Response to interpellation 2022/23:349 on the terms of office for university boards
Translated from Swedish by AI; the translation may contain errors. The Swedish text is the original.
Summary AI, written in advance
The debate concerns the mandate periods of university boards and security policy competence. L establishes that short mandate periods are necessary due to the security policy situation 1. L argues that the higher education institutions need a better understanding of risks 1 2 and that they want to bring in new competence quickly due to espionage 3. L argues that the government will not change the process for external members 4 but instead strengthens the protection of researchers 4. V argues that short mandate periods create uncertainty and undermine trust 5. V argues that the government should act more transparently and democratically 5 6. S criticizes the abrupt actions as threatening academic freedom 7. S admits that the higher education institutions need a better security mindset 8.
Written by AI in advance and may contain errors. The numbers lead to the speech a statement builds on; check against the text below.
Utbildningsministern Mats Persson (L)
Mr. Speaker! Lorena Delgado Varas has asked me if the government intends to reconsider and extend the terms of office for the boards of higher education institutions when it sees how the higher education sector has reacted. She has also asked what measures the government intends to take to strengthen academic freedom. Furthermore, she has asked if the government intends to change the process for how board members are appointed, and if so, how. Finally, Lorena Delgado Varas has asked to what extent I intend to cooperate with the Sweden Democrats ahead of the nomination of new nominees the next time board members are to be appointed and to what extent I intend to cooperate with the Sweden Democrats ahead of new board members being appointed.
I welcome the debate and the commitment that exists regarding the issue among representatives for the country's educational institutions, but the government stands by our decision to appoint the members for a shorter period than usual. The background is the security policy situation and the need for such competence in the boards. The intention is not for the board to decide on individual security matters, but it should be able to handle overarching and strategic issues so that the entire institution's operations take security issues into account.
The government is now restructuring security policy, and it affects the entire society – including universities and colleges. For universities and colleges, it is about the need to have a greater understanding of risks in the new security situation. We now need to look at the overall picture and carefully consider which measures are necessary to increase security at universities and colleges. The purpose of the shorter mandate period for the boards of higher education institutions is to be able, in the shortest possible time, to ensure that there is knowledge of and experience with issues regarding security in the boards of the higher education institutions.
Even though the government is now announcing a review, our starting point is to continue to safeguard the unique character and autonomy of the universities. The government will not change the specific process that currently exists for appointing external members to the universities' boards. The procedure with two nominating persons for each university who produce proposals for board members will therefore remain. The board that takes office thereafter shall serve for a normal period of three years.
The government decided on the appointments of external members, including the chairperson, to the boards of state universities and colleges on April 27. The decisions were made by the government. No other parties in the Riksdag have been involved. That is how it will continue to be. This applies to both decisions on nominees and board members for universities and colleges.
Universities and colleges shall be characterized by openness, academic freedom and by researchers' opportunities to freely share results, for example with researchers in other countries. These values are incredibly important and need to be upheld and protected.
In conclusion, I want to emphasize that the government has confidence in the board chairs and board members who were appointed in April. My urge to them is that they should perform their mandate as they would have done if the mandate period had not been shortened, with long-term perspective and continuity and with the institution's best interests in mind.
Lorena Delgado Varas (V)
Mr. Speaker! Thank you, Minister, for the answer! If the boards are to handle overarching and strategic issues so that the entire operation, i.e., the universities and colleges, shall increase their security measures and competencies, is the answer not to shorten the terms of office? And the question is what comes afterwards.
I believe myself and many others that adding parameters so that the persons included in the board have a clearer security competence is not a successful model. On the one hand, the educational institutions are already working on the issue, and on the other hand, it sounds to me and many others as if the government wants to specify who should sit there or not. By shortening the mandate period, uncertainty has been created, and a task that should have been carried out in a much more continuous and inclusive manner is being rushed through.
It also undermines the feeling for the elected board members that they truly have full confidence in their work. The Minister says that the government has confidence, but one obviously does not have enough confidence to be able to handle this in a democratic way, where the new boards are involved in the security work instead of facing a shocking announcement. No one knew that this was going to come.
