Free to Think is an annual report by Scholars at Risk’s Academic Freedom Monitoring Project. The report explores concerning trends in attacks on higher education communities around the world with the aims of raising awareness and urging diverse state and non-state stakeholders to join us in protecting and promoting academic freedom. Excerpts from the executive summary
In recent years, state leaders have mounted escalating and increasingly aggressive attacks on scholars, students, and universities. These assaults on higher education are not isolated to places where the rule of law is weak and dissent openly punished, and they are not just taking place through extreme means of repression such as targeted killings, disappearances, arrests, and prosecutions. These are occurring, yes. However, attacks on higher education have always gone beyond these contexts and measures. Even in societies that have long had strong and stable democratic institutions, elected officials with autocratic impulses are using both the levers of democracy and extralegal administrative measures to undermine democratic institutions, including universities.
Through the Academic Freedom Monitoring Project (AFMP), Scholars at Risk (SAR) identifies frequent and pervasive attacks on academic freedom, institutional autonomy, and higher education in contexts characterized by authoritarian structures and significant repression against dissent or by armed conflict, insecurity, political violence, and civil unrest. These attacks continue. Since 2018, however, a growing number of the incidents included in the AFMP have taken place in countries with ostensibly strong democratic institutions.1 This has continued during the current reporting period, with the election of antidemocratic leaders who appear increasingly willing to interfere in the higher education sector and exert pressure on university leaders. Of particular concern in this regard are the actions taken by the US government following the inauguration of President Donald Trump for his second term in office. Beginning in January 2025, US higher education began to experience unprecedented pressures, including a combination of executive orders and policy actions—many of which were extra-legal in nature—and legislative or budgetary measures.
Universities are engines of social and economic development. They are places for critical research, innovation, dialogue, and debate. They are also bulwarks of democracy, generating data and ideas essential to informed public discourse while training students to be critical, engaged members of civil society. But they can only perform these vital functions to the extent they enjoy autonomy from the state or other outside interference, and to the extent that scholars and students enjoy the right to academic freedom. SAR’s data makes clear that universities are among the first targets of attack in places experiencing democratic decline, where autocratic leaders censor discourse and sanction dissent. Attacks on higher education thus not only imperil the lives and well-being of scholars and students, upend their careers, and jeopardize their futures; they also chip away at the foundations of a free society and social progress by degrading the quality of teaching, research, and discourse on campus and beyond.
Through the AFMP, SAR responds to these attacks by identifying and tracking key incidents, with the aim of protecting vulnerable individuals, raising awareness, encouraging accountability, and promoting the dialogue and understanding necessary to prevent future threats. Since 2015, SAR has published Free to Think, a series of annual reports analyzing attacks on higher education communities around the world. This year’s report highlights concerning developments and trends in 16 countries, including Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Belarus, Colombia, Georgia, Germany, India, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Serbia, Russia, Ukraine, the United States, and Zimbabwe. It also includes brief updates on the situations reported in prior Free to Think reports, including China and Hong Kong, Myanmar, Nicaragua , the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Sudan, and Türkiye.
Attacks on higher education from July 1, 2024–June 30, 2025
Free to Think 2025 documents 395 attacks on scholars, students, and institutions in 49 countries and territories, from July 1, 2024–June 30, 2025. Over this reporting period, students and faculty members fought back against autocracy, corruption, and poor educational conditions by participating in peaceful protests. In some cases, these prompted significant political change, but only after police had responded with violent force. The reporting period also saw the escalation of new illiberal policies, laws, and extralegal actions targeting higher education in democratic contexts, leading to crackdowns on dissent and disfavored speech both in the classroom and outside of it.
As highlighted in previous editions of Free to Think, the attacks on higher education described in this report are indicative of deteriorating global conditions for academic freedom. Declining levels of academic freedom are also evident in the most recent annual data from the Academic Freedom Index (AFi), which indicates that the space for academic freedom continues to contract in countries globally.
In its 2025 update, the AFi found that since 2024, academic freedom had declined significantly in 36 out of the 179 countries analyzed, including in 14 countries or territories included in this report: Afghanistan, Belarus, Gaza, Georgia, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Myanmar, Nicaragua, Russia, Türkiye, Ukraine, the United States, and the West Bank.
Academic freedom expanded in just eight countries from 2014–24.13 Additionally, the AFi rated 10 of the 24 countries or territories featured in this report as completely restricted with respect to academic freedom: Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Belarus, China, Gaza,
India, Iran, Myanmar, Nicaragua, and Türkiye.
Another eight countries were rated as severely restricted: Bangladesh, Hong Kong, Pakistan, Sudan, West Bank, Russia, Ukraine, and Zimbabwe.
As noted in recent editions of Free to Think, the general trend over the past decade is toward declining levels of academic freedom across all contexts spanning the continuum from authoritarian to democratic. In some contexts, these declines have occurred slowly. This is the case, for instance, in the United States, which saw gradual declines in academic freedom from 2014–24.14 Globally, however, the space for academic freedom has shrunk at an accelerating pace over the past decade.
Download the report here