Published February 2023

By Paul Gready and Emma Jackson

Universities are currently experiencing both opportunities and challenges as sites of activism and protection. With regard to opportunities, they often have more resources, status, and leverage than civil society groups, and frequently have more political room for manoeuvre - or face less harsh repression - than activist counterparts. Challenges include privatisation, budget cuts, and enhanced government scrutiny and ‘closing academic space’ (ICNL, 2019). In this complex context, universities display ‘two faces’ (Bush and Saltarelli, 2000). They can both foster and inhibit freedom of expression; provide ‘safe spaces’ and be sites of violence; and function with greater freedom than civil society organisations and be subject to specific forms of state control and capture (Choudry and Vally, 2020(a); ICNL, 2019). 

This Working Paper seeks to identify and support good university practices in support of activism and protection, of people, ideas/values, and different kinds of knowledge.