Academic Freedom, Epistemic Community of Exiled Scholars, and Global Solidarity Networks

• In Event: Global and Transnational Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 1. Challenges to Academia/Higher Education

Abstract

Over the past decade, democratic backsliding and authoritarian resurgence have led to an unprecedented exodus of scholars worldwide, creating an emerging ‘epistemic community of exiled scholars.’ This paper examines what the experiences of displaced scholars reveal about the global condition of academic freedom and its shifting geography through the question of “What can the experiences of exiled scholars reveal about the state and future of academic freedom in the Global North?” It advances this inquiry in four stages. First, it investigates the political economy of academic freedom, analyzing how relative wealth and inequality shape the protection of intellectual autonomy across the Global North and South. Second, it compares policies of academic repression in Turkey and the United States to identify converging strategies of control, marketization, and anti-intellectualism and to detect templates for other settings. Third, drawing on fifty in-depth interviews with exiled scholars, it constructs a typology of contemporary intellectual exile and traces how displacement reshapes knowledge production through gendered experiences. Finally, it maps the solidarity and rescue networks that sustain academic life in exile. By reversing the gaze from the margins of the global academy toward its centers this project reconceptualizes academic freedom as a fragile, interdependent, and globally unequal institution.

Author

• Nazan Bedirhanoglu, Xavier University