The Network of Academic Solidarity and Engagement (MASA) condemns the threats directed at journalist and associate professor of the Faculty of Philosophy in Novi Sad Dink Gruhonjić. With incomplete and manipulatively selected excerpts from a public meeting and further tendentious interpretations, an organized campaign directed at colleague Gruhonjić is being carried out.
Statements made at an informal meeting, outside the framework of academic institutions, cannot be the reason for a kind of persecution within the faculty. Without going into what was said, and understanding the sensitivity of the public, we believe that freedom of speech is the inviolable right of intellectuals everywhere. In a premeditated calculation, edited recordings from the depths of the Internet are transmitted as news in tabloid newspapers, and according to the model we have already witnessed several times, these news are followed by a barrage of threats to the life of the individual and his family, as well as calls to prof. Gruhonjic to resign. Freedom of speech carries responsibility for what is said, but it must not mean public lynching.
We express collegial solidarity because we witness how, through various forms of pressure, public name-calling and spin through the media and social networks, public intimidation is practiced, the integrity of critical voices in the academic community is hindered and the personal safety of its members is threatened.
