Rising Antidemocracy, Declining Academic Freedom, and Challenges to Evidence-Based Knowledge

Abstract:

Today, amid rising antidemocracy around the world, scholars across all sectors of higher education are again having to ask what the responsibility of the intellectual is. Drawing on the historical example of the German academy under Hitler’s National Socialist regime, this article explores the challenges faced by Albert Einstein, who was forced to flee Europe in 1933. This historical example highlights the challenges in pursuing evidence-based knowledge under conditions of antidemocracy and intellectual censorship. Einstein’s case not only reminds scholars today what is at stake when academic freedom is attacked but urges them to rethink their responsibility to students and the wider public and be proactive in resisting far-right political pressure and propaganda.

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