This book proceeds from the premiss that respect for fundamental human rights – including the rights to freedom of expression, association and movement – is essential to the ability to conduct scholarly research without interference or manipulation, and to protect not only the integrity of the research but also the security of the researcher.

In the world today, academic freedom is threatened in many countries. Issuing a warning against this development and identifying its negative consequences, several of the book’s chapters highlight situations in which academic freedom is under increasing attack. Moreover, as scholarly research is linked to, and often has implications for, human rights, understanding the norms and principles that underpin human rights, and incorporating a human rights perspective into academic research, ensures that the results of this research are more accurate and comprehensive, and enables more responsible solutions to pressing societal challenges such as climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic to be reached. The chapters of the volume are revised and updated versions of papers given at an international conference in The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in September 2019.


Jakob Lothe is Professor of English literature at the University of Oslo and leader of the Committee on Human Rights in The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.


Contents

Acknowledgments

Jakob Lothe
Introduction

Rebecca Everly
The Role of National Academies in Protecting Human Rights

Ayse Erzan
Research and Reaching out to the Public – Chance and Necessity

Homa Hoodfar
Building a Transnational Movement for Academic Freedom

Petra Mária Gyöngyi
Research and Human Rights in Hungary: Academic Freedom in Times of Uncertainty

Cathrine Thorleifsson
Understanding Dehumanization: How Scholarship can Defend the Human in an Era of Illiberal Nationalism

Helle Porsdam
Linking Research and Human Rights: The Right to Science

Geir Ulfstein
Human Rights Law Protection of Academics and Academic Work – its Importance and Limits

Odin Lysaker
Dignity in Natality: Hannah Arendt on Human Rights in Dark Times

Anton Weiss-Wendt
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Genocide Convention as a Cold War Flashpoint, 1946–1948

Nigel Biggar
Why the Right to Academic Freedom is not Enough

Cassandra Falke
“The Language of All Nations”: Defining Human Rights Fiction

Contributors

Index


ISBN 978-82-8390-044-6, 209 pp., hardcover
Format: 15x22,5 cm, weight 0,5 kg, year of publication 2020, language: English