Ash Vatansever and Aysuda Kölemen (eds) (2022), Academic Freedom and Precarity in the Global North: Free as a Bird Abingdon: Taylor & Francis, 184 pp., ISBN: 9781032189192

Undoubtedly, academic freedom is one of the key topics in discussions on contemporary higher education. However, those discussions are often narrowed to the issues of the freedom of speech of tenured professors or handling political disagreements at the university. Academic Freedom and Precarity in the Global North takes a crucial step in widening these debates by exploring how precarious working conditions of academics limit their academic freedom. As a researcher of higher education and a PhD student who plans to apply for precarious postdoctoral positions soon, I really appreciate this book's insights.

Moreover, by actively reshaping an understanding of academic freedom, the authors of this edited volume also provide insightful conclusions into matters of academic geopolitics. When they start to understand academic freedom beyond its negative sense of the absence of direct coercion, they see that it is not only an issue in countries of the Global South, criticised for their authoritarian practices of direct political control. Academic freedom is also undermined by the precarious conditions of academic labour in the Global North. Various cases illustrate this argument, in chapters exploring working conditions in Denmark, Italy, Portugal and the United Kingdom. Moreover, the book offers interesting remarks on the conceptualisation of precarity in academia, with concepts like alienation, commodification or being ‘stuck in the movement’ (149) and constantly moving from one precarious position to another.

The first two chapters are vital parts of the book. Britta Ohm provides a critical history of the development of the German chair system. Although the chair is a highly stable position protected from many outside influences, she argues that this system is not beneficial for academic freedom. On the one hand, she points out that this stability is connected with the disconnection of professors from political engagement and the separation of universities and politics. On the other hand, it supports the precariousness of all other positions in the system. Historically, ‘habilitation’ (the degree above the doctorate needed to become a fully autonomous scholar) was introduced in Germany as a necessary degree to protect the hierarchical position of chairs from the increasing significance of young doctors. Lisa Cerami makes a similar argument on the example of academic tenure in the US. From the publishing of the Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure in 1915, ‘academic freedom’ was defined by the American Association of University Professors not as a right of academic labourers but as a prize that could attract the best scientists to university positions. The same organisation was historically against the unionisation of academics.

In the third chapter, Collin Cameron offers a case of the discipline of Disability Studies, which created academic freedom for disabled people. The chapter traces the history of establishing the discipline in the 1990s, its development and contemporary challenges to its further progress. However, in the current academic environment, establishing such emancipation for disabled people has to overcome many prejudices and organisational obstacles. The author discusses what disability is and reflects on how a capitalist drive to make people highly productive and precarious workers disadvantages all those perceived as disabled.

In the book's second part, three chapters explore contemporary national cases of academic precarity undermining academic freedom. The first, by Ana Ferreira, is based on an online survey conducted among postdoctoral researchers in Portugal and reveals that their experience of work in academia is highly influenced by its precariousness. Giuseppe Acconcia analyses the new legislative projects increasing the precariousness of already harsh working conditions in Italian academia. The third case, presented by Dan Vesalainen Hirslund, examines how a series of neoliberal reforms in Danish academia undermined the autonomy of its institutions and led to the ‘marketization of careers’ (120) and work instability.

The last part of the book contains two chapters. In the first, Sanaz Raji discusses the increasingly difficult and precarious situation of migrant academics in the United Kingdom. It is the result of a longer process of historical changes in the UK system impacted by the market-oriented reforms of Margaret Thatcher and the change of the geopolitical position of the UK from a direct coloniser to a more indirectly dominant, politically hegemonic entity. The increasing precarity of highly educated migrants often forces them to accept exploitative working conditions in academia and business after finishing their education or postdoctoral positions. Raji interestingly also points out that this problem is not clearly visible to British academics protesting against the neoliberalisation of universities. It can be especially hard to address when a significant part of university funding comes from migrant students’ tuition fees, and the precarious conditions of migrant students and staff are rarely discussed (143). Even when geopolitical inequalities are acknowledged in discussions in the UK, they are primarily addressed in terms of brain drain and not exploitation through precarious positions (144). This chapter provides an excellent argument for focusing more on addressing issues of academics from the global north and the global south at the same time.

In the final chapter, Georgiana Turculet uses various examples of Global North scholars in unstable positions and provides insightful theorising on academic precarity. Turculet develops the idea of being ‘stuck in the movement’, and although some of the historical examples seem distant analogies for contemporary conditions, this chapter summarises many issues with the hardship of trying to achieve a stable position in contemporary academia. The chapter highlights both the psychological aspect of precarity (the inability to stop moving from one postdoctoral position to another) and more physical aspects, such as exile from one's home country increasing the precarity of one's situation. Placing these issues at the centre of reflection enables us to see how the political fight for open borders can be counterproductive when disconnected from the fight against precarity.

Partly because it is an edited volume, not every chapter of this book is strongly connected to the others. Some introduce exciting ideas that are not developed later in the book. Others do not engage directly with the book's central question: how does precarity influence academic freedom in the Global North? Although all the chapters are focused on precarity or academic freedom, some chapters help us understand precarity better, but do not directly engage in the question of the significance of this precarity to academic freedom.

Moreover, in the book's introduction, one can find a brilliant but undeveloped theme. Asli Vatansever connects precarity and academic freedom with Immanuel Wallerstein's (2020) world-system analysis. She makes an analogy between the limitations of academic freedom and the global division of labour described by Wallerstein (4). For Wallerstein, one of the main differences between central and peripheral regions was different ways of coercing labour. Vatansever observes that similarly, when we understand precarity as a limitation to academic freedom, we can see that it is becoming the dominant way of limiting academic freedom in the centres such as the UK. At the same time, more direct political control and censorship are present in more peripheral countries like Turkey (4). One can hope that this theoretical observation will be developed in future studies.

Hirslund's statement in the book that the struggle for academic freedom is central to contemporary academia (124) is also worth reflecting on. When we try to understand this freedom as limited by precarity and the whole capitalist world-system, it is hard to disagree with Hirslund's statement. This, however, leads to new questions about the possibility of engaging the existing academic community in struggles for such freedom – freedom from capitalist coercion, and not only limited freedom for accomplished tenured professors.

Franciszek Krawczyk

Scholarly Communication Research Group

Adam Mickiewicz University