Virtual meet-up: «Academic freedom and democracy. What we want to defend and prepare for»

Meet-up with Katrin Meyer (SAGS/Zurich), Astrid Windus (hist4dem/Cologne) and Christiane Hoht (hist4dem/Bern)

The past months have forced many of us to ask ourselves how we can protect and prepare ourselves in times of authoritarian power grabs and fundamental attacks on academia in general, and in particular on established academic fields such as environmental sciences, gender studies, disability studies or postcolonial studies, as well as on individual academics. Once again, the question is how we can strengthen academic freedom as a democratic good.

With this meet-up, we want to create a space to think together about what conditions we want and need to enable democratic academia to exist – and continue to exist. To this end, we have invited three guests to share their experiences with two initiatives that oppose the normalisation of hostility towards academia and patriarchal authoritarianism: the Charter of the Swiss Society for Gender Studies (SAGS) and the group around ‘hist4dem’ (Historians for Democracy) in Germany. What goals do these initiatives set themselves in their respective contexts and how do they understand «academic freedom» or «democracy»? Our meet-up aims to help us build solidarity and discuss possible courses of action in times of feeling powerless.

Language: English fédéral (the discussion will be multilingual)

Moderation: Isabelle Schürch (Bern)