Table Of ContentEducation in the Asia-Pacific Region:
Issues, Concerns and Prospects 54
Zhidong Hao
Peter Zabielskis Editors
Academic
Freedom
Under Siege
Higher Education in East Asia,
the U.S. and Australia
Education in the Asia-Pacific Region:
Issues, Concerns and Prospects
Volume 54
Series Editors
Rupert Maclean, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia
Lorraine Pe Symaco, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
Editorial Board Members
Bob Adamson, The Education University of Hong Kong, China
Robyn Baker, New Zealand Council for Educational Research,
Wellington, New Zealand
Michael Crossley, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
Shanti Jagannathan, Asian Development Bank, Manila, Philippines
Yuto Kitamura, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
Colin Power, Graduate School of Education, University of Queensland,
Brisbane, Australia
Konai Helu Thaman, University of the South Pacific, Suva, Fiji
Advisory Editors
Mark Bray, UNESCO Chair, Comparative Education Research Centre,
The University of Hong Kong, China; Yin Cheong Cheng, The Education
University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China; John Fien, Swinburne University
of Technology, Melbourne, Australia; Pham Lan Huong, International
Educational Research Centre, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam;
Chong-Jae Lee, Korean Educational Development Institute (KEDI), Seoul,
Korea (Republic of); Naing Yee Mar, GIZ, Yangon, Myanmar;
Geoff Masters, Australian Council for Educational Research,
Melbourne, Australia; Margarita Pavlova, The Education University
of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China; Max Walsh, Secondary Education
Project, Manila, Philippines; Uchita de Zoysa, Global Sustainability
Solutions (GLOSS), Colombo, Sri Lanka
The purpose of this Series is to meet the needs of those interested in an in-depth
analysis of current developments in education and schooling in the vast and diverse
Asia-Pacific Region. The Series will be invaluable for educational researchers,
policy makers and practitioners, who want to better understand the major issues,
concerns and prospects regarding educational developments in the Asia-Pacific region.
The Series complements the Handbook of Educational Research in the Asia-
Pacific Region, with the elaboration of specific topics, themes and case studies in
greater breadth and depth than is possible in the Handbook.
Topics to be covered in the Series include: secondary education reform;
reorientation of primary education to achieve education for all; re-engineering
education for change; the arts in education; evaluation and assessment; the moral
curriculum and values education; technical and vocational education for the world
of work; teachers and teaching in society; organisation and management of
education; education in rural and remote areas; and, education of the disadvantaged.
Although specifically focusing on major educational innovations for development
in the Asia-Pacific region, the Series is directed at an international audience.
The Series Education in the Asia-Pacific Region: Issues, Concerns and Prospects,
and the Handbook of Educational Research in the Asia-Pacific Region, are both
publications of the Asia-Pacific Educational Research Association.
Those interested in obtaining more information about the Monograph Series, or
who wish to explore the possibility of contributing a manuscript, should (in the first
instance) contact the publishers.
Please contact Melody Zhang (e-mail: [email protected]) for
submitting book proposals for this series.
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/5888
Zhidong Hao • Peter Zabielskis
Editors
Academic Freedom Under
Siege
Higher Education in East Asia, the U.S.
and Australia
Editors
Zhidong Hao Peter Zabielskis
University of Macau University of Macau
Macao, China Macao, China
ISSN 1573-5397 ISSN 2214-9791 (electronic)
Education in the Asia-Pacific Region: Issues, Concerns and Prospects
ISBN 978-3-030-49118-5 ISBN 978-3-030-49119-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49119-2
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the University of Macau for a grant between 2012 and 2015
on a comparative study of the role of faculty in different cultural contexts. The proj-
ect included mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, and the United States.
Several papers from this project were subsequently published in academic journals.
When that project was finished, we thought that we should include more jurisdic-
tions and publish an edited volume. So we invited professors who studied Japan,
South Korea, and Australia to join us. They gracefully accepted our invitation and
now we have a chapter from each of those jurisdictions. Meanwhile, the Hong Kong
team expanded, and we have also included another chapter on China. We want to
thank all the authors in this book for their collective effort in making this book
possible.
We especially want to thank Professors Ruth Hayhoe and William G. Tierney for
their careful reviewing and thoughtful comments on the manuscript. In the process
of our thinking and writing, we have benefited a lot from their insights in their com-
parative and historical study of higher education.
Finally, we want to thank the editors of Springer Nature who have guided us
from the initial review of the book draft to the final editing and its production.
Without their efforts, we would not have been able to produce such a high-qual-
ity book.
We hope our readers like it and will find it relevant to their own endeavors and
concerns.
