The DAVO Committee on Academic Freedom (DAVO-CAF) is committed to monitoring and defending academic freedom in research, teaching, and learning related to the study of the contemporary Middle East/West Asia and North Africa, both in the German-speaking academic sphere and globally, including institutions within the region. More information on DAVO-CAF can be found in Section 16 of the DAVO Statutes.

As stipulated therein, the DAVO-CAF’s work is grounded in the constitutional guarantee of freedom of art, science, and research (GG, Article 5, paragraph 3), as well as the 1997 UNESCO “Recommendation concerning the Status of Higher Education Teaching Personnel.” It interprets academic freedom as “the right to teach and discuss freely without restriction by any prescribed doctrine, to conduct research and disseminate and publish the results freely, to express one’s opinion freely about the institution or system in which one works, free from institutional censorship, and to participate freely in professional or representative academic bodies.”

The current spokespersons for the DAVO-CAF are Sevil Çakır and Nils Riecken. You can send inquiries to DAVO-CAF by email at academicfreedom@davo1.de.

12.11.2025: Joint statement with BRISMES, SeSaMO, and MESA on the cancellation of the symposium “Palestine and Europe” organized by the Chair of Contemporary History of the Arab World at the Collège de France and the CAREP (Arab Center for Research and Political Studies) >> PDF