Do you have to be able to say everything on Twitter and Facebook? Is Instagram morally obliged to remove photos from attacks? Should we allow the terrorist group to recruit new members on the internet?

From Incident to Precedent

On 10 June 2021, Merinda Stewart defended her thesis 'Freedom of Overflight: A Study of Coastal State Jurisdiction in International Airspace'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. P.M.J. Mendes de Leon en Prof. J.J. Rijpma.

Stam defended his dissertation ‘Freedom of speech and the suppression of discrimination in the Netherlands: a constitutional-developmental approach’ on 12 November 2025. The doctoral research was supervised by Afshan Ellian and Bastiaan Rijpkema

On 30 November, Florian Theissen defended the thesis 'Sincerely believing in freedom: a reconstruction and comparison of the interpretation of the freedom of religion and belief on the Canadian Supreme Court, the South African Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights'. The doctoral…

DNA carries various forms of information. Out of these forms of information the most well-known is classical genetic information.

Press freedom in Indonesia is still under pressure, despite the demise of Soeharto’s regime in 1998

On 15 September, Democracy Day, Michael Klos, researcher/teacher at the Department of Jurisprudence of Leiden Law School appeared as a guest on Radio Weetlust.

Of course, Jan Melissen is proud of the publication of his new book. Even so, one painful memory lingers: because of American interference, he was forced to remove the chapter on citizen diplomacy, diversity and inclusion. ‘It did affect me.’

De ophef rond het geplande optreden van Kanye West in Arnhem groeit, maar juridisch gezien kan de burgemeester dat niet zomaar tegenhouden. Volgens Adriaan Wierenga, noodrechtspecialist bij de afdeling Staats- en bestuursrecht en tevens werkzaam aan de RUG, botsen zulke ingrepen al snel met fundamentele…

Recently Cambridge University Press published dr. Jan Osters monograph “Media Freedom as a Fundamental Right”.

The gripping story of a collective passion for freedom that shook the world.

On 12 November Ingrid Leijten was a guest on Dutch NOS NPO Radio 1 programme Met het Oog op Morgen. She was asked to speak about the right to freedom of expression.

What does academic freedom mean? And how do we give shape to it in Leiden? The Academic Freedom Core Team considered these questions and presented its final report on 17 June.

As of 1 May 2025 Dr. Vasiliki Kosta has been appointed member of the standing Committee for Freedom of Scientific Practice (Commissie voor Vrijheid van Wetenschapsbeoefening - CVW) of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).

President Putin will be officially opening the Netherlands–Russia Year on 8 April in Amsterdam. Leiden Slavist Sjeng Scheijen was responsible for putting together the cultural programme. How much freedom did he have in doing so? ‘The Dutch photography project on the demolition of Sochi districts was…

The Europa Institute has invited Dorjana Bojanovska from Macedonia to visit Leiden Law School to conduct her master thesis research from 6 March - 31 March 2017. Dorjana is a student at the Comparative Constitutional Law program at the Legal Studies Department of the Central European University. The…

In ‘Dimensions of Free Speech’, Devrim Kabasakal Badamchi (Leiden University Institute of Political Science) offers a new theoretical framework for free speech by critically analysing the major justifications for free speech. Kabasakal Badamchi argues for a justification: namely the double-grounded…

Prof. Mark Leiser and a team of thirteen law students from Leiden University’s Advanced LLM programmes in European and International Human Rights Law as well as in Law and Digital Technologies together drafted a report for the UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom…

This thesis focuses on the concepts of freedo and fixity as two central topics of my artistic research. I present, analyze. and contextualize four of my works which have explicit links to fleedom and fixify and which demonstrate the dynamic interrelationship between the two.

Is the right to choose your healthcare provider protected in the Dutch Constitution? What are the consequences then for the Dutch healthcare system? PhD defence on 5 July 2022.

The Press Freedom Monitor is set to be presented during this year’s World Press Freedom Day celebrations on 3 May. To mark this occasion, the interactive media museum Beeld & Geluid in The Hague will publish a three-part podcast series.

In the light of the fragility of current liberal democracies, this dissertation aims to contribute to rethinking political order by reconstructing Hegel’s account in the Philosophy of Right.

On 22 November 2018, Els De Busser spoke at a panel during the conference

On 5 May we celebrate freedom, a basic human right that should not be taken for granted. We asked international students and staff what it means to them.

On the 31 March 2022 Mr. Taufiq Hanafi successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

In Freedom Stories we share the freedom stories of our students and staff, in honour of Liberation Day in The Netherlands. Today, we share Leen's story. We asked her, what does freedom mean to you?

This study is an attempt to reconstruct the muted violent past by breaking the monopoly of the Turkish state over the memory of the Armenian genocide.

Op 10 en 11 december 2019 vond het seminar ‘The Freedom of Movement in Intra-Schengen Border Areas: Challenges & Opportunities’ plaats aan de Haagse Campus van de Universiteit Leiden.

This project applies a social-historical approach to examine and contrast various groups of African-American slave refugees who sought freedom within North America between 1800 and 1860. It innovatively distinguishes between different “spaces of freedom” for runaway slaves, namely sites of formal, semi-formal,…

When a foreign book is translated for the Chinese market, there is a good chance that not all of the text will make it into the new version. With an NWO XS grant, university lecturer Svetlana Kharchenkova will investigate how foreign authors deal with this censorship.

On 3 May, World Press Freedom Day was held and the Dutch 2022 'Persvrijheidsmonitor' was presented. The safety of journalists in 2022 was the most important theme in the area of press freedom in the Netherlands. Tarlach McGonagle, Professor of Medial Law & Information Society in Leiden, and Otto Volgenant,…

Authorities in Denmark and Sweden are examining whether it is possible to ban Quran burning following recent incidents. These have caused tension in many Islamic countries as well as in the countries where they occurred.

In Freedom on the Offensive, William Michael Schmidli illuminates how the Reagan administration's embrace of democracy promotion was a defining development in US foreign relations in the late twentieth century.

This is the 2017 paperback release of William Michael Schmidli's The Fate of Freedom Elsewhere, which won the 2013 Foreign Affairs Magazine Best Book of the Year.

On 11 October, the roundtable entitled ‘Academic Freedom – Theoretical Perspectives’ took place at Leiden University's Academy Building. This event was organised as part of the Vidi research project entitled 'The EU fundamental right to 'freedom of the art and sciences': exploring the limits on the…

On this page you will find more information about the selected projects of the Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) Fund for 2026.

How do borderland dwellers living along militarised frontiers negotiate regimes of state security and their geopolitical location in everyday life? What might 'freedom' mean to those who do not resist captivity engendered by borders? Focusing on the predicaments of a double-minority, Radhika Gupta examines…

On 5 May, we celebrate the liberation of the Netherlands in 1945 and the fact that we have been able to live in freedom ever since. But what does freedom mean, and how does it relate to our safety? Various FGGA experts draw connections with their own fields of expertise.