As academia in the United States is reeling from an all-out attack on academic freedom, there has been a push for European countries to attract American researchers. In Sweden, the current education minister Johan Pehrson, the leader of the Liberal Party wrote on Twitter that “American academics and scientists – we need you!” and that “few things are more important to us than freedom, in both academia and life”.
Sweden is an amazing place to work in academia. I am very happy and feel very privileged to work here. I hope excellent researchers from America and across the world have more opportunities to do research here. That being said, as a researcher who is American, I thought I would provide some important context to the current government’s higher education policies for prospective Americans who might want to move here:
The current government relies on support of the far-right Sweden Democrats to rule. This is a party whose top leadership nominated Donald Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize leader, whose leader called Trump a breath of fresh air, and whose MPs have attended Trump rallies. Under Johan Pehrson’s leadership the Liberal Party chose to cooperate with this party breaking a decade long exclusion of SD. They were the kingmakers during the coalition building process.
During the first years of the government, the former education minster Mats Persson (L) focused on combating cancel culture and disruptive activism at universities. He is among the first center-right politicians in Sweden to import this concept and he made it the primary initiative of his term, writing numerous op-eds on the topic. At the same time, Swedish universities faced extremely high rental increases, as many university facilities are owned by a state property management company which is required to produce a profit. These increased costs led to cutting of fundamental aspects of the university functioning – resulting in lab closures, zoom only lectures, and hiring freezes. Despite numerous op-eds from university leadership, student groups, and faculty groups, Mats Persson (L) never publicly addressed what was the most pressing issue in Swedish academia, focusing his energy into discussions about university protesters, cancel culture, and woke ideology.
The current government also shortened university board term lengths from three years to 17 months. This raised concerns of increasing the potential for politicization and political steering of university boards. The justification for this by the government was because of the current security situation in Europe. This was criticized unanimously by all university leadership across Sweden.
In June 2023, the Government suddenly cut all ear marked development grants. The timing meant that hundreds of researchers spent countless hours applying for grants that were ultimately not processed without warning. This move did not cancel existing funding that had already been granted. The government justified this by pointing to the War in Ukraine, while critics argue that this was primarily motivated by an ideological dislike for development aid.
In short, the government’s record on higher education in Sweden is characterized by outsized focus on cultural issues (cancel culture/disruptive protests/woke ideology), structural changes that many saw as attempts to assert more political control over the universities, and ad-hoc funding cuts which lead to thousands of wasted researcher hours.
These issues are small compared to the brutal attacks against American universities. But America did not get where it is today overnight. Politicians who want to promote their countries as safe havens for American researchers should do this by actions by safeguarding the autonomy, funding stability of universities, while recognizing the threat that far-right populism poses against academic freedom. Or as we say in America – you can talk the talk, but can you walk the walk?