To me, freedom means to be able to live my life on my own terms. It is incompatible with living under the power of someone else. You need to have options to choose from in your life.

I’ve come to realise that it’s not only about having choices and whether someone keeps you from making them, but also about having your rights protected. And looking at the political situation today, we are becoming more aware that the freedoms we enjoy are not as protected as we thought they would be. 

Compared to other people around the world, I don’t have to fight for it in a direct and physical sense. But in our daily lives we are all confronted with structures of power that put our freedom at stake. We need to work together to preserve it.

Freedom is never fully individual, it’s impacted by where you are. I’m thinking about my family in Ukraine – they don’t have the freedom to decide on anything they want to do. They can’t easily move because of the curfews, for example. And that’s just a small example of what freedom means. I think Ukrainians are asking what it means to be free in a democratic society.

I realised that being free in a democratic society is not stable. It’s not something you take for granted, but something you need to fight for every day. The protests in March, which were against the budget cuts, were not just against the cuts. These protests took place in the context of major global events, like the Russian war against Ukraine or Palestine fighting for its existence. That protest carries larger implications – fighting not only for academic freedom but also for a free and democratic world.

I cannot consider myself free if those around me are not. Freedom means a world without oppression.

Growing up, I associated freedom with anti-colonial movements. In the past two or three years, I’ve realised that because my home country, India, gained independence, it doesn’t mean it’s free. I’ve shifted from the idea of freedom to the idea of justice, because it emphasises what you are being freed from. 

Fighting for freedom is a way of life for me, being constantly stuck in the frictions of power and trying to locate different places of corrosion, different pores to pass through. It’s a continuous process. Every time I apply for a visa renewal, it feels like I’m closer to the friction of power.

Freedom is the ability to choose my education, my relationships, and the life I want to live. It’s about making meaningful decisions not out of necessity, but out of desire and possibility. 

I used to think freedom was a given, but over the years, I’ve witnessed it being taken from others. I’ve come to understand that freedom is about being in a place to fight for the freedom of others. It’s something meant to be shared.

It’s difficult to fight for freedom back home in Hungary while living abroad, but I do what I can. I vote in elections and referendums, I sign petitions, like the one to invite Orbán to be confronted about the state of Hungarian politics on the largest public-funded media outlet.

For me, the value of freedom is connected to respecting others, their way of life, and their opinions, which can be a challenge if you disagree. 

Living in a privileged part of the world, you may not realise how fragile freedom is. I think we’ve started experiencing this in the Netherlands, too. We have to make sure that we do not lose our freedoms, but it seems that we don’t quite know how. 

When I was at a climate change conference in the US recently, I realised how important freedom actually is. There was a genuine risk that scholars working on this topic would be denied access to the country. We have to fight to not lose our academic freedom, to ensure that no one is going to tell us what to think and what not to think.

As human beings, we are fundamentally free, but we’re often unaware of it. Freedom can be suppressed by social or physical conditions, like imprisonment, but it is never fully extinguished. Feminist philosophers speak of a feminist consciousness and protesting women’s oppression, but you don’t have this consciousness until you recognise the situation could be different. Being aware of your freedom means recognising there is a possibility of change. 

It seems so strange that freedom of expression has actually been weaponised to restrict expression in the United States, but that doesn’t change what I think freedom is or should be. 

I’m in a lucky situation. I have a lot of freedom to express myself in different ways and I don’t have to fight for that. But I do speak up about injustices in a global context, in solidarity with others whose freedom is much more restricted.

Freedom means having the ability to say and be whatever I want, whatever is right for me. It allows for judgement and love, and for curiosity. Freedom is the right to be wrong, learn from mistakes, and to be better.

Coming from South Africa where gender based violence is a massive thing, I used to believe that freedom was the ability to go outside and not be afraid of what someone might do to me purely because I am a woman. Moving to Europe a few years ago has drastically expanded my scope.

The last time I was in South Africa, I worked with a group of women to lobby for a change in the national law to increase and improve protections in law for women and people who have suffered from violent crimes. It was a long fight but we got there.

Freedom is being free from pressure and force, being able to manage and fulfill your life. But there’s no use in having freedom when others don’t. You’re not a single atom in the universe, but you are a part of a bigger whole.

I’m more aware of what I can do for society than I used to be. What I can do for people, like my colleagues for example, who have more problems than me because they come from other countries. Their contracts are cancelled because of the budget cuts and the cut of English programmes.

I fight for freedom by staying critical of the legislators and helping people to rule their own life. I have worked in the field of human rights for thirty years now, and for me, there’s a big overlap of my intrinsic motivation for my work and the relevance of freedom.

To me, freedom isn’t just about having choices. It’s also about the presence of systems that ensure those choices exist for everyone. That’s why intersectionality is so important. 

Growing up in South Africa, crime and gender-based violence limits your physical freedom so much as a woman. Being ‘free’ on paper means nothing when women are terrified to leave their homes because of men and the incompetency of the government. 

As a lesbian who’s lived and traveled in many countries, seeing my rights rolled back taught me that freedom is something we have to fight for. It’s not handed to us on a silver platter.

Through my studies and my outspoken tendencies, I try to fight for freedom in small ways every day, whether it’s holding hands with my girlfriend or teaching someone about African politics. I also fight for reproductive rights and immigrant rights in Malta and the EU.

Freedom is having the right to just exist as yourself and express yourself. That’s not something that can be given to you or that you can give to others.

Initially I would only think about personal freedoms for humans, but my study of ecology really opened my eyes to the fact that all life deserves a right to live and to exist. All life deserves freedom. I’m vegan, so I think animals that we mass produce have the least freedom of all. They have very little space. They have no option to perform their natural behaviours. 

I fought for freedom in demonstrations for academic freedom, for climate justice and against the pollution of our planet. Personally, I feel very free.

Freedom means being able to live my life the way I want to and not have anyone shove their nose in it. I am allowed to love someone regardless of what parts they might have that makes them ‘biologically incompatible’ with me.

I moved out of my home country and now I don’t have to worry who sees me holding hands with a person of the same gender, or fear that someone might tell my family. Finally, not a single nose in my business.

When I started dating my current partner, my mom found out from an ex-colleague and was baffled—even though she knew I was queer. Instead of celebrating, I had to resort to shameful solutions to make her leave us alone. She’s still not happy, but has made her peace. Sometimes she asks about us, so I hope the fighting is over.