ACADEMIA AND POLITICS – ENTANGLED, YET NOT THE SAME (original) (raw)
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This article explores the attacks to which gender studies programs in Central and Eastern Europe have been subject and the responses such attacks have elicited in the context of analogous phenomena in other parts of the world. The undermining of gender studies in recent years has been aggravated by the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic that has exacerbated financial crises of educational institutions while also-in some contexts-providing cover for restrictions on academic freedom. Our specific focus here, however, is on how illiberal policies have limited the scope of academic gender studies, sometimes calling into question their very existence. To identify the modalities through which illiberal governments may narrow gender studies programs, we draw on Pirro and Stanley's analysis of illiberal policymakers' toolkit based on "forging," "breaking," and "bending." We consider these categories useful for our analysis but add a fourth: "de-specification"-a purposeful submersion, or redefinition, of gender studies into other programs, such as family studies. Our purpose is not to present an exhaustive analysis but rather to delineate a framework for analyzing such attacks and the responses to which they have given rise, and then to indicate some questions for further research. As such, this article should be read as a work in progress that seeks to explicate the modalities of the attacks on gender studies in higher education to which contemporary illiberalism has given rise concomitantly with attacks on gender rights and emerging forms of resistance that bespeak the resilience of the gender academy.
Disputing “Gender” in Academia: Illiberalism and the Politics of Knowledge
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This article explores the attacks to which gender studies programs in Central and Eastern Europe have been subject and the responses such attacks have elicited in the context of analogous phenomena in other parts of the world. The undermining of gender studies in recent years has been aggravated by the effects of the Covid‐19 pandemic that has exacerbated financial crises of educational institutions while also—in some contexts—providing cover for restrictions on academic freedom. Our specific focus here, however, is on how illiberal policies have limited the scope of academic gender studies, sometimes calling into question their very existence. To identify the modalities through which illiberal governments may narrow gender studies programs, we draw on Pirro and Stanley’s analysis of illiberal policymakers’ toolkit based on “forging,” “breaking,” and “bending.” We consider these categories useful for our analysis but add a fourth: “de‐specification”—a purposeful submersion, or redef...
Academics against Gender Studies
Kvinder, Køn & Forskning
In Germany, knowledge production by gender researchers has been under attack not only from male rights activists, Christian fundamentalists and right-wing parties and movements, but also from scientists in various fi elds. Based on a discourse analysis of their publications (2009-2017) and a media reception analysis, this essay analyses arguments used by ‘gender’-critical scientists and the socio-political backgrounds to where they position themselves. I show that their arguments do not belong to scientifi c discourse, but can be interpreted as a form of science populism which lends ‘scientific’ authority to the formation of authoritarian, anti-feminist discourses that aims to reify ‘secure’ knowledge about ‘gender’. Accordingly, ‘gender-critical’ scientists are read mainly by non-scientific publics, including right-wing and Christian fundamentalist media and actors. As I will show, the phenomenon of scientists taking action against ‘gender’ can be situated in historical antifeminis...
In October 2018, the Hungarian government issued a decree prohibiting gender studies courses in all universities across the country. Vast national and international protests and petitions followed, from both the general public, as well as academic and professional communities, including numerous universities and scientific organizations. The Political Studies Association (PSA) confirmed that gender studies form an integral part of understanding the complexities of social interaction, the impact of policy, and the dynamics of the economy. Similarly, the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) maintains that gender studies is an internationally recognized discipline and an established multidisciplinary area of research and teaching in the social sciences, which helps to understand dynamics and power relations in our society. The aim of the event was to contribute to this conversation and to discuss the place and role of gender studies in education and research, as well as the importance of academic freedom for the functioning of democratic societies. Zuzana Fellegi (Researcher and lecturer on gender, human rights and European policies, Institute of International Relations and Anglo-American University, Prague) opened the debate with stress on gender studies as an internationally recognized discipline and proposed the main topics of the event to be: 1) the situation in Hungary and its possible spillover to other Central European countries, and 2) the legitimacy and legality of external regulation of academic curricula in universities in general. The keynote speaker Andrea Pető (Professor, Department of Gender Studies, Central European University, Budapest) started her speech with an alarming general question: whether " we are ready to die for science. " She shared her personal experience, when she as a publisher in the field of gender studies, received life threatening anonymous email messages and numerous hateful comments under her posts. She notified the university as well as the police, but the investigators claimed to be unable to resolve her case. Not only the situation remained unresolved, but other colleagues of hers from the gender studies community in Budapest received similar messages. According to professor Pető, the anti-gender studies movement aimed at scientists, educators and thinkers has spread all over Hungary and become a new phenomenon, connected with the emergence of public hate speech. Along with her colleagues, she analysed this situation in the article Gender as Symbolic Glue: How 'Gender' Became an Umbrella Term for the Rejection of the (Neo) Liberal Order, and noted the emergence of a new form of polypore state, characterised by state financed NGOs, stress on traditional family,
The Gender Wars, Academic Freedom and Education
Journal of Philosophy of Education, 2021
Philosophical arguments regarding academic freedom can sometimes appear removed from the real conflicts playing out in contemporary universities. This paper focusses on a set of issues at the front line of these conflicts, namely, questions regarding sex, gender and gender identity. We document the ways in which the work of academics has been affected by political activism around these questions and, drawing on our respective disciplinary expertise as a sociologist and a philosopher, elucidate the costs of curtailing discussion on fundamental demographic and conceptual categories. We discuss some philosophical work that addresses the conceptual distinction between academic freedom and free speech and explore how these notions are intertwined in significant ways in universities. Our discussion elucidates and emphasises the educational costs of curtailing academic freedom. The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.
‘Thank God for the Catholic Church!’, Fassin quotes an imagined gender studies expert, as the anti-gender movement is gaining momentum in France. My response reflects on an issue that remains unaddressed in this volume: what are the consequences of the increasing public exposure of gender studies as a profession due to the surge of anti-gender movements? Recently gender studies scholars can indeed not complain about the lack of wider social interest in their work – just the opposite is true. In Poland, ‘gender’ was chosen as the word of the year in 2013. The mailboxes of gender studies faculty members have been filled with emails with queries about their research and invitations to public debates in different media. Can the profession of academic feminism meet the expectations of what Fassin calls the ‘double exposure’, as anti-gender movements, demonstrations, and discourse brought not only national but also international recognition to gender studies scholars (Peto˝2016)? And in what sense is this different from ‘mainstreaming’ gender, which has been the aim of gender studies professionals?
This study analyzes relations between professionalization, activism, and biographic experience within trajectories of three female scholars of gender and sexuality studies, an area with tradition in the political field outside the university. As a hypothesis, we maintain that analyzing these trajectories allows rebuilding both this area's institutionalization process and its transformations regarding how social sciences are researched and taught, as well as changes among public, private, and intimate spaces that reconfigure biographies of institutional subjects. In a qualitative strategy, in-depth interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of researchers to inquire into their university development, academic insertion, and incorporation into and development in the scientific system. Our interest is to take into account the particularities of a generation that entered the academic system in a context of professionalization that rapidly changed the daily work of Argentinean universities. As part of our conclusions, we claim that the interviewees' incorporation into this knowledge area encourages them to reread their biographies and politicizes their personal narratives through a specific (type) of knowledge. At the same time, teaching work is re-signified in terms of activism for its chances of intervening in students' biographies and current pedagogical dynamics. Finally, we claim that this activity is a form of resistance against the current devaluation of knowledge transmission and also against the over-valorization of the circulation of knowledge in peer-review international journals Keywords Academia — Activism — Biography — Gender Studies — Professionalization.