I can also feel that it is a bit problematic when the government first says that they will not change anything in the process but will only conduct a review, while at the same time starting by shortening the mandate period. A lot has been said on this issue. The universities and colleges have clearly stated what they think about the issue, and they are not positive words.
This is a time when we have a great need to strengthen the trust between politics and the academic world, not just in Sweden. Globally, there is a move towards more authoritarianism and reduced democratic space. Many times, researchers and others are questioned by politicians. It is actually very sad that this step was taken in this way, but it was perhaps not entirely unexpected when one thinks of the coalition parties you in the government have.
Does the Minister not realize that one needs to provide some more concrete answers on what one wants to achieve with this and what parameters one is talking about? Perhaps one should also admit to the universities' boards that there was a lack of process and transparency.
Mats Wiking (S)
Mr. Speaker! I shall speak a little on the same theme here. We Social Democrats have for a longer period had very much contact with our universities. We have had many dialogues. We have matched much positive energy and forward-looking spirit with descriptions of how the academy, together with the Riksdag, can develop higher education and research.
In recent times, however, we can state that the criticism against Minister Mats Persson has been heavy. This concerns how the government has acted abruptly to shorten the terms of office for the external members on the boards of the state universities from three years to 17 months.
We have, just as we said in the committee, full respect for the security situation, that it is very serious and that the universities need to take it into account. But instead of rushing blindly into it, we think that one should see what opportunities exist to manage the security situation in dialogue with the universities' new boards. Otherwise, it will naturally lead to our universities experiencing that academic freedom and the universities' independence are threatened. There must be better ways to ensure that the universities, with the boards at the helm, have the competence that is required.
And with the government's actions, the process of appointing external members to the boards of educational institutions is also being questioned. We see a process where it has previously been important that politics should not define what competencies the external members in the boards should have. It has been important to safeguard academic freedom, and I believe that the Liberals have also stood behind that. Now the government departs from this important principle by announcing that they want to regulate that the external members should have security policy competence – at least according to the Minister for Education – and by saying that those who have been appointed are not sufficiently security-cleared, according to the Minister for Finance. In that case, it is difficult for those who have now been chosen not to feel questioned.
My question to the Minister is: How does the Minister intend to ensure academic freedom in the process of appointing external members to the boards of universities?
Utbildningsministern Mats Persson (L)
Mr. Speaker! Let me begin by saying that it is clear that I can be self-critical in hindsight regarding how we have informed about this. It is clear that we could have informed in a better way towards our chairpersons and our educational institutions. It is something that we self-critically take to heart and must carry with us in the future work. We could have informed about it in a different way.
When it comes to the issue itself, I maintain that there is a need for greater security policy competence, and this applies broadly across our educational institutions.
The government governs in different ways. The criteria that exist for our boards are one way. But equally important, or perhaps even more important, is how our educational institutions work with this in the daily operational work. There, the government took measures in December by us, in the regulatory letter, emphasizing the need to, among other things, work with information security.
The Government is currently reviewing the need for national guidelines regarding security issues, as these are lacking today. We are also reviewing what we can learn from other countries and in what way Sweden can move forward positions in these types of issues.
Mr. Speaker! The background is that Sweden finds itself in a new security policy situation. This applies in general, but it applies in particular to our educational institutions, our universities and colleges. Our authorities, including Säpo, emphasize that there are individuals at the educational institutions who have spied for foreign powers. This is what Säpo, one of our authorities, says. It is clear that the government, which is ultimately responsible for Sweden, cannot stand with its arms crossed and watch when Sweden is exposed to completely different external threats than before.
Säpo specifically points out three countries: Russia, China and Iran. Not least, the strategic work that China carries out means that Sweden as a nation faces entirely new issues. Not least, the educational institutions are a part of this. In Säpo's annual report, in Must's annual report and in FOI's reviews, our educational institutions are highlighted particularly as vulnerable in this.
My assessment is that Sweden is lagging behind other countries and needs to do more. Therefore, we are now undertaking intensive work to move forward our positions and take sharper measures to handle these types of issues.
