How to Protect Young Scholars from the Managerial Machine
Anatoly Oleksiyenko | 06 July 2024 | University World News
Academic freedom is essential for high-quality knowledge production, which requires that researchers and teachers have integrity and the courage to seek truth, as well as communicate inconvenient findings to disparate stakeholders, notwithstanding their status and power.
Academics succeed in this challenging endeavour when their institutions have autonomy, and when they enjoy autonomy within their institutions.
As academic practices in post-totalitarian societies show, creating a university which respects academic freedom is difficult. Managerial traditions that prioritise hierarchical relations and administrative control often undermine the freedom of scholars to do research, teach or engage in public outreach. In post-totalitarian regimes, managers often ‘know better’ what professors need to do to achieve institutional success….