首页 | 本学科首页   官方微博 | 高级检索  
     


Criminalising Academia: The Protection of State Information Bill and Academic Freedom
Authors:Jane Duncan
Affiliation:University of Johannesburg, South Africa
Abstract:This article assesses the implications of the controversial Protection of State Information Bill for academic freedom in South Africa, specifically for communications, media and journalism studies. The Bill requires the security cluster to classify sensitive documents on national security grounds. Academic teaching and research can help citizens to understand whether the security cluster is acting in the universal interest, rather than the interest of a political elite; it can also be used to assess media performance in reporting on national security matters. Using a critical approach to the concept of national security, I argue that the Bill favours secrecy over openness, and South Africa’s embrace of the human security definition of national security has contributed to the problem. This overemphasis on secrecy is likely to reduce the few spaces that exist in academia for critical, emancipatory work on security issues, which could hobble the sector’s attempts to understand the deeper processes at work in the security cluster. If such enquiry is marginalised, then the higher education system risks becoming an instrument for continuity rather than change in South Africa’s existing, highly unequal power relations: relations that are being maintained increasingly by force.
Keywords:Protection of State Information Bill  academic freedom  South African higher education  national security  communications and media studies  journalism studies
设为首页 | 免责声明 | 关于勤云 | 加入收藏

Copyright©北京勤云科技发展有限公司  京ICP备09084417号