Mr. Speaker! The interpellants are asking me questions about academic freedom. Academic freedom has several layers. One such layer, or dimension, concerns the autonomy and independence of higher education institutions, something that is important and which, among others, my own party has championed for many years.
Another dimension concerns the individual researcher's academic freedom. In that regard, the government is now initiating a number of measures that should have been taken long ago. For example, we are strengthening the criminal protection for deans and professors in cases of threats and violence. We also intend to appoint an inquiry to change the system for ethics review, an area that many researchers perceive as encroaching on their academic freedom.
The government is therefore making a series of reforms to improve academic freedom. These are reforms that should have been made already, but better late than never.
Lorena Delgado Varas (V)
Mr. Speaker! Thank you for the answer, Minister! It is still good that one acknowledges that it could have been done differently. I think that perhaps it would not have required so many steps to do it in another way.
I want to bring up what has also been discussed regarding the Sweden Democrats' role. It is not so strange that people wonder if the Sweden Democrats are driving this, even though they have said that is not the case. They have, after all, included a number of political issues that are undemocratic in, among other things, the Tidö Agreement. This feels like another such issue.
We are talking about security against certain imperialist states, certain dictatorships, or simply countries that do not work in a fair way to strengthen their competitiveness. The security issue is something that is mentioned time and again as a reason to be able to make these perhaps undemocratic changes.
Of course, the security issue is important, as the other member also mentioned earlier in their contribution, and of course, we do not want our relatively open society to be exploited by undemocratic forces. But the development cannot go towards us developing in the same way as the countries we criticize. There are several examples. China, for example, has a state member on every corporate board for the foreign companies that invest in China. Is that a path we should take? I truly hope not.
Hungary is another example. It is a country that has been praised by the same party as I mentioned earlier but which cannot live up to the basic requirements of a democracy and the rule of law. Hungary has introduced something called Lex CEU, requirements which meant that the right to conduct educational activities no longer is based on professional criteria but more on political criteria. The bill limits the possibility for non-European universities to enter into cooperation with Hungarian universities.
The proposition itself was drafted in complete secrecy and pushed through within a few days without the opposition being able to say much about it. What was actually intended was to attack, for example, gender studies, LGBTQ work, environmental and climate work, and so on. The Hungarian government pointed then to the need for more nationalism and strengthened security, but in reality, they wanted to attack certain issues politically by restricting academic freedom.
It shows how important this is. We must constantly adhere to the democratic rules of the game. I believe that changes must occur democratically and transparently. Perhaps the committee could have been informed regarding the security issue in a more transparent way, and perhaps then one could have found steps to address the issue in a different way.
Mats Wiking (S)
Mr. Speaker! That Sweden's security situation has changed is something we Social Democrats and the government completely agree on. At the same time, both the Minister for Education and the undersigned know that our universities are well aware of the tense security situation. Here, surely our universities, just like the rest of society, need to become better in their security thinking. In that regard, the Minister is right.
Based on the reasoning that it is necessary to bring in members with more security policy knowledge, it is therefore interesting to reflect on how the government intends to proceed. The question is how and who will handle the recruitment of the new external board members. Will the government use the same recruitment method as when the current boards were formed? Or will they use a different method? If so, which one?
I am also a bit curious about how someone is to determine who should leave the boards after 17 months. What criteria will be used then?
Last but not least: What special tasks shall the new board members have in the new old board after 17 months in order to meet the government's requirements?
Utbildningsministern Mats Persson (L)
Mr. Speaker! I will begin with Mats Wikings' questions and read out from the interpellation response: "The Government will not change the special process that exists today for appointing external members to the boards of educational institutions. The procedure with two nominating persons for each educational institution who produce proposals for board members will thus remain." This is in both the oral and written interpellation response. I hope that is clear enough for the member.
Lorena Delgado Varas asks if Sweden is on its way to becoming China, that is to say a communist dictatorship where the state controls companies and all spheres of society. The answer is no. Sweden is not on its way to becoming China.
Is Sweden on its way to becoming Hungary, where politicians order the closure of certain privately owned universities or try to politically steer what researchers are allowed to research? The answer is no. What the government is doing is quite the opposite.
