קול קורא // כנס: בעיות של חופש מדעי בהיסטוריה המודרנית ובימינו [פרנקפורט 11/18] דדליין=1.4.18

Problems of Scientific Freedom in Modern and Contemporary History
Frankfurt am Main
Goethe-University in Frankfurt am Main, Campus Westend, in the building of the Excellence cluster „Normative Orders“.

02.11.2018 – 03.11.2018

Over the last few years, the public discourse has witnessed a renewed interest in the question of scientific freedom, triggered by several current occasions: educational institutions are bleeding especially in countries that were affected the most by the financial crisis of the last decade. Positions driven by hate, racism, and obscure worldviews are gaining ground within the political movements. Even in the states hitherto known as bastions of tolerance and liberalism, the broader scientific community is coming under pressure of legitimacy due to conservative electoral successes.

There are examples of how critical research communities are deprived of infrastructural support and how governments break collaboration with scientists as advisors and experts in various political fields. Although not at all a novelty, such phenomena have lost nothing of their topicality and are of utmost importance.Moreover, the global dimension of the topic is often neglected and there is a need to grapple the question of scientific freedom in its relevance to world and global history, since the current constraints imposed upon scientific freedom are not at all nation-specific.In view of the increasing devaluation of critical thinking worldwide, it is not only appropriate, but also urgent to reflect on the various aspects of scientific freedom in the transnational and cross-national context. Issues at hand are:

– The human right on opinion, education and research, and its substantial meaning for the society

– The financial impasse imposed upon the academia by the financial crisis and neoliberal politics, i.e. the curtailing of the financial and infrastructural opportunities, among them the cutting of wages and the creation of precarious working conditions

– Different forms of reactionary populism and anti-intellectualism, i.e. the exclusion of scientifically founded positions from the public discourse, as well as the valorization of populist, racist and other obscure positions (as depicted in the phrase „knowledge diverges from power”)

– The undermining of the educational infrastructure, i.e. the closing down and liquidation of unpopular areas of scientific research

– The state repression directed at disliked researchers, i.e. the ban on free thinking

– The dismissal and expulsion of scientists and thereby their incorporation into the great global streams of forced emigration

– The unequal distribution of knowledge potential (brain-drain und brain-gain) and thereby the redistribution of future chances between the expelling and receiving countries.

The purpose of the conference is thus to deal with varying phenomena, from the restricting of scientific freedom within the last 250 years with its impact on the working conditions of scientists, to the dismissal and expulsion of intellectuals with respect to the impact of these phenomena both on the intellectual environment of the respective countries in particular and on human societies in general.

For this purpose, we invite both contributions that take on these questions in the light of historical or current case examples of ideologically motivated interventions to science, as well as general thematic approaches to scientific freedom in specific regional contexts. Contributions from both the field of fundamental historical research and applied interdisciplinary research that grapple with current political issues are welcome.

The case examples can be drawn from the rich repertoire of the successfully implemented extension of scientific freedoms as well as from that of the restrictions imposed upon science and scientists across the globe. We welcome paper proposals on current phenomena in the Western and Eastern hemisphere as much as we welcome contributions that deal with repression and hostility to science in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The politically motivated granting of freedoms for the purpose of knowledge expansion in areas such as new technologies, medicine, and the not-so-nobly motivated weapons armament research, on the one hand, and the repression imposed upon the representatives of unpopular scientific positions as well as the long list of recent expulsions, on the other, are equally relevant.

The conference will be held in English (probably some partes in German depending to the composition of the panels). Deadline for the submission of proposals (in English, max. 1 page and a short bio) is April 1st, 2018.

We have applied for reimbursement of travel expenses and accommodation of the speakers and can presumably offer a grant for travel expenses, probably more. In the spirit of scientific freedom no conference fee will be charged.