Academic freedom is under pressure across countries and disciplines. The severe crises that societies face call for researchers to create a more trustworthy and compassionate academic environment in which ideas and creativity can flourish more than they can today. 

The reason for this need is dialectic in the sense that it is difficult to pose the right questions or come up with the right solutions to the crises we find ourselves in – when we ourselves as researchers are bound by systems whose very logic is the underlying driver of the crises: Terror of comparison, the cage of rationality, pseudo-work, mistrust, and unhealthy hierarchies are just some of the labels that could be applied to academia today.

Therefore, we need to find a path to free ourselves from the very logic that encapsulates academia - to create an academic system built on openness, an ethics of care, integrity, and trust. This is an impossible task to solve individually, and, more than ever, we need to come together across disciplines, universities, and countries to create a new collective movement of scientists and researchers.

It is a key priority of the Movement for a Free Academia to explore – not just theoretically – but physically and organizationally ways to create true academic freedom for researchers. We will meet at symposia over the coming years to manifest the manifesto.