Academic Freedom Fellows Scheme in Europe

Academic freedom, the right to explore, express, and exchange ideas without fear of reprisal, is facing unprecedented threats worldwide. Scholars, educators, and students are increasingly vulnerable to contemporary challenges to academic freedom, including ideological polarization and censorship to misinformation, undue influence in funding, surveillance. This erosion of academic freedom undermines the quality of education, hinders scientific progress, and weakens the foundations of open and democratic societies.

In response to these challenges, NORRAG proposes the establishment of an Academic Freedom Fellows Scheme to complement those in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and South-East Asia. This Fellows Scheme will, in the same way as in the other regions, support critical research, foster dialogue, and promote the defence of academic freedom. The scheme will provide a platform for Fellows to investigate salient threats to academic freedom, contribute to a more nuanced understanding of its importance in contemporary society, and develop innovative approaches to its protection.

This project directly addresses the urgent need for innovative and context-specific approaches to safeguarding academic freedom. By supporting fellows from diverse backgrounds and disciplines, the scheme will generate new knowledge, promote cross-cultural learning, and empower advocates to address the multifaceted challenges facing academic communities. The project’s emphasis on moving beyond legalistic definitions of academic freedom, and the exploration of its emancipatory potential will contribute to a more robust and inclusive understanding of this fundamental right. Furthermore, the Fellowship’s focus on supporting senior, mid-career and early career academics across the entirety of the European continent will facilitate the identification of effective strategies for promoting and defending academic freedom in different academic and geopolitical contexts and career stages.

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Deadline: 26 September 2025

Why Europe?

This Fellowship programme in Europe complements other academic freedom coalitions that are embedded in other regions, such as the Africa Coalition for Academic Freedom (ACAF), the Coalition for Academic Freedom in the Americas (CAFA), and the Southeast Asia Coalition for Academic Freedom (SEACAF).

Europe is fruitful ground for further research and policy-making to protect academic freedom due to several factors:

• Protections: Many European countries have constitutional or legal provisions explicitly safeguarding academic freedom, which potentially decrease vulnerability to political shifts. Regional conventions to reinforce these protections include the Bonn Declaration on Freedom of Scientific Research (2020) and the European University Association’s (2025) commitments. These more entrenched legal protections stand in contrast to other regions, where academic freedom may depend more on individual institutions’ interpretations and policies.
• Politicization of Universities: Western European academic institutions, while not immune to political influence, currently face fewer overt legislative attacks on what can be taught or researched than in other regions of the world. Academic freedom in Eastern Europe, however, has suffered legislative attacks by nationalist, authoritarian or conservative governments aiming to control research, silence dissent, and shape historical and social narratives, by passing laws that restrict curricula or dismissing dissenting academics. In this diverse context, Academic Freedom Fellows in Europe can carry out comparative analysis across different contexts in the region to share knowledge and practical tactics.
• Public vs. Private Funding Structures: European universities rely more on public funding, which can create a stable framework for safeguarding academic independence. Just 28% of European universities rely on private donors, corporate funding, whereas up to 67% of universities in the USA are privately funded.
• Institutional Autonomy and Governance: Many European universities enjoy greater institutional autonomy from government or corporate influence, since their governance structures often emphasize academic self-regulation.
• Regional Judicial Responses and Policy Coordination: European courts, including the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), have ruled on cases reinforcing academic freedom as a fundamental right. The European Union provides an additional layer of policy coordination and funding mechanisms (e.g., Horizon Europe, Erasmus+) that can promote academic freedom across borders within the EU and to associated non-EU members.  

How will the initiative work?

This Academic Freedom Fellows Scheme will operate from September 2025 to December 2026. NORRAG will support these Academic Freedom Fellows as a community of experts, with online and offline opportunities to collaborate quarterly and to share information and experiences on their work on academic freedom, how to best develop and communicate actionable research that may be used for policy, planning and practice, and how to strengthen linkages between academic freedom research in their country and innovations or programs in other countries in the region. The project team will facilitate writing workshops for the Fellows to write together, whether developing academic or policy products, and also to elaborate larger collaborative research programmes for future funding by the European Commission or individual country’s research funding agencies.

The theme of the fellowship programme is deliberately broad, to capture the wide range of current debates in academic freedom in learning, teaching and research. Fellows will propose the specific focus of their fellowship activities based on their own area of expertise and contribution to the wider group. These sub-themes will constitute the thematic foci for networking, network and substantive events and peer exchange. NORRAG will provide ample communication, translation and publication support to amplify Fellows’ research and increase the uptake of the fellows’ work across the region and globally, where relevant.