Retrogression in the Legal Protection of the Right to Academic Freedom in Europe.

Abstract

This article is a condensed and reworked version of: "Measuring" the Erosion of Academic Freedom as an International Human Right: A Report on the Legal Protection of Academic Freedom in Europe (Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, Vol. 49, 2016, 597-691), making the research results available to an audience versed in the higher education sciences. The article assesses to what extent the right to academic freedom as construed in terms of international human rights law, specifically UNESCO’s Recommendation on the Status of Higher-Education Teaching Personnel of 1997, is protected in the law of the 28 Member States of the European Union. It determines the elements of this right, to then operationalise these by way of indicators accorded numeric values in order to assess state compliance and rank states in terms of their performance. The article shows that there is retrogression in Europe insofar as the legal protection of the right to academic freedom is concerned. Institutional autonomy is being misconstrued, academic self-governance denied and job security eroded. These developments appear to be the result of deliberate policy decisions by EU Member States seeking to make higher education “the arm of national economic policy,” so as to ensure higher education will contribute to national GDP.