IPSA Statement on Academic Freedom 2026
IPSA affirms its commitment to the academic freedoms necessary for the social sciences to flourish. In line with its Mission Statement and the UNESCO Recommendation concerning the Status of Higher-Education Teaching Personnel (1997), IPSA upholds the principle that academic freedom is essential to research, teaching, publication, public engagement, and the free exchange of ideas across borders and institutions.
Over the years, the Association has strengthened its work on academic freedom through research and guidance for its members. It issued the IPSA Academic Freedom Report 2021, presenting the results and analysis of a survey on violations of academic freedom conducted among its collective members in 2020. Building on this work, and in response to requests for practical guidance, the Guidelines on Academic Freedom Protection Procedures were developed in 2025. These are available on the IPSA website and are intended to help national associations shape policies and procedures suited to their own contexts.
For IPSA, academic freedom means the freedom of academics and researchers to work freely and effectively in undertaking their research and teaching, and to disseminate their ideas and results to colleagues and the public, nationally as well as internationally. It also includes the liberty of scholars and researchers to express opinions freely about the institution or system in which they work, to fulfil their functions without discrimination or fear of repression by the State or any other actor, and to participate in professional or representative academic bodies.
IPSA recognizes that academic freedoms can be threatened both directly and indirectly. Direct threats include arbitrary arrest, harassment, censorship, intimidation, and violence against scholars. Indirect threats include discriminatory employment practices, constraints on promotion and tenure, politically motivated restrictions on research funding, interference in curricula, and limitations on scholarly communication.
IPSA further recognizes that war, armed conflict, and other forms of organized violence can gravely undermine academic freedom. Such violations include the killing and maiming of academics, attacks on universities and other sites of learning, destruction of archives and research infrastructure, forced displacement, and restrictions on the mobility and exchange on which academic life depends. These acts are incompatible with academic freedom, with the protection of higher education, and with respect for humanitarian law.
IPSA therefore calls on all authorities and relevant actors to protect scholars, students, universities, and research institutions, to respect humanitarian law, and to uphold the conditions necessary for free inquiry, open debate, and peaceful scholarly exchange. IPSA also urges its members not to adopt or support policies and practices that conflict with these principles.
Political scientists facing threats to academic freedom may seek guidance and support through IPSA’s Secretariat and relevant IPSA bodies. In reaffirming these principles, IPSA underscores that academic freedom, institutional autonomy, and peace are mutually reinforcing conditions for scholarship and democratic life.
IPSA Executive Committee
April 2026
IPSA Guidelines on Academic Freedom Protection Procedures
Academic Freedom entered the global political agenda in the 1990s, when UNESCO agreed on a common definition. It is considered a central value of higher education and universities worldwide have integrated it at the core of their mission.
IPSA’s Mission Statement declares that IPSA aims “to support the academic freedoms needed for the social sciences to flourish” and several actions were taken in recent years to implement this objective. In 2016, IPSA adopted a Statement on Academic Freedoms, the provisions of which are considered as the necessary minimum to ensure that political scientists can work freely and effectively. The idea behind IPSA’s Statement was to invite national political science associations to play a relevant role in assessing the concept and practices of Academic Freedom, in raising public awareness, generating advocacy, and increasing protection for academic communities. Also in 2016, Ilter Turan, then IPSA President, established an ad hoc Committee on Academic Freedom comprised of members of IPSA’s Executive Committee (EC) as well as external advisers from different regions of the world. In 2018, then President Marianne Kneuer transformed this ad hoc Committee into a permanent body of the EC. One of the first actions taken by this Committee was to conduct a survey among IPSA’s collective members (national and regional political science associations) to identify problems and issues of Academic Freedom as well as practices to tackle these problems.
One of the outcomes of this survey was a widely shared request by the collective members for guidelines provided by IPSA that could help national associations shape a policy on Academic Freedom. To that purpose, the IPSA Committee on Academic Freedom produced Guidelines on Academic Freedom Protection Procedures that aim at providing national associations with suggestions for the establishment of national protocols regarding reactions to potential Academic Freedom limitations or attacks. The Guidelines also offer some suggestions for the establishment of a nationally formalized procedure for monitoring eventual violations of the academic freedoms of political scientists.
The provisions in the Guidelines are to be considered as suggestions that could/should be adapted to the specific national contexts.
IPSA Executive Committee
April 2025
READ THE GUIDELINES
IPSA Statement on Academic Freedom 2016
The IPSA Council approved the following IPSA Statement on Academic Freedom in conjunction with the 24th IPSA World Congress of Political Science in Poznań on 25 July 2016.
The full statement is available on this page.
IPSA Academic Freedom Report 2021
IPSA is proud to present the IPSA Academic Freedom Report 2021. Written by IPSA President Marianne Kneuer (2018-2021), the report presents the results and analysis of a survey on violations of Academic Freedom (AF) elaborated by the IPSA Committee on Academic Freedom (CAF), and conducted by the IPSA Secretariat among its collective members in 2020. 44 national and regional Political Science association members of IPSA responded to the survey.
The report is available here for all IPSA members – collective, institutional and individual – hoping that it can serve them as much as it can serve IPSA in order to get a better picture about the situation of AF violations in their national community or other regions.
IPSA Academic Freedom Report 2021 PDF
Background
International professional organizations in the scholarly community are increasingly confronted with incidents of infringements on AF or with complaints on violations of AF by individual scholars or by institutions. Thus, AF has become a crucial issue for these associations and their work. This also, and especially, applies to the International Political Science Association (IPSA) as a global professional organization. Even though AF is not a new problem, AF issues have not been confronted in a systematic way and did not lead to institutionalized bodies and procedures until recently. In 2016, IPSA President Ilter Turan formed an ad hoc CAF comprised of EC Members as well as external advisers from all regions. In 2018, President Marianne Kneuer transformed this ad hoc Committee into a permanent body. Moreover, she suggested conducting a survey with the collective members to identify problems and issues of academic freedom as well as practices to tackle these problems.
The CAF considered it relevant to define in a more concrete way which specific service IPSA could render to the national associations in the realm of AF. As an international professional organization, IPSA includes a heterogenous membership consisting - besides the individual members - of national and regional associations around the globe with potentially very different experiences. Which forms of support from IPSA could be needed in those associations? And how could IPSA contribute to a better network between the collective members in this regard? Could both sides learn from each other? And how could learning within the national associations be fostered?
Hence, the CAF considered it important to a) get an overview of the nature and scope of AF infringements in the national and regional political science associations being collective members of IPSA, b) get an understanding of how national associations deal with such infringements, and c) determine how IPSA can contribute and what services the national associations would welcome in terms of AF issues. The CAF envisaged the overall goal of increasing the possible exchange and joint efforts between IPSA and its collective member to find ways of dealing with the AF issues.
To get this overview of the different problems, circumstances, experiences and models tackling AF violations, the CAF decided to do a survey among IPSA’s collective members, resulting in the IPSA Academic Freedom Report 2021.
IPSA Executive Committee
April 2021
