In a Nutshell

The leadership of two major European scholarly societies, the European Society of International Law (ESIL) and the European Society of Criminology, almost simultaneously published reflections on a growing crisis in academic circles, resulting from heightened geopolitical tensions.

Gleider Hernández (ESIL)’s piece in the European Journal of International Law argues for “principled restraint” as a form of institutional neutrality. Rather than a rule of silence, he promotes restraint as a practice intended to prevent an institution’s collective voice from crowding out the individual scholars it is meant to protect.

Dealing with strikingly similar issues, Anna-Maria Getoš Kalac (ESC) addresses the threat of “collective indictment,” specifically opposing academic boycotts based on national or institutional affiliation. She argues that replacing individual responsibility with a presumption of complicity based on identity is incompatible with scholarly exchange and scientific reasoning.

Both authors testify to the difficulty of maintaining these boundaries when facing intense pressures to take a stand, yet both conclude that the primary duty of a learned society (and scientific research in general” is to protect the “home” where reasoned disagreement remains possible.

Our Take

We obviously agree. Fortunately, we also see that, more and more, learned societies learn from their mistakes and go back to institutional restraint.

Moral consensus on global tragedies may or may not exist, but it should not disrupt the core mission of critical scientific infrastructure. Otherwise, the learned society becomes little more than a device to enforce moral consensus, which itself contradicts the scientific method.

A learned society should never prioritize institutional branding over academic principles and respect for its diverse members.

To preserve credibility in knowledge production, this requires leaders to maintain a strict separation between personal conviction and institutional mandate. Leadership must resist the impulse to collapse a community’s plurality into a single institutional statement, while simultaneously defending the right of individual members to express their own convictions without fear of retaliation.

Read the full stories at:

• European Journal of International Law, Vol. 37, No. 1 (2026): G. Hernández, On Institutional Restraints and Academic Freedoms: Reflections on Berlin
• ESC Presidential Address: A.M. Getoš Kalac, Criminological Authority and the Future of the ESC, available at: https://escnewsletter.org/storage/summaries/1496ae44-ad38-4653-bda0-bfec72215707.pdf