Zhidong Hao
Peter Zabielskis
v
Contents
1 Academic Freedom Under Siege: What, Why, and What
Is to Be Done . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Zhidong Hao
2 Commercialization and Corporatization vs. Professorial Roles
and Academic Freedom in the USA and Greater China . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Zhidong Hao
3 The Role of Commercialization and Corporatization
in University Shared Governance: An American Case Study . . . . . . . 61
Zhaohui Hong
4 Professors as Intellectuals in China: Political Roles
and Academic Freedom in a Provincial University . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Zhidong Hao and Zhengyang Guo
5 Academic Staff’s Dual Role in China: Academic Freedom
in a Prestigious University . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Xiaoxin Du
6 Freedom to Excel: Performativity, Accountability,
and Educational Sovereignty in Hong Kong’s
Academic Capitalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Wai-wan Vivien Chan, Hei-hang Hayes Tang,
and Ross Lap- kin Cheung
7 In Search of a Professional Identity and Academic Freedom:
Higher Education in Macau and the Academic Role of Faculty. . . . . 147
Zhidong Hao
8 How Commercialization and Corporatization Affect Academic
Freedom in Higher Education: A Case Analysis of a University
in Taiwan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
Emily Jin-Jy Shieh and Sheng-Ju Chan
vii
viii Contents
9 Turtles or Dragons? Academic Freedom in Japanese
Universities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
Edward Vickers
10 South Korea: Managerial Wisdom in Higher Education
for a Selective Academic Repression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
Jae Park
11 Commercialization and Corporatization: Academic Freedom
and Autonomy under Constraints in Australian Universities . . . . . . . 219
Linda Hancock
12 Afterword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
Peter Zabielskis
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
Chapter 1
Academic Freedom Under Siege: What,
Why, and What Is to Be Done
Zhidong Hao
Academic freedom is under siege everywhere in the world, and it cannot be taken
for granted. Core academic values such as academic freedom, institutional auton-
omy, social responsibility, equity, integrity, etc. “need to be nurtured, actively pur-
sued and defended” (Stølen and Gornitzka 2019; see also Myklebust 2019). This is
true not only under authoritarianism and dictatorships but also in democracies
(Scholars at Risk 2018a; Teichler et al. 2013; Tierney and Lanford 2014: 11–14).
Some argue that academic freedom should be recognized as a transnational right
“anchored in the political and intellectual history of different cultures and regions
across the world” (Hoodfar 2017). Most recently, members of the European
Parliament adopted a report that recommended making academic freedom a human
rights consideration in EU’s foreign policies (Scholars at Risk 2018b). A declaration
from 1988 of the core values of the university, called Magna Charta Universitatum
and signed since then by 906 universities worldwide, is now being updated and will
be finalized by 2020 in light of the current situation (Stølen and Gornitzka 2019).
The examination of universities in some Asia-Pacific countries and regions in
this book demonstrates how and why academic freedom is under siege and needs to
be actively nurtured, pursued, and defended. The jurisdictions this book covers
range from democracies such as the USA, Australia, Japan, South Korea, and
Taiwan, through semi-democracies such as Hong Kong and Macau, to authoritari-
anism/dictatorship like mainland China. Although the problem manifests itself to
different degrees in different political systems and cultures, commonalities abound
(see also Tierney and Lanford 2014). For example, each jurisdiction has a different
set of historical and political contexts and contemporary symptoms. Nationalism
plays a more important role in East Asia in impeding academic freedom than in the
USA. And in general the more democratic a country or region is, the more academic
Z. Hao (*)
University of Macau, Macao, China
e-mail: [email protected]
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 1
Z. Hao, P. Zabielskis (eds.), Academic Freedom Under Siege, Education in the
Asia-Pacific Region: Issues, Concerns and Prospects 54,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49119-2_1
2 Z. Hao
freedom there will be and vice versa. But the erosion or lack of academic freedom
is found across all jurisdictions despite all these differences. And the nature of con-
straints and restraints of academic freedom is the same.
The pursuit of academic freedom is a historical as well as contemporary struggle.
As Tierney and Lanford (2014: 8–9) point out, European universities in the Middle
Ages were partly self-governing, but their charters of government could always be
amended or taken away by the Pope or the Emperor. When the modern conception
of academic freedom (i.e., Lehrfreiheit, “the right of the university professor to
freedom of inquiry and to freedom of teaching, the right to study and to report on
his findings in an atmosphere of consent”) was developed in Europe, especially in
Germany, in the late nineteenth century, and the European academy was vastly
expanded in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, “the president and
board of trustees of an institution retained power over daily activities.” Scholars in
various disciplines then “created groups, unions, professional associations, and/or
national associations to advance the rights of faculty and the notion of academic
freedom.” Since then a seesaw battle has been engaged between the profession and
the powers that be. In the contemporary era, the academic profession is again facing
an uphill battle in promoting and protecting academic freedom. We need to better
understand how and why academic freedom is under siege and what can be done so
that higher education can function as a common good searching for truth and its
exposition, thereby benefiting the entire society politically, economically, socially,
and culturally (see also Tierney and Lanford 2014: 7).
In this introductory chapter, I discuss what is academic freedom; why it is a uni-
versal value; how academic freedom is under siege, including shared governance
and tenure, the pursuit of international rankings, student evaluations of teaching,
extramural speech, etc.; why it is under siege, i.e., the ideological and political fac-
tors underlying the erosion of academic freedom; and what can be done to promote
and protect academic freedom. In doing so, I cite the chapters in the book as well as
other relevant literature. I am hoping that the reader will have a better idea of what
the current status of the profession is like regarding academic freedom and what the
stakeholders of higher education need to do in enhancing this public good.
1.1 Defining Academic Freedom
Academic freedom is a cultural construct composed of a belief, a value, and a set of
norms. The American Association of University Professors’ (AAUP) “1940
Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure with 1970 Interpretive
Comments” is still arguably the most authoritative explanation of the concept. As a
belief, academic freedom assumes that institutions of higher learning are “con-
ducted for the common good and not to further the interest of either the individual
teacher or the institution as a whole. The common good depends upon the free
search for truth and its free exposition” (AAUP 2001: 3; see also Scott 2019). This
would also include free pursuit of extramural activities, e.g., writing and speaking
