Advancing academic freedom and collegiality

Abstract The Institute of Australian Geographers encourages members to speak out in support of academic freedom. Academic freedom must be advanced to further the public good. Collegiality, including collegiate decision‐making, is fundamental to academic freedom. Academic freedom and collegiality are being undermined in Australia by adverse political interference and counter‐productive university actions taken in response. State suppression is evident in acute instances of interference, and in the chronic re‐engineering of universities to service a narrow economic agenda. Conservative Australian governments have repeatedly intervened to overturn peer recommendations for research funding, while simultaneously instituting sector‐wide cuts, and pushing an ideologically driven pro‐academic freedom agenda based on weak evidence, and in disregard of institutional autonomy. A regressive legislative definition of academic freedom has been introduced that restricts the scope of shared freedoms and intra‐mural expression, and elides state support and self‐governance altogether. Historic and contemporary exclusion and silencing remains unaddressed, and is becoming compounded as university managements uncritically adopt commercial corporate models and perverse internal policies. Codes of Conduct are especially hazardous, as demonstrated in employment terminations, and Federal and High Court litigation. Awareness‐raising and advocacy is necessary for law reform, beyond compliance behaviour, and the establishment of autonomous collegiate, inclusive and caring institutions capable of addressing the inter‐related environmental and social justice challenges of the Anthropocene.