Politik, etik, protest: Yttrandefrihet & palestiniers mänskliga rättigheter på svenska lärosäten

Abstract

For more than a year and a half, students and faculty at universities across the world have been protesting academic complicity and non-innocence in the Israeli state’s treatment and mass killing of palestinians. According to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression, these events are part of a global crisis of freedom of expression. The following case study examines how freedom of expression and its limitations have been perceived and implemented at Swedish universities during the initial year of protests. It asks how the universities’ official stance on Israel and their related administrative measures affect protesters and freedom of expression in the Swedish academic setting. Through interviews with students and members of university administrations, and supplementary material such as news reports and self-publications, the question of freedom of expression at academic institutions is interpreted in relation to our public ethos, the ethics of care, and privileged irresponsibility. The study finds that the boundaries of permissible expressions were shaped in large part by conflicting views on how responsibility should be assigned in the organisational structure, and the significance of moral insight for personal and institutional accountability. These findings underscore the tension between freedom of expression, political engagement, and the university's role as both an autonomous institution and a state-regulated entity, while highlighting that what is framed as necessary impartiality by the leaderships of Swedish universities, is in practice institutional silencing of Palestinian advocacy.