Academics have a ‘duty to ask difficult questions’, Dublin event told

Academic freedom “is not a privilege, it’s a right”, author and historian Michael Ignatieff told a Dublin audience on Friday at which concern was expressed over limits on free speech on university campuses.

“It’s unacceptable to have places devoted to freedom shutting down and suppressing speech,” said Prof Ignatieff who formerly led the Liberal Party in Canada and more recently was rector and president of the Central European University (CEU).

“The duty of academics is always to ask difficult questions about narratives”, he said. “People want a story that makes sense of all this… stories which may not always be sufficiently critical of Western governments, for instance.

“I’m a pretty unconditional supporter of the Ukrainian side of this war, but you’re a damn fool if you think they’re not committing war crimes.”

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Prof Ignatieff was guest speaker, along with UCD political scientist Ben Tonra, at the event on Academic Freedom: Threats Within and Without, hosted by the Royal Irish Academy.

Earlier this year, Prof Tonra resigned from a management position in UCD in protest at an “underwhelming” statement the college issued in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Prof Tonra, who remains on the academic staff, had argued the muted UCD response was linked to the presence of the Chinese government-funded Confucius Institute on campus.

The two academics shared stories of Chinese students in colleges who were afraid to speak openly against their home government, for fear that some of their classmates would report them. “I want Chinese students in my classroom, but we must understand their pressures… they’re caught in the entrails of authoritarianism”, said Ignatieff, who is now a history professor in the CEU, a university which was forced out of Hungary after a legal battle with Viktor Orbán’s government over academic freedom.

Speaking in the shadow of thick tomes and busts of revered academics in the grandeur of the academy’s main hall, Mr Ignatieff called himself “an unapologetic teacher of the dead white males” that have defined and dominated the canon of intellectual thought.

Referencing classical thinkers like David Hume, he insisted that figures could be admired as academics without ignoring or excusing their associations with racism and slavery. “You want students to hold two thoughts in their minds at the same time… not to use one of those thoughts to cancel”, he said.

“Pluralism is good for thought”, said Mr Ignatieff. “I remember what my classroom was like in 1965 and I don’t want to go back to it - because they all looked like me!”

Prof Tonra similarly noted the pair were “conscious of the irony of two white middle-aged men having this conversation”.

On the current culture wars, Prof Ignatieff said he feared the “tyrannous covens of political correctness” that could be created by the instinct to “cancel” complex figures.

However, he sees the most prescient threat to academic freedom as not progressives, but the populists who will utilise the weaknesses created by these progressives to undermine free universities.

The CEU was founded in 1991 by liberal philanthropist George Soros, a figure of contempt for many right-wing figures. In 2018, the university was forced to leave Budapest under pressure from Mr Orbán’s administration and has relocated to Vienna.

“The worst day I’ve had as rector was not my battle with Viktor Orbán… It was the day 50 students stood up and walked out of a lecture delivered by Roger Scruton”, said Prof Ignatieff, referring to the English philosopher, controversial for his views on homosexuality. “I despise his homophobia… but when 50 students got up before he even spoke, Viktor Orbán was sat there… thinking: ‘Exactly, that’s what’s wrong with CEU’.

“The question of woke culture on American campuses is the bell to ring if you’re a right-wing populist in the United States looking to win votes”, Prof Ignatieff added.

As for academics, he offered some collegial advice: “You must avoid the temptation to talk about things you don’t know anything about”. Academics should “understand where your intellectual authority lies”.