Activist Scholarship and Freedom in Peril in Southeast Asia
Bencharat Sae Chua
JSEALab Visiting Scholar
Southeast Asia Coalition for Academic Freedom (SEACAF) and Mahidol University
With a history of strong student movements in Southeast Asian countries such as the Philippines, Indonesia, and Thailand, universities have become important sites for cultivating critical ideas and political activism. As a result, higher education has emerged as a space of contention between state ideological domination and efforts to promote critical thinking. In the context of democratic backsliding and polarized societies in Southeast Asia, academics who challenge the status quo and advocate for human rights and democracy increasingly face attacks from both state authorities and conservative forces. This paper explores how activist scholars in Southeast Asia, with a particular focus on Thailand, navigate this restrictive environment. It argues for the need to contextualize understandings of academic freedom by moving beyond a politically neutral definition and taking into account the active social engagement roles of the scholars.