An excellent initiative in many ways, EUPLANT also provides scholars with a wonderful platform to discuss the terms of transnational academic engagement, especially between the EU and China. These terms, and the potential pitfalls of interaction between systems underpinned by different conceptions of research governance, have increasingly become an issue of concern in EU countries.
There is reason to be concerned. In November 2018, the European Parliament in its Recommendation on Defence of academic freedom in the EU’s external action observed that ‘the academic community and education institutions are increasingly vulnerable to interference, pressure or repression from states, the business sector or other non-state actors’ and that ‘every year, hundreds of attacks on universities, higher education institutions and their members are reported around the world, including killings, violence and disappearances, wrongful imprisonment/detention, wrongful prosecution, loss of position, wrongful dismissal/expulsion from study, restrictions on travel or movement and other extreme or systemic threats.’ It added that ‘violations of academic freedoms are also occurring within Member States of the EU and its closest partners’ and noted that funding cuts had made higher education institutions particularly vulnerable.
The Recommendation proposed a range of responses, including: the monitoring, public exposure and criticism of violations by EU officials (c, d and e and h), collaboration ‘with the UN, the Council of Europe, international agencies, civil society and higher education communities to create mechanisms for monitoring and reporting’ (k), ‘dialogue with university communities and organisations’ (l), as well as capacity development (m), research and advocacy (n), diplomatic efforts (o), support for individuals at risk (p and q, sand support for ‘an international declaration on academic freedom and the autonomy of higher education institutions’ (u).
China is not the only, but certainly one of the countries of concern in this context, as scholars and organisations such as Human Rights Watch and Scholars At Risk have pointed out in recent reports. As a human rights scholar with a research focus on China, I have had opportunities to understand the pernicious effects of, for example, cross-border threats and intimidation, travel bans on Chinese scholars and immigration bans on would-be researchers in China. I know that academic persecution isolates and marginalises Chinese scholars and practitioners whose experience could give us vitally important insights into China’s system and society, all the while exchange and engagement create inducements, as well as pressures, to censor or self-censor their voices out of exchange projects. Many other governments seem similarly hostile to academic freedom, and in some instances even more likely to use state coercion and violence for the purpose of censorship.
The Recommendation’s action points are largely plausible, so far as they go. It makes sense for EU agencies to collaborate with academic institutions and organisations on defending academic freedom, for example. It would also be very encouraging to see a normative document on these issues take shape, as a set of norms tailored to the problems of the 21st century would provide a critical standard for scholars and advocates, as well as university administrators, governments and funding organisations to draw on. Whether currently ongoing efforts to draft a new general comment on Article 15 UN-ICESCR will prove sufficient, is in doubt.
However, what the European Parliament recommends is not enough. It fails to address head on the risks of EU actors’ complicity with transnational academic repression, even though it acknowledges some of the root causes of such risks. To varying extents, academic institutions in EU member states have exposed themselves to dependency on interaction and exchange with institutions operating in the shadows of (or indeed supporting) autocracy. Dependency results partly from the pressures of a complex political economy of globalised academia. Universities can be keen to establish research cooperation projects and joint degree programmes or recruit research students from China for a mix of reasons: research, funding, and reputation, for example. This may mean that they will benefit, directly or indirectly, from stipends issued to students or visiting researchers or funds for cooperative projects that come with invisible string s attached to them: no research or teaching on topics the autocratic government doesn’t like. This risk is even graver in those countries where the marketisation of higher education has been especially pernicious, like the UK – a country where academic ties with the EU will continue attractive even after it has left the EU.
What can be done about these problems? A number of things – it would be good if the EU national governments provided more uncensored funding for their higher education institutions targeted to counterbalance the autocrats’ money, and if universities established rigorous and effective funding screening mechanisms, for example. It is also right that the EU should be careful and strategic in its decisions on what academic endeavours to fund. And, certainly organisations focused on strengthening academic freedom and assisting scholars at risk deserve to be supported for these vital services to the academic community and civil society more widely.
The most basic and most central requirement, however, is transparency – both about what funding universities accept, and about the terms on which they accept it. This should include a negative ban on nondisclosure agreements. Such requirements would not only enable external critics – such as advocacy NGOs and the public media – to scrutinise academic institutions’ external funding. They could also shift the power balance within academic institutions, enabling critical-minded scholars and students to check up on their own institutions more effectively, and it might make university administrators more willing to involve experts when negotiating with partners abroad. They would make it harder for institutions and individuals to take problematic funding from countries of concern.
The modalities of institutionalisation of such requirements would, of course, need to be further discussed. It should be considered, for example, whether transparency requirements could become part of EU-based academic funding, a step that could set an example for other academic funding bodies. Of course, any proposal is likely to meet with pushback. University managers might even point to the very principle of academic freedom to demand exemption from scrutiny. But academic freedom is not the freedom of business actors with no special obligations to the public – and indeed, some academics argue that the UN Guidelines on Business and Human Rights apply to universities a fortiori, articulating minimal standards of human rights responsibilities universities must not continue skirting. Rather, that comes with obligations under a range of soft law norms referenced in the Recommendations, as well as further norms, such as the. It is a constituted freedom that requires institutional ground-rules to be properly defended.