There is no Academic Freedom without Job Stability

An Interview with Prof. Asli Vatansever, Bard College Berlin
By: Camilla Crisma (University of Trento, LAW- CEILS Degree); Ella Eklund and Ida Hellkvist
Karlsson (University of Trento, DSRS-Sociology and Social Research Degree); Marie-Luise Winter
(University of Trento, Centre for Integrative Biology)
The research topic we select as scholars are often the result of personal experiences, combined with
an impetus to thread the latter into a critical analysis of broader phenomena. Asli Vatansever dialogues with students, to provide an engaging reflection on how labour precarity intertwines with state and university censorship to constrain academic freedom. While the discussion interests political events hitting Turkey since 2016, it holds relevance well beyond this national context. Students begin to discuss with our guest the social responsibility of scholars to raise their voices against rights violations, a ‘duty to critique’ that lies at the hearth of the university mission. Asli Vatansever reflects on her decision to sign the ‘Academic for Peace Petition’ in 2016 and on the consequences this held for her professional dismissal. While state violence against dissident academics is recalled as a landmark in a disrupted academic career, Vatansever also reminds us that prolongued precarity, the erosion of tenure-track positions, the imperative of prolongued job- seeking mobility act as powerful means to weaken academic freedom. In this respect, any careful analysis of academic displacement from Turkey cannot be disentangled from a critical discussion of the worsening conditions of academic labour in receiving destinations like Europe.