6.5.1 Reactions from colleagues – difficult climate of debate
Several of the consultative statements the Com-mission has received cite colleagues’ reactions as a main reason why academics do not want to or prefer not to engage in dissemination activities and exercise their academic freedom of expres-sion. Negative reactions can be explicit or implicit.
Being «silenced into submission» can also be very unpleasant and make further attempts at dissemi-nation seem pointless or at least very unappealing – and certainly not a high priority.
The OsloMet report states:
A lack of support from above and a lack of soli-darity among researchers – for example, in dif-ferent disciplines or across generations – as well as a general scepticism towards collea-gues sticking their necks out have been high-lighted as general obstacles to good research dissemination (Heuman et al., 2020; Kierulf, 2017; Wig & Svensen, 2016). These kinds of internal obstacles take on even greater
signifi-57 Aftenposten: Opprop: i frykter at offentligheten går glipp av viktige bøker [A call to arms: We fear that the public is missing out on important books]. https://www.aftenpos- ten.no/meninger/debatt/i/pWr9zj/opprop-vi-frykter-at-offentligheten-gaar-glipp-av-viktige-boeker
Box 6.4
It would be highly regrettable if we end up in a situation where it is no longer possible to com-municate academic findings and results to Norwegian society clearly and precisely.
Minister of Research and Higher Education Ola Borten Moe, interview in the daily newspaper Klassekampen, 13 November 2021.
https://klassekampen.no/utgave/2021-11-13/vil-snu-spraktrenden
cance in situations where researchers are publishing controversial findings or assuming a contentious position in a public debate.58 A survey from the Institute for Social Research (ISF) shows that half of the academics surveyed believe that researchers should avoid participat-ing in debates in the news media on topics they are not doing research on.59 This provides a very narrow scope for dissemination. It is far narrower than what researchers are entitled to voice opin-ions on, from a legal perspective, and it is also much narrower than the knowledge sharing and bridge building between academia and the broader public spheres that academic freedom of expression is intended to ensure. The survey also reveals that the research community opposes dis-semination in several ways. It is not anonymous online trolls, but other researchers and colleagues who are most often behind unpleasant comments and threats to academics.60
These findings underline the impression the Commission has gained from a number of consul-tative statements of collegial pettiness and a poor culture of free speech in academia.
Academic freedom of expression enables sharp exchanges of opinion. However, condescen-sion, ridicule, marginalisation and bias do not con-tribute to constructive debate between genuinely dissenting voices, as they often result in the peo-ple who are being attacked withdrawing and not feeling capable of or willing to continue dissemi-nating. Academics too can get carried away by their feelings and pride when they come across expressions from other academics with which they disagree, and may sometimes respond in the spur of the moment rather than after sober, sidered reflection. This can lead to upset and con-flict, rather than a constructive, truth-seeking exchange of opinions. It is an element of the responsibility of academic expression to debate with colleagues with whom one disagrees in a manner that is as open, factual and honest as pos-sible. The goal is to encourage more, not fewer,
views to be shared. To avoid misunderstandings and unpleasantness in the public debate, academ-ics should adhere to the golden rule from two-way radio communication: think, press, speak; which online might translate into: think, type, send.
There is also a difference between reactions from different types of peers – the more senior and established they are, the more demanding it can be to challenge them. Students are in an asymmetrical relationship with their supervisors and academic staff in general. Reactions from superiors raise some particular issues. Negative or unpleasant comments from superiors may have several dimensions in terms of labour law. They can be regarded as reprimands with more real power behind them than the opposition that aca-demics receive from their colleagues, and they may have a stronger silencing effect. In uncom-fortable exchanges of opinion between col-leagues, academics who also have management roles must take extra care to ensure balance between their roles. Managers are responsible for maintaining a good working environment and pre-venting, for example, harassment, but they also have a responsibility to ensure that academic free-dom of expression, including sharp exchanges of opinion, can take place without intervention from above. Intervening in heated exchanges can easily create the impression that the manager is taking sides with one party against another. We will return to this in section 7.4.2.
There is also a broad spectrum in terms of unpleasant expressions. Many are uncomfortable
«only» because they constitute public opposition, sometimes in quite sharp forms. The only real way to deal with these kinds of public battles is counter-argumentation or simply letting it go and moving on, both of which get easier with practice.
This is discussed in more detail in chapter 7.4.3.
Some unpleasant expressions are illegal. The most serious, such as criminal threats, stalking and hate speech, can be reported to the police.
