On politics and precarity in academia

Abstract

In addition to 'invisible' structural constraints and insecurity, political crises have had their impact on academia in recent years. We have witnessed numerous political attempts to influence academic research, and not only in so-called authoritarian states. In Turkey, almost 6,000 academics lost their jobs and were accused of 'promoting terrorism' after the coup attempt in summer 2016. In the USA, the Trump administration threatened to cut the budget for climate research in 2016. And in Hungary, a new law openly targeted George Soros's Open Society Foundations and caused the displacement of the Central European University (CEU) to Vienna.