All interested researchers are invited to submit proposals for articles to be included in the thematic issue of “Archiwum Filozofii Prawa i Filozofii Społecznej”. The provisional title of the issue is “Freedom of speech of a university teacher: Between the known and the unknown”. It will consist of English and Polish-language texts.
The aim of the volume is to take a multifaceted look at the above-mentioned problem area. The issues addressed may cover fields such as: freedom to conduct scientific research and to communicate the results obtained; freedom of expression in academic teaching; autonomy and self-governance of higher education institutions. The framework of the volume includes analyses of relevant laws (from Polish or any other jurisdiction), historical-legal research and philosophical reconstructions of the idea of the university and the academic ethos, as well as socio-cultural diagnoses of the specific situation of the contemporary academy in Poland and worldwide.
As an invitation to collectively identify what we know about the scope of academic freedom of expression, and what remains unclear and thus requires further research and discussion, we present the following sample questions for consideration:
- What expectations are formulated in the broadly understood public debate about academic research and teaching practice? To what extent do values such as truth, the development of knowledge, and the practical usefulness of results inform these expectations?
- What are the limits of academic freedom of expression? Should its scope be different from the freedom of expression of those who do not have such a role? Does the role in question affect the scope of the freedom of expression he or she expresses outside the purely professional sphere (research and teaching), for example in public debate or in the private sphere?
- What factors determine the limits of a university teacher’s freedom of expression? To what extent does the scope of this freedom depend on the context of a given society (historical, cultural, etc.)?
- How do the changes in the structure of social communication brought about by the development of new technologies, in particular the Internet, affect the freedom of expression of an academic teacher?
- To what extent is academic discourse responsible for the state of the public sphere? With regard to this question, is it possible to make a generalisation about people in the academy, or does the specific field they represent have an impact on the answer?
- Should the academy maintain neutrality in relation to ongoing political disputes at the domestic and global levels? If so, what precisely constitutes such neutrality? If not, what are the limits and requirements for the academy and its individual representatives to engage in such disputes?
The volume will be edited by Dr Paweł Jabłoński (UWr), Prof Przemysław Kaczmarek (UWr) and Dr Mateusz Wojtanowski (UWr) as the fourth issue of the “Archiwum” in 2025. Article proposals should be sent to mateusz.wojtanowski2@uwr.edu.pl by 31 March 2025. Texts have to be prepared according to the editorial standards used by the “Archiwum” (detailed guidelines for authors are available at: https://archiwum.ivr.org.pl/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Editorial-standards-ENG-zm.1.docx, with a maximum of 35,000 characters, including spaces and footnotes). For any further information, please contact the editors of the volume: pawel.jablonski@uwr.edu.pl, przemyslaw.kaczmarek@uwr.edu.pl, mateusz.wojtanowski2@uwr.edu.pl