HEIs Organisational Resilience Against Attacks on Academic Freedom: From Symbolic Compliance to Substantive Action?

Attacks on academic freedom (AF) are increasing not only in the USA (see, amongst many others, Spannagel 2025) but also other regions (e.g. Kinzelbach et al. 2025), including member states of the European Union (Maassen 2025). These attacks are often considered components of a wider trend of democratic backsliding (Haggard & Kaufman, 2021; Lewandowsky et al., 2025) or authoritarian developments (Boese et al., 2021; Gillies, 2023). In Germany, experts argue that comparable developments have been constrained by protections by the Basic Law (Gärditz 2016) and by the DFG’s institutional autonomy as central research funding agency (Einstein Stiftung 2025). However, awareness is rising that the research system and higher education institutions (HEIs) are targets of a variety of attacks, including on people or infrastructure, defamations (against individuals, topics, disciplines or science as such), “deplatforming” or politically motivated funding cuts (Schäfer 2024; Schimank et al. 2024). Current studies highlight researchers' awareness – albeit still relatively low incidence – of attacks (Blümel 2024; Fabian et al. 2024). HEI leaders must often balance different dimensions of AF, safeguarding individuals while preserving institutional autonomy. The shift of HEIs (not only in Germany) towards greater organisational agency (Brunsson and Sahlin-Andersson 2000; Hasse and Krücken 2009; Krücken 2017) has gone hand in hand with growing expectations that their leadership acts decisively. The tension between these multiple expectations is further intensified by demands from HEI members for a discrimination-free space, while the wider public expects HEIs to offer a public place for debate, including perspectives beyond academic discourses. Navigating this plethora of expectations, HEI leaders need to develop strategies; however, systematic options remain limited. Our presentation, drawing on a review of German and international literature as well as policy papers, discusses which components of AF might clash with other legally protected rights (e.g. freedom of opinion, freedom of assembly) and thus particularly challenge HEI leaders’ responses. We then analyse cases of reported attacks on AF, drawn from a sample of English- and German-language newsletters from 2014 – 2024. We identify which steps HEI leaders took or were expected to take, and which responses were perceived as effective. Whether such attacks require changes in HEI leaders’ actions, and if so, which, is the urgent question we address. Finally, we want to debate how far the neo-institutional account still holds. In this account, organisational change in HEIs responds to expectations of their social environments (DiMaggio and Powell 1983; Meyer and Rowan 1977). Often HEIs only change their formal structure to signal compliance while keeping changes to core activities to a minimum (Brunsson 2006; Kühl 2010). Mere formal adjustments might be insufficient while attacks on AF threaten HEIs’ “core values” (Tremp and Tresch 2016). We therefore build upon Pinheiro/Young (2017), arguing that HEIs should strive to be adaptive resilient organisations. Pinheiro/Young maintain that HEIs are more resilient when they act as loosely coupled systems (Weick 1976). We ask how responses shift from symbolic compliance to substantive protection, and which strategies can enhance resilience under competing expectations and rights.