Joint CBI & EDOC policy on academic and democratic values

Academic events, such as the CBI and EDOC conferences, are places where ideas and concepts should be shared, scrutinized and discussed openly. Irrespective of people’s political preferences, nationality, religion, race, gender, etc. These academic values typically go hand in hand with democratic values, such as freedom of speech, majority based decisions, while respecting the needs of minorities, etc.

These values are not a given. They need to be guarded, and when needed defended. As an academic community, we have a responsibility to take a leading role in doing so. We should be able to rely on our academic institutions, and our academic events, to be places that foster and uphold these values.

Presently, these values are under treat once again. Even more, we regret to see that some academic institutions, engage themselves in actions that explicitly undermine these values.

In line with this, the CBI and EDOC conferences have jointly agreed on the following policy:

• We continue welcoming researchers from across the globe.
• However, institutions that knowingly engage in actions that undermine academic and/or democratic values shall not be mentioned as part of the affiliations of researchers, funding acknowledgements, etc.

Examples (from past and presence) of such undermining actions include:

• Structurally firing staff for their political conviction, religion, race, etc.
• Blocking students from studying due to similar considerations.
• Openly supporting aggressive actions of their government against (other) democratic nations.

The joint EDOC/CBI Steering Committee takes the final decision (by consensus between the SC’s and by majority vote within the two SC’s) regarding the question if an institution ”qualifies” in the above sense.