In the first week of February, the anthropologist Professor Ghassan Hage was sacked from the Max Planck Institute of Social Anthropology in Halle for sharing posts on social media that expressed views “that are incompatible with the core values of the Max Planck Society”.

In support of our colleague Prof. Hage, and in support of all our colleagues who find themselves under similar pressures by their institutions, we want to think further about the “academic space” and how it is shaped by the relation between the institution and academic work. We want to consider questions such as:

• How do scholars negotiate the tension between institutional interests and disciplinary interests in their research, as well as in their teaching?

• What can be done to safeguard the academic space from such pressures?

• What support can be offered to scholars who find themselves in such situations?

• What are the specific issues for “local academias”, and how do they converge and differ to issues in the broader, international academic space?