{"id":607,"date":"2025-06-08T15:06:27","date_gmt":"2025-06-08T15:06:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cusjc.ca\/scholars-at-risk\/?p=607"},"modified":"2025-06-11T14:30:50","modified_gmt":"2025-06-11T14:30:50","slug":"rae-sounds-alarm-about-u-s-governments-systematic-attack-on-academic-freedom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cusjc.ca\/scholars-at-risk\/2025\/06\/08\/rae-sounds-alarm-about-u-s-governments-systematic-attack-on-academic-freedom\/","title":{"rendered":"Rae sounds alarm about U.S. government’s ‘systematic attack on academic freedom’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Hon. Bob Rae, Canada’s Ambassador to the United Nations, spoke to conference delegates on May 22 about the enduring importance of academic freedom during a special address via video from New York. [Photo \u00a9 Conference News Team] <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Bob Rae, Canada\u2019s Ambassador to the United Nations, had some blunt messages for conference participants when he delivered a special address via video link from New York to the Scholars at Risk gathering at Carleton University on May 22.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGovernments fear academic freedom,\u201d said Rae, the former Ontario NDP premier and former interim federal Liberal leader, who is also currently serving as president of the UN Economic and Social Council.  \u201cAuthoritarian governments fear institutions that insist on being free and freestanding and able to resist the power of politics, the power of authoritarian governments.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rae said the quest for academic freedom has been a long battle in many Western democratic countries and institutions. And he pointed to \u201cterrible irony\u201d of events unfolding on the very day of his address to highlight the fragility of academic freedom in the present era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rae put a spotlight on the decision by the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump to ban Harvard University from enrolling international students \u2014 a response to the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based school\u2019s refusal to divulge visa information about its foreign students to the U.S. government. The clash over foreign students \u2014 who account for about one-quarter of Harvard\u2019s student population \u2014 follow previous conflicts between the prestigious Ivy League university and the Trump administration over the centuries-old institution\u2019s governance, alleged \u201cideological\u201d indoctrinating of students and purported failure to vigorously combat antisemitism on its campus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPresident Trump has done that because Harvard has exercised its academic freedom in telling the government of the United States that he cannot dictate their policies on diversity, equity, and inclusion,\u201d said Rae. \u201cThey refuse to do what he wants and expects them to do. So this is just another escalation of the battle.\u201d In a bid to prevent the ban on international students, Harvard promptly sued the Trump administration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rae, Canada\u2019s UN ambassador since August 2020, emphasized the importance of preserving academic freedom at a time when governments and institutional pressures continue to make that freedom uncertain. He said the historic commitment of educational institutions to the \u201csacred\u201d principle of intellectual freedom has been key to universities maintaining \u201ctheir ability to withstand the impact of political interference.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though deeply rooted in history, the struggle to uphold academic freedom is very much a contemporary fight, Rae warned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is not some medieval battle. This is not some battle of the 19th century about the emergence of modern science and how modern scientists insisted on their right to tell the truth as they found it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe key thing to remember now is it\u2019s a battle that\u2019s still ongoing. In fact, it\u2019s even more intense and significant, because the country that has the largest number of great universities in the world \u2014 the United States \u2014 is right now engaged in a systematic attack on academic freedom. And it is what authoritarian governments do.\u201d<\/p>\u2014 Hon. Bob Rae, Ambassador of Canada to the United Nations<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe key thing to remember now is it\u2019s a battle that\u2019s still ongoing,\u201d he continued. \u201cIn fact, it\u2019s even more intense and significant, because the country that has the largest number of great universities in the world \u2014 the United States \u2014 is right now engaged in a systematic attack on academic freedom. And it is what authoritarian governments do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a cautionary tale, Rae referenced the battle waged by his long-time friend and former Liberal Party colleague Michael Ignatieff, the Canadian scholar who experienced and then chronicled the attacks by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n on the Central European University \u2014 and its eventual expulsion from Budapest in 2019 \u2014 during Ignatieff\u2019s presidency of the institution. At the time, Ignatieff condemned the Hungarian government\u2019s \u201cunacceptable assault on our academic freedom,\u201d and he was later awarded the prestigious Dan David Prize for his efforts to defend democratic values and the independence of scholarship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat university,\u201d said Rae, \u201cwas basically thrown out of Hungary by (Prime Minister) Orb\u00e1n because he saw it as a direct threat to his ability to control thought, control the direction of academic thinking in his country. And he didn’t want foreign students, and he didn\u2019t want other people hanging around and infecting the rest of the society with democracy, with what the democracy intended.