Echoing the Call: Standing in Defense of Academic Freedom for Our Field

This article joins the call to protect academic freedom and freedom of expression in scholarly work. In our commentary, we reflect on how Digital Journalism has long provided a space for scholarship that examines and challenges authoritarian pressure and political controls on journalistic and democratic institutions. We outline what is lost when academic inquiry is curtailed in the face of political pressure and efforts at authoritarian control, and underscore the importance of preserving and defending academic freedom and inquiry as a democratic imperative. In doing so, we echo calls to defend our colleagues’ research and our field from undue political pressure, wherever it occurs. While we advocate for a robust defense of this tradition in light of current political circumstances, we also pause to acknowledge our own shortcomings as a group of digital journalism scholars by highlighting the anti-democratic trends we might have missed in recent years, in the hopes we can avoid such blindspots in the future.