There are also other statutory and institutional norms in place to safeguard the working environ-ment and avert some uncomfortable interactions.
Harassment and other forms of improper conduct are prohibited under the Working Environment Act and the Equality and Anti-Discrimination Act.
The Norwegian Labour Inspection Authority lists the following as examples of expressions that may, depending on the context and duration, be regarded as harassment: Being reprimanded in earshot of others, being ignored, being ridiculed, the withholding of necessary information, con-demnation no matter what you do, blaming and
58 The report Et ytringsklima under press? [A climate of expres-sion under pressure?]
59 Mangset, M., Midtbøen, A.H. Thorbjørnrud, K., Wollebæk, D., Fladmoe, A: (2021). Forskerne og offentligheten – om ytringsfrihet i akademia [Researchers and the public sphere – on freedom of expression in academia]. Institute for Social Research (ISF), p. 9.
60 Mangset, M., Midtbøen, A.H. Thorbjørnrud, K., Wollebæk, D., Fladmoe, A: (2021). Forskerne og offentligheten – om ytringsfrihet i akademia [Researchers and the public sphere – on freedom of expression in academia]. Institute for Social Research (ISF), p. 18
shaming, hurtful joking and teasing. Many institu-tions have whistleblowing schemes and «speak up» systems that make it easy for people to report bullying and harassment. These schemes are important. However, they can also be abused to try to silence legitimate expressions that some people find controversial or offensive.
6.5.2 Culture of conformity
Academic institutions, like society at large, are very aware of and pay close attention to the need for diversity and equality. Diversity in this context is often linked to the bases for discrimination laid down in the Equality and Anti-Discrimination Act.61
A kind of diversity that receives less attention, but that is also important to safeguard academic freedom of expression is diversity of opinion. The pursuit of truth also presupposes the exchange of opinions between different types of views, class backgrounds, values and ideological positions. In the absence of opposing views, «echo chambers»
tend to develop, where confirmation bias is ampli-fied, and like-minded people simply continue in the direction they were already heading.
Drivers of conformity can come from within, in the form of norms and pressures within academic communities, through recruitment, «academic families» and echo-chamber effects that also raise the bar for dissent. They can also come from the outside, in the form of guidelines and pressures from public authorities and private clients, the Research Council of Norway and other actors that have an influence on the way research, teaching and dissemination are performed.62 A culture of conformity is not necessarily found only within academia. This kind of culture can also develop in the interaction between academia and the public administration and/or other social actors. This can make it even more difficult to voice divergent opinions.
Diversity of opinion is important for the indi-vidual’s continued growth and education, and for truth-seeking research and student communities.
As discussed in section 3.2, it is crucial to counter
the cognitive biases we are all prone to. An absence of ideological or political conformity is also important for society’s confidence and trust in academia in general and research-based knowl-edge in particular. Although academic work does not require representativeness or democratic anchoring, major differences between the political composition of the population as a whole and that of academia may easily influence people’s view of the objectivity of research. Academia’s potential to ensure quality and to contribute to increased social mobility in society will also be weakened by a culture of conformity that limits the pool of tal-ent.Surveys indicate that Norwegian researchers are clearly more left-wing and eco-oriented than the population as a whole.63 This tendency applies to a wide range of disciplines and fields, but is most evident in the humanities and social sciences. The political parties the Red Party (R), the Socialist Left Party (SV) and the Green Party (MDG) are overrepresented, while the Progress Party (FrP) and also the Conservative Party (H) are underrepresented.64
Researchers are less critical of immigration, more concerned with environmental protection than economic growth, more positive about state governance and public consumption, and more concerned with equality than the population as a whole.65
There is no easy solution for the challenges ensuing from conformity culture. However, aware-ness of the issue and conscious efforts to ensure greater latitude of expression and diversity of opinion are crucial to counteract this kind of cul-ture. Thinking related to the importance of
diver-61 Pursuant to section 6 of the Equality and Anti-Discrimina-tion Act, discriminaAnti-Discrimina-tion on the basis of «gender, pregnancy, leave in connection with childbirth or adoption, care responsibilities, ethnicity, religion, belief, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age or combinations of these factors is prohibited. ‘Ethnicity’
includes national origin, descent, skin colour and lan-guage.»
