The implications of the securitization of research, both in the sources and purposes of research funding and in who is permitted to conduct research, when, and where, should be taken up more vigorously by professional associations and academies. These implications are no less dazzling, tempting, and terrifying than those of the commercialization of scientific research in the era of Bayh-Dole,7 and they will only grow as terrorism drives government policies around the world.
So in sum, my advice to the international community of research scholars and scientists:
1. Don’t
shun your colleagues. This plays into the hands of those who want to suppress
research collaboration and does nothing to provide concrete support to fellow
scholars and scientists.
2. Don’t
abandon your research goals. Be pragmatic, flexible, and attentive to the
implications of your work for those who may carry it out and who may rely on
it, but don’t succumb to intimidation—bullying only works as long as it works.
3. Continue
to name and shame, and take up individual cases. You will always feel terrible
knowing both that there are hundreds more scholars and scientists caught
invisibly between the permitted and the prohibited and that no individual is a
saint, but a little courage, assistance, and comfort on your part is better
than none.
4. Finally,
advocate and explain. You know what academic freedom is, mostly because you
have been its beneficiary, and you should advocate the virtue and value of
education and research proudly, confidently, and energetically, and be
absolutely uncompromising in demanding the rights and responsibilities that
sustain it, including freedom of information, expression, and association. You
can tell the world what is lost by discouraging research: the capacity to
cultivate and advance new ideas that will enhance the prospects for economic
prosperity, human security, social justice, and dignity everywhere.
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