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How academic freedom is changing around the world — by the numbers
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University staff and students call for better funding for French education at a protest in Lyons.Credit: Antoine Boureau/Hans Lucas/AFP/Getty
Academic freedom is deteriorating globally according to the Scholars at Risk (SAR) network, a human-rights organization based at New York University.
The network’s latest annual report documents 382 attacks on academic freedom by state authorities on scholars, students and academic institutions in 59 countries and territories between July 2025 and June 2026. That’s fewer incidents, but across more regions, than the previous year (which had seen 395 attacks in 49 countries and territories). The analysis, titled Free to Think 2026, defines an attack as a violent or fatal assault on scholars and students, wrongful prosecution or imprisonment, sacking or expulsion from institutions and restrictions to academic freedom or to travel.
Attacks on higher education are “about controlling the flow of information”, says Robert Quinn, founding executive director of SAR.
Sources: Free to Think 2026; V-Dem Dataset (https://go.nature.com/47UZF3P)
Tensions between universities and governments “represent some of the front lines of the debates and political clashes happening around the world”, says Mushfiq Mobarak, an economist at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.
Other events counted in the SAR report include government interference with research topics or funding on ideological grounds. “While often justified in neutral terms — such as fiscal discipline, public accountability, or anti-discrimination — these interventions are often used to impose ideological control”, the SAR report explains.
But academic freedom has substantially improved in some places, notably Bangladesh (see ‘Freedom in figures’). Nature highlights five countries where scholars experienced recent changes to their freedoms.
Data from the Academic Freedom Index Update 2026 report, published in March, show a steep decline in academic freedom in the United States (see ‘Rapid deterioration’). The trend is very troubling, says Quinn, who notes that it is not limited to the last five years. Its start precedes the return of US President Donald Trump to office in 2025. “The pressures on higher education are not limited to one election [or] one administration,” he says.