IPSA is pleased to announce that Professor Donatella della Porta will be a plenary speaker at the 2025 IPSA World Congress of Political Science in Seoul on 14 July 2025. Her keynote, titled The Contentious Politics of Academic Freedom: Social Movements and Repression, will explore the growing threats to academic freedom, particularly the repression of scholars and social movements in both authoritarian regimes and Western democracies.
Further details regarding her plenary address are available on the World Congress website.
The Contentious Politics of Academic Freedom: Social Movements and Repression
Reflections on academic freedom often develop in response to authoritarian regimes. More recently, however, concerns about the freedom to teach and conduct research in academic settings have taken on renewed urgency in Western democracies, as entire fields of study, which have emerged alongside social movements, have come under increasing attack. Defamation campaigns have targeted scholars, artists, and intellectuals. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has called for universities to “respect peaceful activism and revise repressive policies targeting the pro-Palestine solidarity movement”, thereby attesting to the widespread perception that academic freedoms are being restricted. The fundamental value of universities as spaces for the free exchange of ideas and for innovative and open debate is being challenged, as restrictive new regulations have been adopted to stifle protest on campuses. At the same time, progressive social movements have claimed the right to protest, linking it to a specific conception of higher education. This plenary keynote will build upon an empirical analysis of forms of repression specific to academic freedom, including the manner in which they are framed, and the way that discontent with this repressive trend is mobilized and justified. Rooted in the relational turn in social movement studies, the keynote address will locate the contentious politics of academic freedom within broader political developments related to policies of commodification of knowledge in neoliberal universities, but also increasing intersectional inequalities, the spread of poly-crisis, and the regressive backlash against civil, political, and social rights.
Biography
Donatella della Porta is Professor of Political Science, Dean of the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, and Director of the PhD program in Political Science and Sociology at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence, where she also heads up the Centre on Social Movement Studies (Cosmos).
Prof. della Porta is the author or editor of 100 books, 171 journal articles, and 161 contributions in edited volumes. The main topics of her research include social movements, political violence, terrorism, corruption, the police, and protest policing. She directed a major European Research Council (ERC) project on civil society participation in democratization processes in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America, entitled Mobilizing for Democracy.
In 2011, Prof. della Porta was awarded the Mattei Dogan Prize for distinguished achievements in the field of political sociology, and in 2021 she received the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation’s Research Award in recognition of her career-long research activities. In 2022, she was nominated International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 2023, she was appointed a member of the Accademia dei Lincei. In 2024, Prof. della Porta was awarded the John D. McCarthy Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Scholarship of Social Movements and Collective Behavior. She holds honorary doctorates from the following universities: the University of Lausanne, the University of Bucharest, the University of Gothenburg, the University of Jyvaskyla, the University of Cyprus, and the University of Peloponnese.