Academic freedom and (re)building the nation

This article examines the links between academic freedom and nationalist approaches to European higher education policies in recent years at two levels: the national (using case studies of France and the UK) and the European. Understanding these developments requires responding to two questions: (1) who defines academic freedom? and (2) for whom? Through the lens of political sociology, we show how in two so-called liberal democratic regimes in Europe, both state and non-state actors endanger the exercise of academic freedom through three types of attacks: legislative/judicial; discursive; and socio-economic. We focus on how these attacks curtail academic freedom to conduct critical scholarship on the foundational myths of nation states by framing academic freedom as both (1) a national value to be protected against outsiders, and (2) a risk to national security. Through such framing, academic freedom becomes a governmental tool, aligning with geopolitical aims and nation-building discourses. The article shows how academic freedom is mobilised with the aim of protecting both the status quo of power relations within the nation state and the current geopolitical distribution of power between “The West and the Rest”. We propose that understandings of academic freedom must take into account how, when separated from an understanding of structural power, academic freedom can become a repressive tool of nationalism, which only allows freedom for some.