Authors

Discussion

The ongoing debate on academic freedom and what kinds of academic practice it refers to allowed to formulate a number of functional definitions of what constitutes academic freedom. There is a separate classification of approaches of how academic freedom can be studied aggregated by Spannagel (2020). Yet the common ground among various intersecting interpretations based on collective (AAUP 1915; EUA 1988; UNESCO 1997) or individual (Hayek 1960; Humboldt 2002; Karran 2009; Metzger 1987; Post 2006; Russel 1993) interpretations, is that the core universal principles of academic freedom are freedom to research and teach. What is left behind in all of these definitions is the place and the role of students of the academic freedom in Academia.

Traditionally, students were considered rather as “second-range” beneficiaries from the academic freedom, while the professors were the first. This happens because the status of educators is either conceptually stretched to scholars, ignoring the existing power gap between university employees and students, or the opposite, students are neglected as contributors to academic knowledge (Macfarlane 2012).

The need in defining academic freedom for students poses not only ideological (how do we perceive students as faculty and researchers) but a theoretical puzzle. Should the students be approached as a social movement? Should they be researched as a professional group? Should they enjoy separate freedom or is it possible to find an overarching conceptual solution that would protect anyone who is forming a university?

The proposed roundtable aims to reflect these questions using the data conducted within the project on academic rights and freedoms by CISR-USA for teachers and researchers, and later for students from the Russian academic environment. The special focus of the investigation was the social interaction between the students and professors as a possible field of academic rights. The students from regional universities, from departments of humanities and social sciences, as well as natural sciences, were invited to discuss the question of students’ rights in Academia.