Description
The significance of academic freedom - as a concept and as practice - for the discipline of IR has been growing rapidly. This, in particular, due to the internationalisation of Higher Education and the fact that during the first two years of the Covid-19 pandemic, most of our teaching and research activities have moved online. We have surveyed over 1,000 academic faculty in the social sciences and the humanities across universities of Scotland, to learn how faculty experience academic freedom since the Covid-19 pandemic started. While scholars we surveyed are based in Scotland, the concerns our research outlines extend far beyond its borders. Scholars feel uneasy about online teaching and the safety of students based in non-democratic states. Some are finding it difficult to engage research participants using only Internet-based methods. The paper replies directly to the conference call and its emphasis on the anniversary of the Human Rights Declaration.
