Open Letter in Defense of Academic Freedom in Switzerland
27 February 2024
As scholars working at Swiss universities and beyond, we write this open letter with grave concern regarding the erosion of academic freedom and the increasingly anti-intellectual climate in Switzerland. In particular, we wish to address the phenomenon of intensified attacks by segments of the media and political officials on the social sciences and humanities. This is a global development that predates the ongoing war in Gaza, but has intensified since 7 October 2023.
Thus far in Switzerland, the post-October 7 climate has led to two administrative investigations of entire university institutes that engage in critical scholarship and teaching in academic fields such as gender, critical race, migration, border, postcolonial and settler colonial studies. While this letter is not the right place to address in detail the specific cases, we nonetheless see a dynamic emerging that has implications beyond these specific incidents. We are deeply concerned that this development could set a problematic precedent for other disciplines, departments, and universities in Switzerland.
We are worried that through administrative investigations in Basel and Bern, universities have indirectly accepted and legitimized a scientifically unqualified and politicized media framing of critical scholarship in the social sciences and humanities as “ideological” and unscientific. In our view, academic research has a responsibility to address social phenomena, particularly those that are marginalized in the public debate or politically highly sensitive. Engaging in socially relevant research also places responsibility on scientists to make a clear distinction between their normative positions and their scientific analysis. Yet, it is not up to the press and politics to decide where normative positioning within academia begins and scientific analysis ends. This distinction is based on the critical standards of scientific disciplines and academic pluralism. We are therefore highly concerned when academic, educational or cultural institutions sanction individuals and departments based on public pressure.