Academic Freedom

How the press have covered the story ?


Dear students

You may be aware of the arrest and release without charge of one of ourpostgraduate students Rizwaan Sabir in the School of Politics andInternational Relations under the terrorism legislation, and a clericalassistant at the University of Nottingham.The arrests were prompted by a document, downloaded from an open sourceon the internet for our student’s dissertation on contemporaryterrorism. I would like to explain to you why I will be taking part in ademonstration for academic freedom next Wednesday afternoon on 28 May2008 at 2.00 pm outside the Hallward library which will include areading from the document which prompted the two arrests.Academic freedom is of great concern to me as a lecturer and formerstudent of the University of Nottingham. Indeed my interest in academicfreedom was inspired by undergraduate studies degree in Russian andSerbo-Croatian here at Nottingham. I studied Russian writers who wrotepassionately in defence of the intellectual freedom of ordinarycitizens against official censorship. Today I teach and write on humanrights and civil society. I am a strong believer that a flourishingdemocracy needs a flourishing civil society with citizens engaged inthe questions of their day. I believe a flourishing academic lifeinvolves much more than the curriculum and our individual academicdiscipline and formal research. Thus not only politics lecturers andstudents should be concerned with political questions, but alsonon-politics academics and students, and non-academics. Thus not onlysociologists and sociology students should be concerned with socialquestions, but also non-sociologists and non-sociology students. I amalso a strong believer in affirming autodidacts or self-educatedindividuals and their right to explore the questions of the day. I believe academic freedom is not just for academics but everybody oncampus, including non-academics and non-students.I am concerned that arrests under the terrorism legislation for adocument widely available on open sources via official US web sites maydeter research on terrorism and developing public understanding ofterrorism. I am concerned that the arrests have implications forresearch into other controversial areas. Narrowing academic freedom toauthorised academics has implications beyond academia to questions ofjournalistic freedom and the position of professional journalists andcitizen journalists or blogger journalists.

Kind regardsVanessa Pupavac