Co-Directors Nandini Ramanujam and Frédéric Mégret invite you to join the Centre for Human Rights & Legal Pluralism at McGill University in Montreal for a two half-day online conference:

This conference will bring together over 20 scholars from a variety of regions and disciplines to discuss current challenges to academic freedom, emphasizing transnational developments.  Four panels will discuss the following themes:

Panel 1 (June 9, 8:00 am EDT):  Imagining, Defending, Critiquing Academic Freedom will endeavor to get the conference discussions launched by articulating different visions and conceptualizations of academic freedom.

Panel 2 (June 9, 10:15 am EDT):  Diversity and the Democratization of Academic Freedom will explore the need to increase diversity and to decolonize higher education, and to what extent academic freedom can belong to certain groups or communities.

Panel 3 (June 10, 10:00 am EDT):  Between Authoritarianism and Populism: State Interference with Academic Freedom will discuss threats to academic freedom by states, both traditional authoritarian and new populists.

Panel 4 (June 10, 12:15 pm EDT):  Emerging Threats and Responses will discuss challenges to academic freedom stemming from the corporatization of universities, private funding, ideological monitoring, as well as other emerging threats. It will also explore possible avenues to address these issues.