Creating a culture of academic freedom through international partnership: Insights from a European Universities Alliance

Abstract This article analyzes elements for the creation of a culture of academic freedom within a European Universities Alliance (EUA), CHARM-EU. Set against the backdrop of global declines in academic freedom, this research presents evidence collected in Hungary, a country that has been referred to as a critical case in terms of democratic backsliding. The study explores interviews with faculty engaged with an EUA from a traditional university in Hungary through a phenomenographic method that organizes outcome spaces by gathering categories of description that result from the aggregation of units of meaning. The outcome spaces in this article are constructed according to guidelines devised by the European University Association for the promotion of academic freedom. Findings present specific dimensions and themes in which pedagogical practice in CHARM-EU's Master's in Global Challenges for Sustainability converge with the groundings of academic freedom. Discussion resorts to the concepts of pedagogical device and pedagogical discourse. In conclusion, international partnerships are deemed able to expand views on the political dimension of pedagogical innovation in higher education, calling for the sophistication of extant models of analysis of academic freedom.