62 The report Et ytringsklima under press? [A climate of expres-sion under pressure?]
63 In the Norwegian Association of Researchers (FF)’s 2017 survey among its members, more than 56 per cent stated that they would vote for the Red Party (R), the Socialist Left Party (SV) or the Labour Party (Ap), compared with just under 36 per cent in the general population. https://
www.forskerforum.no/slik-stemmer-norske-forskere/ A recent survey identified the same tendency: «While a majority of the population voted for one of the five central or right-wing parties – the Centre Party (Sp), the Christian Democratic Party (KrF), the Liberal Party (V), the Con-servative Party (H), the Progress Party (FrP) – in 2017, this proportion was less than a fifth among social scientists and academics in the humanities». See Mangset, Midtbøen, Thorbjørnsrud, Ytringsfrihet i en ny offentlighet [Freedom of expression in a new public sphere] (2022) p. 139 f.
https://doi.org/10.18261/9788215051017-2022
64 The Conservative Party is better represented in medicine and agriculture, aquaculture and veterinary science.
65 Mangset, Midtbøen, Thorbjørnsrud, Ytringsfrihet i en ny offentlighet [Freedom of expression in a new public sphere] (2022) p. 139 f. https://doi.org/10.18261/
9788215051017-2022
sity should be based on a broad concept of diver-sity, where diversity of opinion and ideological diversity are also included.
Attempts to welcome opposing voices and dis-courage conformity can sometimes tip over into another challenge. One example of this is inviting individuals or groups with extreme views to voice their opinions, primarily to avoid being accused of conformity. This may result in these kinds of views receiving a disproportionate amount of attention in the debate in view of the differences in the knowledge base on which the two positions rest. There is no standard formula to determine when more voices and greater balance are impor-tant, and when false balance actually serves to undermine, rather than contribute, to the search for truth. However, attention must be paid to both issues to be able to make good assessments in specific situations where this question arises.
6.5.3 Cancel culture, deplatforming, marginalisation
Cancel culture, deplatforming and ostracising are all concepts used to describe the process whereby academics with «divergent» opinions are rejected by the academic community and are prevented from participating in the public debate. Examples include not being invited to seminars or projects in fields where their research is relevant, invita-tions to debates or teaching being withdrawn as a result of something they have said or published, boycotting of certain teachers or teaching, and attempts to get sources of funding or employers to intervene in their research or teaching. The rea-soning behind such attempts to silence these voices is that the people who want them gone find the views so outdated, dangerous, hateful etc. that they believe they have no place in the public sphere. In this respect, they want to interfere with the freedom of information of their colleagues and fellow citizens by curating what they are permit-ted to hear.
Cancel culture can take the form of organised campaigns of varying degrees, where academics are denounced as fascists, communists, haters, etc., or by illegal acts such as threats and harass-ment (see section 6.5.5). It can come from outside academia, or from within – from colleagues, administrative staff or students – and can target both staff and students.
The terms «cancel culture» and «deplatform-ing» describe real phenomena that exist in society today. However, because they are used in very varying ways, even the terms themselves are
con-troversial and have become politicised. The opposing fronts can be roughly outlined as fol-lows: Individuals and groups who feel their views are never heard or heeded, who are not invited because their views are uninteresting or they are bullies, or who otherwise experience opposition to what they stand for as unreasonable see cancel culture everywhere. Individuals and groups who think the public sphere is just fine without voices or views they themselves believe to be overrepre-sented, hateful or dangerous consider the claims of cancellation to be exaggerated or that cancel culture does not exist.
Cancel culture is characterised by a distorted reading of the positions or views with which one disagrees. Expressions are taken out of context and presented in ways that make them appear to have a different – and stronger or worse – mean-ing than they originally had. Historical contexts also become irrelevant, if what is regarded as the morally superior principle is deemed to be impor-tant enough. This may lead to demands to remove historical monuments or erase facts that are no longer considered appropriate in a more equal, fairer era. For example, in 2021, a municipal dis-trict committee in Oslo urged the Natural History Museum to remove a plaque on a bench com-memorating Carl von Linné in the Botanical Gar-dens.66
This phenomenon has received considerable attention in academia in the USA, but we have also seen signs of it here in Norway, including in the debate on the proportion of foreign researchers in Norwegian academia, discussions within gender research, and the debate on climate change. Can-cellations and campaigns to marginalise voices are unpleasant for the academics they affect. They also have obvious chilling potential for others engaged in research, teaching or dissemination on topics where these kinds of campaigns are likely to be used. In the USA and countries where academics’ employment protection is weaker, and where projects are more susceptible to pressure from their sources of funding, these kinds of cam-paigns can have major consequences for individ-ual researchers and research fields. While these vulnerabilities are less pronounced in Norwegian academia, we nevertheless need to be aware of the challenges here as well.
