Pick Our Brains - with Machiko Kanetake - 'Research Security' in Europe: Human Rights Perspectives

The Pick our Brains sessions of the Maastricht Centre for Human Rights are open to students, PhD students, and more senior members of our Centre, as well as to members of other research centres and universities. These sessions are intended to foster intellectual stimulation and exchange, and to potentially promote collaborations within and outside the Centre. They also provide an opportunity to receive feedback on ongoing or upcoming research, showcase recent research and events at which you have presented, and exchange scholarly ideas. Each session consists of a short presentation followed by a lively debate.

These sessions will take place physically and online. The Teams link for the online sessions will be distributed later after registration.  

On 20 October our speaker is Machiko Kanetake (University of Amsterdam). The title of the presentation is 'Research Security' in Europe: Human Rights Perspectives.

This is the abstract:
‘Research security’ is a relatively new yet fascinating research topic connected to the EU’s openness to the world in research and innovation. In the Netherlands, it is better known as ‘knowledge security’ (kennisveiligheid in Dutch). Everyone agrees that international collaboration is crucial for the development of cutting-edge technologies. Consider, for instance, AI, quantum technologies, and energy technologies. Universities and other research performing organisations (RPOs) are a cornerstone of research and innovation efforts. Yet this openness for international collaboration is increasingly being challenged and scrutinised—legally and politically. As geopolitical tensions intensify, international research collaboration is seen as risking the transfer of critical knowledge and technology that may undermine the security of the EU and its Member States. This is part of the broader, and often problematic, phenomena of the ‘securitisation’ of research and RPOs. 

During the seminar, I would like to introduce this new research topic: what 'research security' is, what societal and normative challenges it brings, and how international and EU legal scholars can contribute to the analysis of the phenomena? I have been approaching this topic primarily from the perspectives of human rights law at the international and national levels. In essence, the security-based (self-)governance of the knowledge sector creates unique tensions with the respect for human rights, including academic freedom, non-discrimination, right to development, and the emerging right to science. While human rights law offers a three-pronged test (i.e., legality, necessity, proportionality) for determining the permissibility of restrictions on rights, human right law itself may be inadequate or at best insufficient to address the particular characteristics of tensions between security and human rights arising from the governance of RPOs. This is because such tensions involve: (1) the volatility of the geo-politicised concept of security (military, national, economic security) that makes technology transfers ‘undesirable’, (2) the uncertain legal applicability of human rights to RPOs due to their institutional autonomy and distance from governments, (3) the mixture of regulatory methods (governmental and non-governmental, formal law and informal measures) that blur the locus of decision-making, and (4) the reliance upon the technical expertise of project management and compliance officers within RPOs. The possible shortcomings of human rights law suggest that a new normative framework is needed in this domain to guide EU governments and RPOs.