Obstacles to Academic Freedom in Tunisia: A Psychoanalytical Reading at a Historical, Geopolitical and Socio-Cultural Crossroads as Witnessed by a Tunisian Academic

Tunisia has a middling rank on the Academic Freedom Index and, in 2017, a Tunisian University Charter was created. Despite that, many symptoms show the withering of academic freedom. This paper proposes a psychoanalytical reading within a multifactorial hostility to the implementation of academic freedom in Tunisia. I present this account from my own trial by fire as a Tunisian woman, academic and researcher in a scientifically “peripheral” country struggling with what I call “the epistemology of Procrustes’s bed”. A holistic understanding of the hindrances to academic freedom may contribute to its democratization and to ethical and equitable science.