Controversies over the meaning and scope of academic freedom aren’t just campus flashpoints, but track deeper ideological fault lines – even beyond the Anglosphere in countries where “culture-war” battles over universities are less prominent.
A new peer-reviewed study in Politics & Policy surveyed more than 3,300 people in the UK and Japan to examine how citizens understand academic freedom when it is framed in concrete terms rather than as an abstract slogan. Why this approach? Because according to the authors, survey respondents will often express strong support for free inquiry in the abstract, but that headline support can soften when people are asked to apply the principle to contentious cases involving offence, alleged “harm”, reputational risk, or political controversy. Citing HEPI polling, they note that while 56% agreed that “free speech is important”, support fell to 46% when respondents were asked about “speech that some people might find offensive or upsetting”.
Methodologically, the authors therefore avoid collapsing attitudes into a single “pro–academic freedom” score, and instead treat each scenario as a discrete test, asking respondents to judge specific situations on a 7-point agree/disagree scale, with each item designed to capture a different dimension of academic freedom in practice.
The scenarios included whether universities should avoid conducting research that could cause offence among “marginalised groups”; whether academics should be protected to research and publish their results “regardless of whether they cause offence”; and whether universities should work with everyone, including multinational corporations or political regimes in countries that “violate basic human rights”.
Across the UK and Japan samples, left–right ideology was a powerful organiser of opinion on academic freedom. On average, respondents who place themselves further to the right were more inclined to endorse expansive protections for academics and less inclined to accept constraints justified by offence. Specifically, right-leaning participants were more likely to reject the idea that universities should avoid research because it might give offence, and more likely to agree that academics should be able to research and publish even when their work triggers public controversy. What is striking, the authors note, is that this pattern is not confined to Britain’s highly politicised university debates. It is also visible in Japan, where public disputes of this kind are less salient, despite academic freedom being formally protected under Article 23 of the constitution.
Respondents on the left, by contrast, were more willing to support limits where research was framed as offensive or “harmful”. In the authors’ interpretation, that tendency is consistent with a more “accountability”-oriented view of academic freedom, in which autonomy is not treated as absolute but weighed against wider ethical and social responsibilities.
However, the UK–Japan comparison looks different once the questions turn from protecting controversial research to institutional partnerships. In the UK, attitudes to these partnership scenarios split along left–right lines: right-leaning respondents are more supportive of universities working with multinational corporations, but less supportive of engagement with political regimes in countries that “violate basic human rights”. In Japan, by contrast, left–right ideology does not significantly predict responses to either partnership item, suggesting that these “who we work with” questions are more politically polarised in Britain than in Japan.
In their discussion, the authors argue that these patterns help explain why debates over academic freedom so often feel polarised and unresolved, and why appeals to “academic freedom” alone may fail to persuade sceptics.
Readers can explore the full analysis, including the role of trust in expertise, by clicking here.
This article forms part of the Committee for Academic Freedom’s monitoring of developments in UK higher education. To receive monthly updates and analysis on cases affecting academic freedom, click the link and subscribe to our newsletter.