How is academic freedom threatened by states and what can be done to protect scholars? Join us for an expert discussion co-hosted by the Centre for International Security and the Centre for Fundamental Rights.
Academic freedom is an indicator of and a prerequisite for sound governmental decision-making and a well-functioning society. In spite of this importance, according to the 2022 Academic Freedom Index, approximately two out of five scholars worldwide now live in countries where academic freedom has deteriorated substantially over the past ten years. In fragile and politically repressive regimes, scholars are valuable targets for authoritarian governments. Simply by virtue of the information scholars gather, they can inadvertently become intelligence assets for the range of adversaries who utilise information and cyberspace. This includes actors who are directly or loosely affiliated with repressive governments. The tactics of state control used against scholars, researchers, investigative journalists, and activists include the instrumentalisation of information, cyberattacks, disinformation campaigns, surveillance and spyware, as well as online and offline censorship.
This state behaviour creates both conventional and new (digital) threats to scholars as they work in hostile local political contexts. Importantly, the expansion of repression into the digital realm means that scholars are now also at risk of being targeted by (1) foreign governments in their own country, (2) their own government when residing abroad, and/or (3) foreign governments when residing abroad. An example for the third category would be Ukrainian scholars who have been the target of digital threats by actors affiliated with the Russian government.
Thus, this event aims to facilitate cooperation and collaboration between academics-at-risk and the higher education, research institutions, NGOs et al. who can support them by furthering their professional development, promoting academic and university freedoms, and finding ways to deter or counteract the asymmetric threats they are facing.
Join us for a conversation on these themes with Viktoria Boiko (Centre for International Security), Dr. Emre Turkut (Centre for Fundamental Rights), and Janika Spannagel (Freie Universität Berlin). The discussion will be moderated by Prof. Dr. Anita Gohdes (Hertie School).
This event is co-hosted by the Centre for International Security and the Centre for Fundamental Rights, and supported by funds from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.
Speakers
Panel
Viktoria Boiko is a practice fellow at the Centre for International Security and has been a research fellow since 2016 at the National Institute for Strategic Studies in Kyiv. Her main areas of research are cybersecurity and transnational security, human and civil rights, privacy and data protection, disinformation and the influence of new technologies on decision making. Viktoria studied EU Governance (Legal and Economic Integration) at the College of Europe and International Relations at the Estonian School of diplomacy. She has been a participant of the Program on Cyber Security Studies (PCSS) at the George C. Marshall Center for Security Studies as attended the MITRE Risk Management Framework and Cyber Resiliency workshop titled "Building a National Cyber Information-Sharing Ecosystem in Ukraine".
Dr. Emre Turkut is a Postdoctoral Researcher at Hertie School’s Centre for Fundamental Rights. He received his PhD in international law from Ghent University in December 2020 and remains an affiliated researcher at the Ghent Rolin-Jaequemyns International Law Institute (GRILI). Emre’s research covers a variety of fields within the domain(s) of public international law, international human rights law and comparative constitutional law including states of emergency, derogations, emergency powers, counter-terrorism, international law in domestic courts, transnational judicial dialogue and judicial politics in authoritarian regimes. Emre previously taught at the Riga Graduate School of Law, held a Swedish Institute visiting fellowship at Uppsala University (2018-19) and a DAAD fellowship at Hertie School (2019-20). Along with his academic work, Emre is frequently contacted by NGOs and global media platforms to give expert opinions on issues of human rights, international law and Turkish law. He also serves as a legal consultant and expert witness on Turkish law to several private entities.
Janika Spannagel is a postdoctoral researcher at Freie Universität Berlin and the International Research College (IRC) at the Cluster of Excellence “Contestations of the Liberal Scripts (SCRIPTS)". She is in the process of completing her doctoral degree in political science at the University of Freiburg with a dissertation on the international protection of human rights defenders. Her current work focuses on the diffusion and contestation of academic freedom norms. She is also a non-resident fellow at the Global Public Policy Institute, where she co-developed the Academic Freedom Index prior to her position at FU Berlin. For her work and studies she has received various scholarships from the German National Academic Foundation, the German Academic Exchange Service and the Mercator Foundation.
Moderator
Prof. Dr. Anita Gohdes is Professor of International and Cyber Security at the Hertie School. Her research focuses on contentious politics in the cyber realm, with a current emphasis on large-scale quantitative analyses of state behaviour. Previously, she was Assistant Professor of International Relations at the University of Zurich, and postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center International Security Program. Since 2009, she has worked for the California-based non-profit organisation Human Rights Data Analysis Group. She currently advises the German Federal Foreign Office, and has consulted for the World Bank and the United Nations on security and state fragility. Her doctoral dissertation (University of Mannheim) was awarded the German Dissertation Award in the Social Sciences by the Körber Foundation, and the Walter Isard Dissertation Award by the Peace Science Society.
