Defending academic freedom and political engagement in Latvia
Interface’s East and Central European editor, Andrey Berdnikov (in Latvian – Andrejs Berdnikovs), has recently come under political attack for his research and political activism. With a number of others he co-organised a conference on “The autonomy of Latgale: political, legal, economic, historical and cultural aspects”, as well as a survey on public attitudes towards autonomy. Latgale is the eastern province of Latvia and has a high proportion of ethnic Russians, Belarussians and Poles as well as an ethnically distinctive population whose language and religion differ from the rest of Latvia.
The current Latvian government includes the far-right party “All for Latvia” and is deeply hostile to any discussion of ethnic minorities or regional issues. Four activists involved in the conference had their homes searched by the political police and the survey data removed. Our colleague Andrey has lost all his income as a result of political pressure, with a number of funders breaking off their collaboration and colleagues becoming afraid to work with him. The message this sends to the outside world is that it is impossible to do scholarly work in Latvia and disagree with the parties in power; this does not reflect well on the image of Latvian scholarship abroad.
Interface wants to state clearly that academic freedom includes, and must include, the right to research and freely discuss social or political issues even where they are inconvenient to the authorities. Like all citizens, scholars have a right to be politically engaged and hold views that differ from the ruling ideology. We call on the Latvian government to return the survey data and on Latvian academics and funders to restore their collaboration with Andrey Berdnikov.
We ask readers to support the call for intellectual freedom and the right to political engagement in Latvia by signing this petition. (If you can't see the link, try typing in
https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/latvian-higher-education-institutions-respect-intellectual-freedom-and-the-right-to-political-engagement-2).
Interface (
http://interfacejournal.net) is a global, peer-reviewed, open-access journal of social movement studies.
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Alice Mattoni
Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of Sociology
University of Pittsburgh
www.alicemattoni.com
New Book! Media Practices and Protest Politics. How Precarious Workers Mobilise.
www.ashgate.com/isbn/9781409426783
