Concepts for comparative analysis. In: The Essential Wallerstein. New York: The New
Press, pp.71–105.
Wallerstein I (1999) The End of the World as We Know It. Social Science for the Twenty-
First Century. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
