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This brief discusses cases of neo-nationalist violations of academic freedom in Hungary and Poland. The most prominent case of neo-nationalist violation of academic freedom in Hungary is the fate of the Central European University (CEU). The circumstances of CEU's forced move out of Hungary came before the European Court of Justice regarding it a possible violation of EU law. The Court cited the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) under one of the three pillars of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) 1994 agreement, free trade, and the determination that CEU was a form of international educational services that should not be denied to the people of Hungary. Poland has a similar hostile environment to academics and academic freedom, although with a glimmer of hope following recent elections. The brief also discusses how such open breaches of academic freedom as in Hungary or Poland, in which politicians directly try to exert influence on research institutions and professors, are fortunately rather rare in Germany. However, a confluence of factors perhaps obscures the differences between "academic freedom" and the "freedom of opinion." In Germany, academic freedom includes the search for topics, rigorous methodical investigation, and professional norms to express findings and competent opinions, whereas the free speech is outside of these professional norms. The brief concludes with a discussion of the role of universities and the future of democracy in the context of ensuring a space for free and open debate.

This paper examines how international education (IE) as a tool of government foreign policy is challenged in an era of new geopolitics, where China's growing ambitions have increased rivalry with the West. It compares U.S. and Canada as cases first, by examining rationales and approaches to IE in both countries, second, IE relations with China before conflict and third, current controversies and government policy responses to IE relations with China. The paper concludes identifying contextual factors that shape each country's engagement with IE, but suggests that moving forward, the future of IE in a world of new geopolitics is likely to be far more complex and conflictual.

The history of higher education has revealed all the forms of structural change associated with growth. The following focuses on a special form that involves growth, specialization, and proliferation, and applies mainly but not exclusively to universities. In search for a descriptive term, I have settled on the concept of "structural accretion," a composite form of growth. Its simple definition is incorporation of new functions over time without, however, shedding existing ones or splitting into separate organizations. It is a complex process reflecting, in the main, the following driving forces: expanding as a result of new opportunities for activities, usually but not always relevant to the main missions of the university: the fact that most growth has been a matter of mutual opportunism; and the power of academic competition and emulation in a highly stratified prestige hierarchy of institutions. This paper reflects the first of three Clark Kerr Lectures on the Role of Higher Education in Society given on January 24, 2012 by Neil J. Smelser on the Berkeley campus and on the subject of "Higher Education: The Play of Continuity and Crisis."

This paper analyzes the roots and implications of conflict between the conduct of science and government predilections in the United States, including the security state and neoconservative control of Washington. Three major conflicts are discussed: the emergence of new security and secrecy regimes that seek control of science; religiously derived moral viewpoints that seek to limit scientific research; and the purposeful shaping and censoring of scientific findings for political gain. All three policy issues, argues the author, have their roots in a growing public mistrust of science and its purposes, but also the actions of the current presidential administration. What is needed, he states, is a set of rules rooted in several common understandings or rules. First, policies resting on scientific or technological issues, like all public policies, are decided in the end not just by experts but by a variety of people and interests. Second, objective scientific results, tested by repeated efforts at confirmation, are necessary (though not sufficient) elements in such policy decisions. Third, if the scientists responsible for those findings are controlled or silenced by particular policy interests, or committed in advance to any particular category of policy outcome, the resulting decisions are likely to be wrong. If adopted in advance of the installation of the next administration, or at the outset, such a set of rules could be seen a forward-looking improvement in governance, rather than as yet another criticism of what has been going on in this one.