[Koglist] Personal Invitation to Participate in EU Funded Survey on Academic Freedom in Europe (fwd)

Dear Colleague, We are contacting you, in your position as a member of the teaching and research staff in one of Hungary's higher education institutions, to invite you to participate in a European Union funded project, by completing an on-line survey on academic freedom. Previous attempts to contact academic staff in Hungary were not as successful as in other EU countries; for example, we received 485 responses from Denmark, 357 from Ireland, but fewer than 20 from academic and research staff in Hungarian universities. As a result, Hungary is very much under-represented in our study. We think that it is very important to gather opinions from all the states in the EU states, especially the smaller states which are (as a result of their size) often overlooked in studies of this kind, which tend to focus on large nations like France and Germany. Consequently, we decided to choose individual staff in universities and to contact them directly, via email. As you may realise, identifying individual academic staff, (such as yourself), in this way is very time consuming and labour intensive; however, we felt that devoting considerable additional resources was justified, in order to ensure that opinions from staff in universities in all the nations in our EU project get an equal chance to be heard. The survey normally takes about 15 minutes (but may take longer, depending on your English language skills) and is designed to be as easy as possible to complete, as most of the questions just require ticks in the relevant boxes. The survey is completely anonymous, so that the names of both staff who participate and the institutions in which they work cannot be identified. The survey is designed for completion by academic staff who rely on academic freedom in order to be able to fulfil their professional tasks of adding to the body of knowledge, through their research, and passing on that knowledge to their students, through their teaching. The data gathered by the on-line survey will be analysed by means of SPSS, with the results reported in the academic press and disseminated via other media. Although academic freedom affects everyone who works in a university, this survey is designed for full or part-time member of staff employed by the university to teach (such as Lecturers, Professors, etc.) and/or to undertake research (such as Professors, but also Research Assistants, Post-Doctoral Research Fellows, etc.). If you are an Emeritus Professor, who has retired from a full time academic career, then you are eligible to complete the survey. The survey should not be completed by visiting academic staff, or by university support staff (administrative, managerial and secretarial staff, librarians, laboratory technicians, etc.) or by students on taught undergraduate and post-graduate Master's degree courses. Students undertaking research for a PhD, but who also do some part-time teaching are not eligible to complete the survey. We will be looking at students' academic freedom in a subsequent project. If you are not sure as to whether you should complete the survey, then please contact us by return email below, and we will be happy to advise you. It is argued that academic freedom is a universal right that all staff working in higher education acknowledge as an essential component of academic life, both as an individual liberty with respect to their teaching and research, and in terms of institutional autonomy and governance. At institutional level, the right of universities to self-governance and autonomy, free from governmental control over decisions about what should be taught and researched, is seen as vital for their successful working. However, in many nations, the constitutional and legislative protection for academic freedom is limited or poorly defined. Consequently, institutional policies and norms, allied to departmental culture, are often as important as legal instruments in providing normative protection for the academic freedom of university staff. Most research into academic freedom concentrates on legal frameworks; as yet there has been no survey of the normative protection for, and day-to-day staff experiences of, academic freedom and institutional autonomy in the higher education institutions of the EU states. The importance of academic freedom in enabling universities to operate effectively in the global knowledge economy has been acknowledged by the EU, who have funded a Marie Curie Fellowship to undertake research into the knowledge, experience and opinions of higher education academic staff in the EU states, with respect to the policies and protocols that are designed to protect academic freedom at departmental and institutional levels. In order to analyse the extent, character and strength of extra-legal informal protection for academic freedom, which operates via institutional and departmental norms, we have devised an online survey to gather data on the knowledge, experience and opinions of academic staff with regards to academic freedom. Academic freedom is a contested concept, although it is argued that academic freedom is crucially important, not only for all those academic staff who work in universities, but also for society at large, as academic freedom enables university staff to provide expert criticism of the workings of government and the corporate sector, and ensure that they are accountable for their actions, thereby strengthening democracy. In this sense, academic freedom, like freedom of speech, is considered to be a right of the people, not a privilege of a few. By completing this on-line survey, the opinions of university staff on academic freedom will find a voice, and contribute directly to the important debate on academic freedom within contemporary higher education. Failure to nurture the concept of academic freedom within universities, more especially in those European nations which first promulgated this basic right, threatens to undermine this and other basic associated human rights, both within Europe and, by imitation, in other nation states where they are already considerably fragile. Such liberties, once lost, will be infinitely more difficult to reinstate than they were to achieve. We very much hope that you will want both your personal opinion, and that of the Universities in Hungary, to be heard, by participating in this study. If you know of colleagues at other universities in Hungary, who you feel might wish to participate in this study, please feel free to forward this email, with the url address for the survey, to them. The survey can be accessed by going to the webpage at: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/AcademicFreedomSurvey Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions about the research Best Wishes Professor Terence Karran and Associate Professor Klaus Beiter Professor Terence Karran, School of Education, University of Lincoln, U.K.; Docent, Faculty of Education, Oulu University, Finland. Associate Professor Dr. Klaus Beiter, Faculty of Law, North-West University (Potchefstroom), South Africa.