Engaging issues of such fundamental concern to humanity as those theology and the humanities deal with makes our field at its core a global enterprise, even as our questions and responses emerge and manifest themselves locally. Arguably, there is hardly anything that is local that is not at the same time in some sense relevant beyond that which is our own, and vice versa; the local can hardly be understood in isolation. Our perspective needs to transcend the confines of our own neighbourhood, which in turn makes international and interdisciplinary cooperation a sine qua non for any university aiming to realise its potential for excellence.
Intensifying our collaboration with partners around the globe
Acting on its Strategic document, Strategi2030, TF is now in the process of deepening and intensifying its collaboration with partners around the globe. In March 2021, the Committee for Strategic Internationalisation (CSI, consisting of Werner G. Jeanrond, Anne Katrine de Hemmer Gudme, Osamah Rajpoot, and myself) submitted its report to the Dean. The report will provide the basis for discussions to follow among us all on how best to proceed with implementation. Stay tuned for more about this as we plan and organise this part of the process.
Strategy for the Humanities at UiO
International cooperation, however, needs to be understood in tandem with interests and goals across the university to reach it's potential. As the new—and first ever—Strategy for the Humanities at UiO makes clear, the humanities, top-ranked in Norway (2017) and high-ranking internationally, are uniquely situated within our university to interact across disciplines and faculties. The humanities strategy is the result of the work of a group with representation from five faculties, where TF was represented by Marius Timman Mjaaland. This initiative places TF more firmly on the UiO map, and highlights the relevance of our contribution. The opportunities for the future here are seemingly endless, as we are in the very beginning of what is quite clearly a new and promising development.
Democracy one of the focus areas
One of the fields which the humanities strategy singles out as a focus area is democracy, and the need for more research and education on what may strengthen or undermine democratic attitudes and processes. The selection of this focus area, together with several others, is very timely, matches UiO’s new inter-disciplinary initiative, UiO:Demokrati (pdf), and weaves together urgent concerns both local and global. TF has contributed to UiO’s democracy initiative through Jone Salomonsen, who was a member of the group producing the report which outlined its motivation and suggested parameters.
Democracy today is under siege worldwide, including in the US, Europe, Turkey, and India, and the impact of China’s negative influence in this regard increased significantly in 2020 too. As Freedom House reports, “[t]he countries experiencing deterioration outnumbered those with improvements by the largest margin recorded since the negative trend began in 2006.”
Destabilising impact on key academic values
This global negative trend has had and continues to have a destabilising impact on key academic values which we often take for granted, such as academic freedom; such freedoms lie at the core of what a university is and are a necessary condition for a healthy and sustainable democratic society. Academic freedom is indispensable for Big Thinking. Protecting academic freedom should therefore be a central part of the responsibilities of both governments and university leadership, including especially in their cooperation with other actors on the international scene.
Academic freedom
As academics, we are responsible for educating ourselves and our students about what academic freedom is and how it relates both to our day-to-day work and to long-term strategic planning and collaborations. Academic Freedom is defined by Britannica as follows:
Academic freedom, the freedom of teachers and students to teach, study, and pursue knowledge and research without unreasonable interference or restriction from law, institutional regulations, or public pressure. Its basic elements include the freedom of teachers to inquire into any subject that evokes their intellectual concern; to present their findings to their students, colleagues, and others; to publish their data and conclusions without control or censorship; and to teach in the manner they consider professionally appropriate. For students, the basic elements include the freedom to study subjects that concern them and to form conclusions for themselves and express their opinions.
The basic right to freely pursue truth without risking harassment
For students and researchers, UiO and FutureLearn offer a free online course on the topic, and there are many other resources which shed further light on this key aspect of our work; see, e.g., "Academic freedom: What it is, what it isn’t and why there’s confusion | Robert Quinn". Academic freedom is not only about political issues at state level. It is about the basic right to freely pursue truth without risking harassment, ridicule, and other forms of persecution, including legal consequences, which in turn is linked to the protection of the university from politicisation. Importantly, this is not a ‘Left’ or ‘Right’ issue; scholars and students across the political spectrum have been and are affected, in all disciplines, including in theology and religious studies, all over the world.
Free access to information and research is intimately connected to academic freedom, and an important aspect of a democratic society. The global initiative, in which Norway and UiO also take part, to push for open-access publishing is thus a significant part of the academic enterprise. There remains a lot to be done in this regard, but the trajectory we are on has great potential.
We are on the right track
In sum, far from the dominant image of the humanities, theology and religious studies a few decades ago as more or less irrelevant and a waste of tax payers’ money, with little or no impact on society, things are now beginning to change. Big Thinking and an integrated approach to interdisciplinary cooperation, the realisation of just how much fields of knowledge overlap and depend on one another, have highlighted the fundamental need of our field for a sustainable society. Such scholarship is not always safe, as academics around the world and in Norway have experienced, and as recent political developments show. This, however, is as strong a signal as any that we, when we engage in the pursuit of truth and defend the right to think and speak freely, are on the right track.