“Less USSR, more democracy please!”: Hope and discontent in Georgia's quest for academic freedom

Abstract

AbstractIn Georgia, the question of academic freedom emerged only after the country gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 and its universities could begin reckoning with a heavy past of ideological pressure, censorship, governmental control and top‐down management. Despite official declarations of the right to academic freedom and its recognition within Georgia's legal framework, actual practice in the country's higher education system tells a different story. The paper draws on qualitative data obtained from sixteen academics representing diverse institutions and disciplines, as well as the secondary data including educational legislation, government regulations, ministers' decrees, various reports from non‐governmental organisations, think tanks and media archives. The findings of this paper reflect how academic freedom is understood in Georgia and two major threats to its exercise in universities, namely, interference from external politics and internal managerialism. We argue that academic freedom as a concept does not yet have its own place in Georgia's higher education system, protected de jure but with different de facto realities. The paper sheds light on how Soviet legacies of self‐censorship, hidden mechanisms of control and a culture of conformity continue to create tensions inside universities and an environment in which academic freedom cannot flourish.