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In individual terms, Rae said academic freedom is about scholars pursuing knowledge \u201caccording to their own conscience and according to their own determination\u201d \u2014 a message well framed for a conference dedicated to strengthening Canadian support for scholars at risk from around the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Underlying the principle of academic freedom, he added, is the idea that the pursuit of knowledge is valuable for its own sake \u2014 not because it\u2019s useful for a particular government or any other centre of power in society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Hon. Bob Rae, Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations, emphasized in his conference remarks that defenders of academic freedom must always extend protection to the expression of views they vehemently disagree with, or which are even widely considered outright wrong. [Photo \u00a9 Conference News Team]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Freedom to ask questions, to take an independent view, and to express dissent must be protected by societies, said Rae. When people who speak up are unprotected, a \u201cclimate of fear\u201d is quickly created, he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe degree of a real dissent and dissonance becomes more and more restricted \u2014 and so restricted that, in fact, you have to say it doesn\u2019t exist, because anybody who puts their hand up will either be killed or arrested,\u201d said Rae, explaining how quickly fear can turn into authoritarian oppression. \u201cThis is not alarmism when I say these things. This is actually happening.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rae emphasized the importance of scholars being free to pursue their inquiries, to subject hypotheses to experiment, peer review and critical feedback.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe only real way to be able to pursue knowledge is by being free, by having the ability to pursue it in your own way and to be tested,\u201d Rae said. \u201cNot by a government bureaucracy that says, \u2018This is not OK\u2019 or \u2018This is OK\u2019 but by a group of peers who say, \u2018We think it\u2019s OK, but it\u2019s not that good and you could improve it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAn academically free institution is one where not everybody has to have the same ideas and the same thoughts. In fact, quite the opposite. We want to see more diversity of thought, more the ability of people to express themselves in different ways, provided the climate in which that is done is a civil climate.\u201d<\/p>\u2014 Hon. Bob Rae, President of the UN Economic and Social Council<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Though truth may never be uncontested, Rae said he believes there can be things that are truer than others. However, freedom is not threatened by contested truths, but by conformity, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe pursuit of knowledge and the pursuit of truth is different from the pursuit of certainty,\u201d he said. \u201cCertainty is all about conformism, and certainty is all about people having to line up and swear an oath and having to say, \u2018This is what we know and this is what we do.\u2019 The pursuit of freedom is of a very different value than the pursuit of certainty.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rae emphasized how \u201ccritically important\u201d it is to respect a diversity of views, even what might be considered incorrect ones, saying that is what defending academic freedom is all about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAn academically free institution is one where not everybody has to have the same ideas and the same thoughts. In fact, quite the opposite,\u201d he said. \u201cWe want to see more diversity of thought, more the ability of people to express themselves in different ways, provided the climate in which that is done is a civil climate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He added: \u201cI need to put myself on the side of the people who believe that academic freedom is important to allow people to say things that are unpopular, that many people don\u2019t like, that many people don\u2019t agree with, that many people don\u2019t think should be allowed to be said. And I think we all know that those are the times and the places where we need strong institutions to really protect people.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bob Rae, Canada\u2019s Ambassador to the United Nations, had some blunt messages for conference participants when he delivered a special address via video link from New York to the Scholars at Risk gathering at Carleton University on May 22. \u201cGovernments fear academic freedom,\u201d said Rae, the former Ontario NDP premier and former interim federal Liberal … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":567,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cusjc.ca\/scholars-at-risk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cusjc.ca\/scholars-at-risk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cusjc.ca\/scholars-at-risk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cusjc.ca\/scholars-at-risk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cusjc.ca\/scholars-at-risk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=607"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/cusjc.ca\/scholars-at-risk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":762,"href":"https:\/\/cusjc.ca\/scholars-at-risk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607\/revisions\/762"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cusjc.ca\/scholars-at-risk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cusjc.ca\/scholars-at-risk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cusjc.ca\/scholars-at-risk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cusjc.ca\/scholars-at-risk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}