The government is therefore going in the opposite direction and is going significantly further than the red-green government did, that is to say, we are now strengthening the protection of individual professors and lecturers against threats and violence. This is something real that has increased in scope, and now we are strengthening the protection of the individual researcher and the individual teacher in terms of criminal law.
We will appoint an inquiry into ethics review, something that many individual researchers perceive as threatening their academic freedom or nibbling at the edges of it. 2,500 researchers wrote a petition to Sweden's politicians to rectify this system, because they believe that authorities are interfering in which questions the individual researcher is allowed to address.
This is a regulatory framework that the Social Democratic government is indebted to and which was promised to be rectified but was never rectified. Now, the bourgeois government is to appoint an inquiry to resolve the problem.
This is not a new issue but an issue that has existed for several years, where individual researchers have been prosecuted according to the regulatory framework that includes a duty to prosecute, that is to say, they have received a notice in their mailbox that they risk civil litigation.
This infringes on academic freedom. It is a problem that has been known for several years. I have personally held Social Democratic ministers to account regarding this, but nothing has happened. Now the government announces that we will appoint an inquiry to tackle this problem.
The answer is therefore no, we are not on our way to becoming China, a communist dictatorship. No, we are also not on our way to becoming Hungary, but we are taking steps forward to strengthen the individual researcher's academic freedom. We are also taking steps forward to strengthen the protection for free research and the free dissemination of knowledge.
Lorena Delgado Varas (V)
Mr. Speaker! I thank you for the clarification that Sweden is not on its way to becoming Hungary or China. That sounds good. But words are not enough; the processes must correspond to that image.
As democrats, we believe it is important to have knowledge of how democratic processes work, how to build trust, and how to develop instead of destroying. Now that the minister answered, among other things, Member of Parliament Mats Wikings' question, it became even more unclear to me why the mandate period was shortened, if one does not intend to change the process itself. Then these people should enjoy full confidence. In the meantime, the government can conduct an investigation and then build up the work together with the boards in a more democratic way.
Today, there are other problems that also lead to reduced academic freedom. Universities and colleges are underfunded. Some are looking into how they should reduce teacher-led hours and use fewer premises. There are researchers who choose to quit as researchers because of the economic uncertainty. The economic uncertainty makes people choose to work with other issues than those they initially intended to work with. These are also points that should be included in the question of academic freedom.
I would like to take the opportunity to correct one thing that the minister answered earlier. Vänsterpartiet was in favor of the transition support, but we had thoughts regarding the financing. We wanted the employers to take more responsibility.
Utbildningsministern Mats Persson (L)
Mr. Speaker! I thank the interveners for a productive debate and a pleasant approach. It feels as though there is a consensus on the importance of us continuing to work on those types of issues.
Let me give an answer to Lorena Delgado Varas's question: We are taking the measure because we want to bring in new security policy competence as quickly as possible. We do not think we can wait three years, but we want to bring in that competence as quickly as possible. The background is, naturally, the security policy situation. To instill the gravity of the situation, I repeat that our agency Säpo has alerted us that there are individuals at our educational institutions who have engaged in espionage for a foreign power. The gravity of the situation cannot be overemphasized, and there is also a new security policy situation with a completely new geopolitical situation.
This is not something we say in fancy rooms here, but this is serious and must surround everything we do.
The Government intends to return with more initiatives regarding the security policy perspective. We are currently investigating the need for national guidelines that shall cover the entire sector. But we do not rule out further measures beyond that because we live in a completely new global situation.
Mr. Speaker! Lastly, I want to emphasize academic freedom. The Government takes the issue most seriously. We are now implementing some of the largest reforms in modern times to ensure that the individual researcher can spend more time teaching and researching and not feel politically directed regarding which areas one should research. One should feel that one receives the support of society in the event that one, against all odds, is subjected to threats or has violence directed towards them. It is the strongest, best, and most powerful way that we can strengthen the individual researcher's academic freedom. It is extremely important.
Source: The Swedish Parliament. The speeches come from the open data of the Riksdag, translated into English by AI, which may contain errors.