Exploring Academic Freedom Worldwide
Janet Butler Munch
The Academic Freedom Index (AFI) is an excellent metric to assess and analyze the de facto levels of a country’s freedoms in:
- research and teaching
- exchange and dissemination of information
- institutional autonomy
- campus integrity
- academic and cultural expression
Launched in 2020 (through the efforts of Friedrich-Alexander-Universitat Erlangen-Nurnberg, V-Dem Institute, Scholars at Risk Network, and Global Public Policy Institute, AFI now covers 179 countries and territories. It draws on expertise of over 2363 scholars from countries around the world. Their assessments are data aggregated using statistical models. In addition, transparency reports are prepared to track and compare this data for and across countries over long periods of time.
The latest 2025 AFI released (for findings through 2024) noted that over 70 countries had elections in 2024 ranging from free to constrained. The political influence this had on academic freedom was examined. Findings indicated that the government’s anti-pluralist parties had a negative effect on academic freedom, in contrast to countries in which such parties had little to any political influence.
Of the 179 countries in the index, 34 showed significant declines in academic freedom compared to 2014. Six of these countries are democracies: Argentina, Finland, Greece, Israel, Portugal, plus the United States. Because the United States has long had a global reputation for higher education, it received special attention in the AFI. Noted were current unprecedented threats to institutional autonomy, science skeptics, defunding of research, and imposition of political ideology. But attacks on tenure, shared governance, hampered discourse and teaching existed even a decade ago.
Even though the AFI is an independent metric, United Nations cites and recognizes significance of academic freedom as a human right. Guidance on how to protect this right for institutions and countries can be found in the U.N.’s Principles for Implementing the Right to Academic Freedom (March 2024).