In several places, students have protested against controversial speakers or against lecturers who the students believe have crossed a line for
66 Minutes from a meeting of Gamle Oslo municipal district committee, meeting of 17 September 2020, item 100/2020.
what it is acceptable to say in a lecture theatre.
Students have also been behind a number of con-troversial cases in Norway, such as the case at the University of Bergen where a student lodged a complaint about a lecturer who made a joke about Germans. Students are of course part of the aca-demic community and have both general freedom of expression and academic freedom of expres-sion. Students in Norway also have a statutory right to be heard in all questions concerning stu-dents at educational institutions, and the institu-tions have a duty to provide condiinstitu-tions that facili-tate this (section 4-1 of the Universities and Uni-versity Colleges Act). The right to academic free-dom and freefree-dom of expression may affect the students’ right to be heard. The fact that students want to exert an influence on the content of their education must be regarded as both legitimate and desirable, as long as it is done using argu-ments or instruargu-ments that enable continued genu-ine exchange of ideas and debate.
On a highly simplified political–ideological left-to-right scale, cancel culture is often portrayed as a left-wing phenomenon. One frequently cited example is a group of students’ demand for
«decolonisation» of the curriculum at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts in 2020.67 However, demands that certain methods or views should be dropped can both originate from and affect research and academic expressions along every part of this scale. Examples of «right-wing» can-cellations are conservative school boards in parts of the USA that have prohibited teaching on criti-cal racial theory and gender identity. In 2022, the
«Waste Ombudsman» (a satirical Facebook profile
«Sløsriombudsman» that «investigates how bureaucrats and politicians wasted your tax money») issued an open appeal to the University of Oslo, OsloMet – Oslo Metropolitan University and the state proclaiming that a PhD candidate he interpreted as rehabilitating racial biology in his doctoral work ought not to have been granted funding.68
Cancel culture runs the risk of creating a situa-tion where academic opinions are not voiced in the public domain and/or are dismissed by a mas-sive academic majority who believe that they, and
only they, are the stewards of the truth. In these kinds of cases, there is also a tendency for the vast majority to attack the «player» (i.e. the researcher, through ridicule, intimidation, etc.) and not the
«ball» (i.e. the idea propounded), which ought to be met with relevant, objective counter-argu-ments. No matter how common cancel culture is, fear of it can have a significant chilling effect on academics’ eagerness to research, teach and dis-seminate freely.
The negative aspects of cancel culture should nevertheless not be exaggerated. If panels or teaching are organised in ways that upgrade peripheral or less well-founded positions, this may lead to false balance, as discussed in sections 6.2.5 and 6.5.2.
Criticism of plaques on benches, curricula and doctoral projects for a variety of different reasons is perfectly legitimate and can even constitute important use of both general freedom of expres-sion and academic freedom of expresexpres-sion. What distinguishes the methods used by cancel culture from the ordinary use of freedom of expression to disagree with another’s opinion is their goal:
When the goal of opposition is the continued free exchange of dissenting opinions and ideas from multiples sides, it can help ensure, not impede, everyone’s right to freedom of expression and to seek the truth. When the goal is to exclude cer-tain views from the public sphere or teaching, because they are regarded as undesirable, stupid, dangerous or inappropriate in some other man-ner, this kind of opposition will prevent the free exchange of opinions and ideas that is a prerequi-site for the pursuit of truth.
67 Aftenposten: KHiO-studenter krever «avkolonisering» av pensum [KHiO students demand «decolonisation» of the curriculum]. https://www.aftenposten.no/kultur/i/
e8Agdg/khio-studenter-krever-avkolonisering-av-pensum 68 Nettavisen: Ikke gjør rasebiologi greit igjen [Don’t make
racial biology OK again]. https://www.nettavisen.no/
norsk-debatt/ikke-gjor-rasebiologi-greit-igjen/o/
5-95-368040
Box 6.5
As a university college professor, I have a responsibility to take part in the public debate.
My main goal over the years has been to share my knowledge with a broader audience in the debates in society.
Professor of philosophy Einar Øverenget in a portrait in-terview in the Norwegian daily newspaper Aftenposten, published on 8 January 2022.
https://www.aftenposten.no/amagasinet/i/XqpaaW/
politikere-og-presse-har-sviktet-i-pandemien-mener-filosof-einar-oever