Asia Shorts. Ann Arbor: Association for Asian Studies [distributed by Columbia University Press], 2022. xix, 179 pp. (Tables, graphs.) US$16.00, paper. ISBN 9781952636318.
New Threats to Academic Freedom in Asia is a concise and original collection showcasing in-depth studies of academic freedom threats in Japan, Singapore, China, and Indonesia. It also provides rigorous analysis of methodologies for assessing academic freedom trends across the vast, politically diverse Asia region. As Dimitar Gueorguiev remarks in his introduction: “In few places is the tension between a desire for academic progress and the threat to academic freedom more pronounced than in Asia today” (2). This tension is most apparent in China, which has successfully plugged into the globalization of higher education to turn its leading universities into research powerhouses (7). Yet Gueorguiev’s volume attests to less dramatic but still disquieting instances of this tension elsewhere.
Chapter 1, “Academic Freedom in Asia from 1900 to 1921: a Quantitative Analysis” by Katrin Kinzelbach, discusses methodological challenges in using data sets such as the Academic Freedom Index (AFI) to assess trends and variations in academic freedom in Asia (20). An initial assessment shows gradual improvements in academic freedom across the region between 1950 and the 2010s (21). However, disaggregating AFI data allows researchers to highlight steep deteriorations in academic freedom in some Asian countries or regions in recent years (25–26). Detailed consideration of academic freedom backsliding in countries like India can also generate puzzling tensions with AFI data (27–28), which require further scrutiny.
Chapter 2, “Contesting Academic Freedom in Japan” by Jeff Kingston, explores threats to academic freedom in East Asia’s oldest democracy. By Kingston’s assessment, these threats are mostly structural, not political (45), connected to intellectual conformity fostered by demographic/gender imbalances and clientelism in the professoriate, and to neoliberal reforms which have diminished institutional autonomy (42–45). One case illustrating Kingston’s point is research institution self-censorship in monitoring of the tsunami-damaged reactors at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (46–48). Another case is the ongoing “history war” over Japan’s colonial and wartime past, waged by right-wing media, activists, and sometimes government officials attempting to enforce pro-Japan narratives. Kingston also strays somewhat beyond this chapter’s remit into discussions of media self-censorship, a cancelled art exhibition, and harassment incidents involving American and Korean Japanstudies scholars (49, 59, 60–61).
Chapter 3, “The State of Academic Freedom in Singapore’s World-beating Universities” by Cherian George, Chong Ja Ian, and Shannon Ang investigates how, within a soft authoritarian state investing heavily in higher education, “[n]eoliberal globalization has worked in tandem with domestic political forces to disincentivize research in politically sensitive areas” (91). The authors use data from an Academia SG Collective survey of Singapore-based humanities/social science academics to analyze patterns of frequently indirect censorship, and self-censorship in Singapore’s universities (70, 93). Many scholars surveyed felt unfree to discuss controversial topics in classes, and one-third said they had been told—or knew of others being told—to modify or withdraw politically sensitive research findings “for administrative reasons” (76–77).
Chapter 4, “Academic Freedom in China: An Empirical Study Inquiry through the Lens of the System of Student Informants” by Jue Jiang, uses Open-source Intelligence (OSINT) data and focused interviews with 10 humanities/social science academics in mainland China, Macau, and Hong Kong to investigate the deteriorating academic freedoms of scholars subjected to “top-down control and bottom-up (student) surveillance” in China (102). OSINT data show increasing top-down ideological strictures on university teaching and research (104–106) and a systematization of existing student informer practices since Xi Jinping’s accession as president of China in 2013 (106–108). The focused interviews with academics revealed four defended the informer system, while two declared themselves victims of it (108–122). One interviewee made the heartbreaking disclosure that their mother committed suicide after a denunciation from students almost led to their dismissal (111).
Chapter 5, “In the Name of the Nation” by Stefani Nugruho, addresses academic freedom in post-New Order Indonesia, where developmentalist state controls on education and authoritarian limits on speech freedoms under the 1965–1998 rule of President Suharto have dissipated. Though academic freedom is legally protected today (137), diverse threats remain. Influential Islamist or ethnic civic groups can enlist police, military, and university administrative support—or acquiescence—as they monitor, intimidate, or even assault academics and students (137, 138, 148). Mobilizations of these groups tend to focus on “taboo issues” broached in student activist or teacher discussions, including the former Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI), LGBTQ rights, and the Free Papua movement (139–147). I do, however, have one factual quibble with this chapter. Nugruho states that in 1965–1966 “thousands of people” accused of PKI affiliation “were … interned or killed” (135). Today many scholars estimate the death toll of the 1965–1966 anti-PKI massacres at half- to 1 million.
This is an excellent and profoundly disturbing volume; it is a warning to Anglosphere scholars and universities that they cannot be complacent about academic freedom abroad, or at home. Patricia Thornton’s “Afterword” emphasizes that internationalized, marketized universities are highly exposed to transnational academic freedom threats. British universities dependent on fee-paying Chinese students for revenue, and on “authoritarian donors” for research funding, are prone to self-censorship. They are also prone to censoring dissenting campus voices that might offend authoritarian state benefactors (159–160).
A concise book like this cannot cover all bases. A preface by Kamran Asdar Ali does summarize historic academic freedom trends in India and Pakistan (xvi–xix). References to deteriorating academic freedoms in Thailand, Cambodia, and Myanmar provide pointers for future investigation (14, 25, 26). I would also like to see future studies give detailed treatment to the state of academic freedom in South Korea. Amidst civic polarization over memory of the Japanese colonial and authoritarian Cold War pasts, conservative legislators have weaponized South Korea’s National Security Act to prosecute left-wing and supposedly pro-North Korean students and scholars. Meanwhile, progressive civic groups have used the criminal defamation law to prosecute scholars who dissent from nationalist orthodoxies about the World War II comfort women. This state of affairs stands in some tension with South Korea’s high AFI ranking in Asia (31), and begs further investigation. Including Korea’s experience would underscore more hidden but pernicious threats to academic freedom even in apparently liberal contexts.
Shaun O’Dwyer
Kyushu University, Fukuoka