Academic Freedom and the Challenges of Humanism(s)

9:30 – 10:00 

Welcome Greetings

• Francesco Piraino (Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice)
• Laura De Giorgi (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice)
• Sindre Bangstad (KIFO – Institute For Church, Religion & Worldview Research)

10:00 – 11:00

Keynote speaker Pippa Norris (Harvard University), “ ‘Professors Are the Enemy’? Two Faces of Academic Freedom in the USA”

11:00 – 11:30 Coffee Break

11:30 – 12:30  Panel: Academic Freedom in Israel

• Mordechai (Mordy) Miller (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev), “Theological Roots of Anti-Academic Sentiment in Contemporary Religious Zionism”
• Nir Avieli (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev), “The Impossible Academic Freedom of Israeli Critical Social Scientists: ‘Lefty Arab-lovers’ or ‘Genocidal Maniacs’?”

14:00 – 15:30  Panel: Academic Freedom in Africa

• Sindre Bangstad (KIFO – Institute For Church, Religion & Worldview Research), “Academic Freedom vs Academic Freedom: A South African Case”
• Kwadwo Appiagyei-Atua (Africa Coalition for Academic Freedom), “A Critical Review of African Documents on Academic Freedom”
• Erica Bellia (University of Cambridge), “ ‘The Striptease of Our Humanism’: Questioning European Culture from Africa in the Early 1960s”

10:00 – 11:30 Panel: Academic Freedom in Russia, Iran, and in Diaspora

• Giovanni Savino (University of Naples Federico II), “Universities and Academic Freedom in Wartime Russia: A Genealogy of Authoritarian Control”
• Lidia Yatluk (University of Groningen), and Sofya Smyslova (University of Cambridge), “Reclaiming the Right to Research: Academic Freedom, Tacit Knowledge, and Exile”
• Shirin Zakeri (Unitelma Sapienza University of Rome), Minoo Mirshahvald (University of Copenhagen), and Ehsan Kashfi (University of Copenhagen) “Academic Freedom Beyond the State: Diasporic Pressure, Digital Intimidation, National Identity, and Iranian Scholars after ‘Woman, Life Freedom’ ”

11:30 – 12:00 Coffee Break

12:00 – 13:00 Panel: Academic Freedom in Asia

• Ala Uddin (University of Chittagong), “The Political Economy of Knowledge: Market Forces, Funding Pressures, and the Limits of Academic Autonomy in Bangladesh”
• Simon Yin (Hefei University of Technology in China), “Academic Freedom in China’s Hong Kong since 1997”

14:30 – 16:00 Panel: Academic Freedom in Europe

• Annelies Moors (University of Amsterdam), “Politicizing the Academy: Academic Freedom in the Netherlands”
• Maja van der Velden (University of Oslo), “Academic Freedom and Academic Boycott: An Analysis of the Debate in Norway”
• Maryna Lakhno (Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology), “The Invisible Governance of Knowledge: Rethinking de facto Academic Freedom in Switzerland”

10:00 – 11:30 Panel: The Epistological Challenge of Academic Freedom

• Peter Dziedzic (Harvard University), “Akbarian Humanism: The Perfected Human, Perpetual Self-Disclosure, and an Islamic Epistemology of Serendipity”

• Joseph L. Clarke (University of Toronto), “Showing, Not Saying: Academic Freedom beyond the Logocentric Paradigm”

• Federico Dal Bo (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia), “Leo Strauss and the Post-Liberal Return to Esotericism: Academic Freedom in an Age of Compulsory Engagement”

11:30 – 12:00 Coffee break

12:00 – 13:00 Panel: Academic Freedom and the Impact of AI

• Arie Perliger and  Randi Froude (University of Massachusetts), “The Double-Edged Algorithm: Artificial Intelligence, Digital Technologies, and the Transformation of Academic Freedom”
• Andrea Alessandro Gasparini (University of Oslo), “Rethinking the Role of Academic Libraries in the Age of ChatGPT”

14:30 – 15:30 Panel: Law and Policies for Academic Freedom

• Alessandra Lazzarini (University of Padua), “Defining Academic Freedom in Europe: Courts, Soft Law and Integration Tools in Higher Education”
• Silvia Zabeo and Dario Pellizon (Ca’ Foscari University), “Research Freedom as a Foundational Value of the European Epistemic Communities: Policy Frameworks, Stakeholder Responses, and Institutional Practices”

15:30 – 16:00 Plenary