Recent government demands on U.S. universities have some scholars searching for the right historical analogue for insights.

“I’ve been thinking about this budding conflict between the state and universities as possibly a replay of the 1950s” and the McCarthy era, said William C. Kirby, T.M. Chang Professor of China Studies in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Spangler Family Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. But, he suggested, events that occurred outside the U.S. provide more useful parallels.

Kirby and other Harvard faculty with expertise on higher ed crackdowns in various national contexts came together on a recent panel hosted at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies (CES). Stories emerged of governments in other countries muzzling student speech, placing universities under receivership, or hobbling institutions with bureaucratic red tape.

The event, offered as part of the center’s Democracy and Its Critics Initiative, had been in the works since December. “Little did we know then how important this issue would become to the very institution in which we are meeting today,” said moderator Sven Beckert, Laird Bell Professor of History.

The history starts in the heart of Berlin, began Kirby, author of “Empire of Ideas: Creating the Modern University from Germany to America to China” (2022). The University of Berlin, founded in 1810, was the world’s premier research university. It was the first dedicated to the creation as well as the transmission of knowledge. It pioneered the concept of academic freedom for students and faculty. It also placed liberal arts, rather than professional training, at its core.

“It became the model for all great research universities,” said Kirby, who served as FAS dean from 2002 to 2006.