Fasia, Eirini

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‘Police-Governed’ UniversitiesEirini Fasia 2021-02-15T16:32:14On 11 February, the Greek Parliament passed legislation that provides for thecreation of a new police corps, permanently stationed on campuses. Ostensiblydesigned to maintain order at universities, the new law violates both academicfreedom and the ‘self-governing’ legal status of the universities, as enshrined in theGreek Constitution. Particularly in light of allegations of increasing police violenceand abuse of police power in the country, this new law and the nature and duties ofthe university police raise serious concerns.The new law, part of a trendThe legislation was passed with majority of 166 MPs in the 300-seat parliament.The MPs that voted in favour of the new legislation belong to the ruling right-wing‘New Democracy’ party and the far-right party ‘Greek Solution’. The law provides,inter alia, for the creation of ‘Units for the Protection of University Institutions’ (UPUI;article 18). The Units will consist of police personnel and special guards – a typeof minimally trained police personnel that has not attended the Police Academyand is usually enlisted to protect political personnel, important infrastructure, andsensitive targets (paragraph 5). The mission of the UPUI is ‘the protection andsafety of the persons within the higher education institutions, as well as theirinfrastructure’. Their duties are, among others, patrolling of the campuses andthe prevention and suppression of any unlawful conduct taking place within theinstitutions (paragraph 4). It is specified that the Units will not carry firearms (but willbe armed with truncheons, police batons etc.). Article 19 stipulates that the specialguards in the UPUI will be competent to exercise pre-inquisitory powers. It mustbe noted that this is the first time that special guards have been given such powerand concerns were expressed by the police itself through its Panhellenic Federation(POASY) regarding the lack of special guards’ training for such duties.The government contended that this new police unit was necessary in order to putan end to a culture of lawlessness at Greek campuses and that its very presencewill act as a guarantor of academic freedom. It is, however, only the culminationof a recent trend towards increasing police presence in Greek universities.Until 2019, the police could only enter the campuses when called upon by theinstitutions’ administration to intervene in cases of unlawful acts taking placewithin the universities or proprio motu in cases of grave criminal offences (article3(2) L. 4485/2017). In 2019, this law was replaced by a provision stipulatingthat ‘at the premises of the Higher Education Institutions the public authoritiesexercise all their legal competences, including that of intervention to suppressthe commission of criminal offences’ (article 3(3) L. 4623/2019). This provisionessentially abolished ‘university asylum’, which was first introduced in 1974 afterthe fall of the military junta: L. 1268/1982 prohibited police from entering universitieswithout the permission of the rector and representatives of the students, except in- 1 -the case of commission of crimes against life. ‘University asylum’ was first abolishedin 2011 (L. 4009/2011) but was reinstated in 2017 (L. 4485/2017). It is important tomention that throughout this period, i.e., since 1974 and until now, security services,consisting of either civil servants or private personnel, have operated within theinstitutions and will continue to do so in a new form under the recent law (article 14).Also, it is apparent that the intervention of the police in cases of criminal conductwithin university premises was already possible under the previous legal regime. It isthe permanent and continuous presence of a special police unit within the institutionsthat gives rise to constitutional questions.Incompatibility with the Greek ConstitutionArticle 16(1) of the Greek Constitution sets out that ‘[a]rt and science, research andteaching shall be free, and their development and promotion shall be an obligation ofthe State’. Hardy Jones points out in his article ‘academic freedom as a moral right’that “[a]cademics are expected to discover and transmit – in research, teaching,and publication – what they have honestly found to be true. In a sense, this is their‘job’. Without academic freedom, [academics] would not be able to do their work. Ifthey perform these tasks diligently yet are rewarded with dismissal or recrimination,they have been treated unfairly” (Pincoffs, The Concept of Academic Freedom,1972). Yet, academic freedom does not merely mean that an academic has the rightto do her/his job; academic freedom entails more than a combination of individualfreedoms and freedom of speech. It has to do with the idea of the modern universityitself as a collective space of free and critical thinking. As the Humboldtian highereducation model suggests, the university provides not only vocational training butmust also encourage the students to think and research. For this endeavour to besuccessful, the university must be independent and not in direct service to the State(Robert Zimmer, What is Academic Freedom For, 2015). Creating such a free spaceis neither a quiet nor a sanitized process, it is a collaborative process that requiresdialogue, expression of disagreements and doubts, and the right to criticise freelyand unapologetically even if that might be unpleasant to some.Hence, academic freedom must be protected from interventions of the State andthe State itself must provide guarantees that ensure the protection of academicfreedom. Accordingly, paragraph 5 of article 16 of the Greek Constitution, specifiesthat ‘[e]ducation at university level shall be provided exclusively by institutions whichare fully self-governed legal persons of public law’. This means that each institutionhas the power to decide upon its own matters, from asset management to theimplementation of security. A concomitant of this status is the asylum, i.e., the rightof the university to safeguard its premises from any external act of State violence orcoercion. In no way does the concept of asylum signify a space where criminal law isnot applicable. It denotes a free space where police force can