Academic Freedom vs Autocratic Repression

Webinar Presentation to Scholars at Risk Workshop
University of London, March 3, 2026

Click on Scholarship at Risk to register for subsequent webinars
on March 10 (Session 2) and March 17 (Session 3)

By Prof. Alan Whitehorn, Kingston ON, 3 March 2026

These days feel like stressful and pessimistic times about academic freedom and rights. However, the long arc of human history is part of a several millennia-long dvergent pull between democratic speech vs authoritarian restrictions. It is the tension between an opened-ended pluralism vs a closed, dogmatic orthodoxy that was explored by Karl Popper, amidst World War II, in his two-volume The Open Society and Its Enemies. We can observe that throughout history, intellectuals and scholars have been at risk from the state and religious administrative authorities. A few historical examples can be observed. From ancient history, Socrates, an author and teacher in ancient Athens (470-399 BC), was charged with “corrupting youth” and sentenced to death by the regime. Giordano Bruno, an Italian philosopher, scientist and poet (1548-1600), was tried and burned for heresy during the Roman Inquisition. Gallileo Gallilei, an Italian astronomer and scientist (1564-1642), was convicted of heresy and sentenced to life imprisonment (later reduced to house arrest) for publicizing the revolutionary and paradigm changing idea of a heliocentric view of the universe. Even in the early modern era, we observe that John Locke (1632-1704), a pioneering British political theorist, who while in political exile in Holland in the 1680s, penned major treatises on government.

Examples from the modern era also exist. Early on in Hitler’s Germany of the early 1930s, academics and writers, particularly on the left, were harassed and dismissed from universities by the Nazi regime. Amongst many others, the critical Marxist thinkers of the Frankfurt school, such as Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm and Max Horkheimer, had to flee the reactionary regime. The once-strong democratic intellectual opposition failed to stop the brutal German march towards authoritarianism in the 1930s. Sadly, it took a world war and tens of millions dead to rectify this failure to stop the rise and spread of dictatorship. 

During the 1950s amidst Joseph McCarthy’s witch-hunt, American academics and writers, particularly on the left, lost jobs and income, and reputations were initially tarnished. The American public lost too many thoughtful analytical voices, which the world critically needed in the post-war era.

Looking at our current era, one notes that there has been a long and important tradition in Russian history of dissident writers being arrested and/or forced into political exile. In Putin’s post 2000 Russia, since his consolidation of power, there has been an ongoing erosion of freedoms, narrowing of allowable public speech and writing, state violence against peaceful protesters, mass arrests and even killings of those in political and intellectual opposition to Putin. One can suggest that the collapse of domestic freedom in Russia was a key factor in facilitating the foreign invasion of Ukraine. Authoritarianism can spill over into other countries.

Under Trump’s presidency, the United States has seen growing attacks on American universities, academics and many media journalists. There has been a narrowing of allowable topics, cutting off university and institute funding, arbitrary changing of university regulations and replacement of governing boards, threating of professors’ jobs and tenure, revoking student visas and enrolment, efforts at judicial charges or legal lawsuits, and physical threats by political extremist followers of American president Trump. Conditions have deteriorated rapidly, much faster and further than most anticipated. Some of the parallels to Germany in the early 1930s are profoundly troubling.

In writings on the 1915 Armenian Genocide, the risk to authors have not been unique to me as a scholar. Far more serious have been the threats and deeds against others. Notable examples include Taner Akcam (1953-), the pioneering and pre-eminent Turkish scholar writing on the Armenian Genocide, who had been earlier jailed by the regime, became a political émigré, experienced global travel restrictions caused by the Turkish state’s reactions to his writings, and was the target of the regime’s reputational attacks upon him. He continues to speak out against genocide denial.

Hrant Dink (1954-2007) was an Istanbul-based Armenian author and publisher who had been charged in court (under article #301) for offending the Turkish nation, like other notable authors such as Orhan Pamuk and Elif Shafak. Tragically, he was shot and killed by a militant Turkish ultra-nationalist. He did, however, become an inspirational martyr of free speech and democracy. Sadly, too many Turkish intellectuals have gone into exile.

I myself am the Armenian-Canadian grandson of an orphan of the 1915 genocide. I am also a genocide scholar, activist and poet. I have published books and articles and even edited an encyclopedia on the genocide: The Armenian Genocide: The Essential Reference Guide (2015). Over several decades, I have also offered public lectures and presentations, and lobbied for recognition of the mass deportations and killings as genocide. I helped provide documentary information to our Members of Parliament prior to Canadian Parliamentary recognition in the early 2000s.

