Feared Czech institute takeover risks ‘incompetent interference’

Scientists at the Czech Republic’s 76 public research institutes are urgently organising against government plans that they say would curtail self-governance at their operations.

The Czech science minister, Helena Langšádlová, has confirmed that a leaked text of a draft amendment to a law that enshrines institutional autonomy that appeared in local media was genuine, but said it was still being discussed with ministries and the Academy of Sciences, which establish and sponsor the institutes.

A petition organised by trade unions and science and humanities advocacy groups, which has been signed by more than 1,400 people, describes the proposed changes as a “drastic reduction” in self-governance that would bring the “threat of politicisation”.

Currently only elected boards of researchers have the power to dissolve institutes and appoint or replace their directors, but the amendment would transfer this authority to ministries. Such a shift would invite “professionally incompetent interference” that could “influence the direction and results of research activity”, the petitioners write.

Jiří Woitsch, director of the Institute of Ethnology, told Times Higher Education that the update was “changing the logic” of the Czech public research system. “It’s totally opposite to the original law from 2005,” he said, adding that this legislation, which enshrined the autonomy of research institutes, had been crafted over five years of collaboration with the scholarly community before going to parliament.

The recent proposed changes were attached to an unrelated package of legislation over the summer, and without input from the institutes affected. “It’s quite problematic from the constitutional point of view,” said Jan Kober, a specialist in constitutional law at the Institute of State and Law and chairman of an academic trade union.

“The petition is only the first step, and we will do everything possible to stop this,” said Dr Kober, adding that further actions could include street protests.

Despite the considerable concerns about content and process, many scientists acknowledged that the 18-year-old law does need changing.

Daniel Sosna, who chairs the Ethnology Institute’s executive board, which has six internal and five external researchers on it, said he would be open to outside involvement.

“We are, maybe from some points of view, too independent and too much self-governing,” agreed the institute’s director, Dr Woitsch, who suggested that ministries or the academy could be given beefed-up powers of ethical oversight. “Currently, in cases where directors go crazy and are supported by the board of the institute, there’s no way to fire the director,” he said.

The deputy director of the Institute of Physics, Antonín Fejfar, said a little fine-tuning of the law “could actually be welcome”, including changes such as requiring researchers to declare any work with other institutions.

Science is Alive!, the group that published the leaked text, drew parallels between the planned institutional power grab and changes brought in by the Hungarian government of Viktor Orbán in 2019.

But Dr Woitsch and Dr Sosna disagreed with that viewpoint. As did Tereza Stöckelová, a researcher at the Institute of Sociology who studies science and technology policy. She said the changes were likely aimed at merging institutes or encouraging the use of consultancies instead of public researchers for policy development, rather than an attempt to put research in the service of neo-nationalism.

“I don’t think it’s an Orbán-like case; it’s rather a Mazzucato case: austerity, a diminishing state and the liberal agenda of outsourcing expertise,” she said, referring to Mariana Mazzucato, the celebrity economist based at UCL whose most recent book is a critique of consultancy overuse.

The governance changes come as the Czech Republic’s centre-right coalition proposes a freeze on the science budget for 2024, despite inflation running at more than 10 per cent in 2022 and 2023. Dr Sosna said the UK was a better comparison for the country’s government of “economic fundamentalists”, who, he said, prioritise cost-cutting and efficiency over promised research investments.

ben.upton@timeshighereducation.com