intervene, investigate,and arrest only under certain conditions prescribed by law. Full self-governancethen means that the university administration is the only competent authority toallow police intervention within university premises. The legislator can provide forexceptions, such as intervention by the police without prior authorization in the eventof grave criminal offences or crimes being suppressed in flagrante delicto. Thecreation of a police unit outside the jurisdiction of the university, solely answerable- 2 -to the police hierarchy and, finally, the Minister of ‘Citizen Protection’ (as the PublicOrder Minister is now called in Greece) violates the nature of the universities asself-governed bodies. In addition, the new law does not seek to provide at leastsome guarantees for the protection of academic freedom, by stipulating for examplea different process with respect to crimes of opinion and conscience, such asdesecration of national and religious symbols; call to disobedience; spreading offalse news; or the crime of disturbance of the peace.University police in Europe?The presence of a special police unit in universities is also at odds with a longEuropean tradition of freedom and self-governance in higher education. This pointdeserves special emphasis, precisely because the Greek government sought toargue otherwise: It purported to simply transmit to Greece the best practices fromeverywhere else in Europe and the world. The Greek government constructed anarrative in which the existence of specialized police forces is the rule in westernuniversities, especially pointing out the armed police patrols on US campuses.Indeed, university police do exist in the US and, in a more limited manner in Canada,but do not appear to exist anywhere else in Europe or other western states. Inresponse to this debate and the circulation of misinformation in Greek social mediaon whether other European universities and in particular the University of Oxfordhas a police force at its premises, the Oxford Branch of the University and CollegeUnion (UCU) clarified in a motion formally passed at its general meeting that ‘theUniversity of Oxford does not have a university police force, and that security onUniversity premises is provided by the University’s own personnel’. UCU furtherexpressed solidarity with Greek colleagues, students, and citizens, stating thatthe ‘proposal of the Greek Government […] is alarming and not in line with bestpractice’. Europe has a long tradition of independent and self-governed universities;and historic institutions such as the Universities of Bologna, Oxford, the Sorbonne,and Salamanca have enjoyed protection from state intervention since their veryfoundation.Police violence and underfunding of education.Beyond the apparent constitutional issues, it is rather doubtful that the presence ofpolice force will resolve any of the problems that Greek tertiary education faces. Andit would not be surprising if this very presence caused more tensions and episodesbetween students and the police, especially when considering the enforcementofficials’ negative record of violence and abuse repeatedly documented by AmnestyInternational.A meaningful plan for educational reform in Greece would begin with financialsupport for the seriously underfunded institutions. This matter is also documentedin the recent OECD’s 2020 Report ‘Education at a Glance’ showing that publicspending on education as a percentage of total government spending in Greeceis significantly lower than OECD’s average. The issue of underfunding is linked tothe security of campuses and the fiscal constraints imposed on tertiary education- 3 -institutions during the period of budgetary adjustment in the previous decade. Infact, the current PM was responsible for imposing wide redundancies throughout thepublic administration, which included the non-specialist staff of the Greek universitieswhen he served as Minister for Administrative Reform and e-Governance from 2013to 2015 (L. 4210/2013). The choice to introduce now a new university police thatwill impose additional fiscal burdens to the country’s fragile economy is paradoxical.Suffice to mention that while the annual budget for all universities in Greece isEUR 90 million, the establishment of the university police force is estimated to costapprox. EUR 30 million, i.e., 1/3 the total annual budget for all universities in Greece.Bringing back memoriesThe recently enacted bill has caused reactions among academics, students, andopposition parties. The overwhelming majority of the academic community rejectedthe creation of the university police as ineffective. Political parties sharply criticizedthe new law as either unnecessary or as a clear act of state coercion and anindication that the government is becoming more authoritarian and undemocratic.Furthermore, the Diem25 party cited in the parliament a telegram by the USembassy in Athens published by Wikileaks, stating that the US government ispressuring Greek authorities to increase their control in universities through theintroduction of a university police force. Moreover, the police itself, with the exceptionof the special guards’ union, did not support the bill. The POASY questionedbefore parliament the reasoning behind the establishment of university police,underlining the fact that police personnel lack training for operating in such a specialenvironment. Further, the POASY claimed that the most fitting solution for theproblem of delinquency and anti-social behaviour in universities is the operation of asecurity unit under the control of the university authorities with the right to call for theassistance of the police in case of criminal offences.It is disconcerting that the Greek government did not aim to enhance the alreadyexisting security services at the universities. Instead, it chose to introduce a newpolice unit and fashion it in a way that is reminiscent of the ‘spoudastikon’, a specialbranch of secret police that was introduced in the Greek universities during the yearsof the Colonels regime (military junta; 1967 – 1974) in an attempt to sanitize theuniversities from any dissenting voices.- 4 -

‘Police-Governed’ Universities

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‘Police-Governed’ Universities

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