Subsequently, in 2008, the Turkish state threatened significant negative consequences on the Canadian government, military and myself personally, if I did not stop my academic and activist work on the Armenian Genocide. The Turkish government demanded that my university teaching and writings should be placed under full critical review. What sort of institutional and personal responses to such threats should we offer? As a democracy, the Canadian government defended my right, as a senior academic, to continue my professional activity. The high-level inter-governmental incident was not made public at the time; nevertheless, my personal security became a serious concern. An obvious issue was: Should I become silent in a quest for apparent relative safety? Or should I resist such foreign government pressures and threats and continue to speak up? I even penned a poem entitled “A Choice” about this dilemma. In fact, I wrote so many poems during this difficult time that they became the core of a new book collection entitled Just Poems: Reflections on the Armenian Genocide (2009). At the back of my mind, I had calculated that if something violent happened to me, such a volume could be a possible ‘last testament’. But the impact of the threats existed not only on me as a scholar, but also potentially on my extended family. It became a topic of lengthy discussions between my wife and myself and other family members. These were definitely stressful times.

There were, of course, immediate practical safety measures that I could undertake. I became more careful about where I lectured and what on-site safety options existed, when doing public lectures. On entering an auditorium, I immediately assessed my possible rapid exit options, if such was needed. Informal and formal security discussions and arrangements took place for several years. I did not let my travel and hotel arrangements become as widely known. I was more careful about my email and internet presence. One alternate computer always remained off line as a safety measure. I consciously avoided social media, and prior to widespread cellphone usage, usually opted not to post current photos with my publications. When I travelled, I did so with a stripped-down tablet, which contained only the information that I needed for the trip. I certainly was more cautious in my travel itinerary and avoided travel to particular countries, most notably Turkey.

However, it was not just me that was at potential risk. My books and writings could conceivably put some foreign colleagues at risk. For example, at international conferences, when I met with some Turkish scholars, authors and activists, I often offered them a complimentary copy of my book Just Poems on the Armenian Genocide, but only if they felt safe returning to Turkey with such a book. About half, usually from the older generation who had endured more years of political and intellectual repression, politely declined for personal safety reasons. I actually agreed with their pessimism about the prospects of democracy in Turkey. Subsequent events proved us correct.

Relatedly, one of my valued friends is Ruben Vardanyan, a Russian-Armenian billionaire philanthropist, activist and former Nagorno Karabakh government official, who remains a political prisoner in a jail in Azerbaijan.

The ongoing war in Gaza and Israeli occupation of the West Bank have impacted and fractured the global academic community in genocide studies. I have lost at least one valued friend, a fellow genocide scholar. Colleagues have been maligned or even threatened both domestically and internationally, funding in the US has been withheld, and some immigrants’ student visas in the United States revoked. Academic officials of the International Association of Genocide Studies have been targeted by email and other means. At least one new organization has been created, the Genocide and Holocaust Studies Crisis Network. Information on the latter group’s mailing list and scheduled meetings are carefully guarded to protect academic members. Meanwhile, the victims of genocide continue to suffer.

What is to be done in our challenging times? In the 19^th century, Russians posed an existential question about the future of the country and whether it should look inward in a more closed fashion or look outward and become more open. That is a question that not only still confronts Russia in the 21^st century, but also a number of other societies. As Karl Popper and others have asked: do we strive for a more open society or passively concede our freedoms and rights to a more closed, authoritarian polity?

Inevitably, there are contrasting visions and pulls in different directions between the public intellectual vs authoritarian state. This can be expressed in a number of dualisms such as diversity vs orthodoxy, truth to power vs coercive power over truth, difficult issues revealed and explored vs. key facts hidden, challenging arbitrary authority vs imposing obedience, ultimately an open society vs a closed regime.

Sometimes a peaceful coexistence occurs between the state’s demand for obedience versus the public questioning by academics. However, far too often, it is an ongoing struggle, and even at times, a bitter all-out battle. We must be prepared for when an authoritarian state, instead of an uneasy, but peaceful truce, decides to declare all-out war on academia. It is a war of contrasting ideas, the brutal imposition from above of a rigid and closed orthodoxy vs the open-ended democratic quest for understanding and truth.

As academics and public intellectuals, we have to make tough choices in an unjust world. We sometimes face estrangement from others who are afraid or have apparently declined to join us in solidarity. There is certainly the grave risk that when we stand up, we will become targets of a repressive regime. But what else is a decent and honest person to do? It is the nature of being an academic to speak truth to power. In the words of John Stuart Mill (1806-1873): “Better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.”

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Alan Whitehorn is an emeritus professor at the Royal Military College of Canada and was the first holder of the JS Woodsworth Chair in Humanities at Simon Fraser University in 1994-1996. As an academic, he writes on the topics of genocide, human rights, political parties and elections. As an award-winning poet, he explores the issue of genocide and its impact on Armenian-Canadian identity. Amongst his published books: Poems from the Diaspora: An Armenian Odyssey/Poesie dalla Diaspora: un’odissea armena; The Armenian Genocide: The Essential Reference Guide; Return to Armenia/Veradardz depi Hayastan; Just Poems: Reflections on the Armenian Genocide; Ancestral Voices: Identity, Ethnic Roots and a Genocide Remembered; The Armenian Genocide: Resisting the Inertia of Indifference (co-author with Lorne Shirinian); and Canadian Socialism: Essays on the CCF-NDP.