Each year, the Academic Freedom Index (AFI) project releases its annual report on the state of de facto academic freedom across 179 countries and territories. The AFI is a highly regarded dataset from Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem), hosted at the University of Gothenburg and funded by many of the world’s largest research institutions including the National Science Foundation and the European Research Council. The AFI assesses academic freedom on five indicators: freedom to research and teach; freedom of academic exchange and dissemination; institutional autonomy; campus integrity; and freedom of academic and cultural expression.

This year’s report shows that the United States ranks #85 — just making the top 40% of all countries included — after another continuous year of significant decline. In fact, the U.S. received a call-out as a case study in the 2025 report given the political climate of the prior 10 years. America shares this (dis)honor with Argentina and Poland.

When examining the decline of academic freedom in the U.S., researchers showed a statistically significant decline across all five categories from 2014 to 2024. The report notes:

The largest declines of academic freedom in the U.S. concern the freedom to research and teach, and the institutional autonomy of universities. However, there is also now a notable deterioration of the freedom of academic and cultural expression. The decline of the latter indicator may be linked to controversial restrictions on protests at U.S. universities regarding the war in Gaza, including the deployment of security personnel and police on campus. The handling of such protests varied depending on local circumstances, institutional leadership, and campus security arrangements; some events — particularly those involving municipal police — resulted in sharp criticism.

It’s important to set the significant decline of academic freedom in the U.S. within the global context. The U.S. is one of 34 countries that showed a significant decline on the 2025 AFI. This reflects a global trend of declining academic freedom. In 2022 AFI researchers published a report in the journal Higher Education examining growth and decline periods of academic freedom from 1900 through 2020. They found that there has been an ongoing period of decline globally since 2013 after a particularly long and prosperous period of academic freedom growth from around 1980 through the mid-2000s.

The U.S. in particular enjoyed relatively stable academic freedom until 2019, when a precipitous drop occurred. Each year since, the U.S. has experienced significant declines in academic freedom with each new AFI report. The 2025 AFI confirms this period of decline in the U.S. is ongoing.

But why are we seeing this now in the U.S.?

One possibility, according to the 2025 AFI report, is the rise of “the electoral success of anti-pluralist parties as a potential driver of academic freedom decline,” noting the U.S. in particular. According to the 2025 AFI report:

the longer-term build-up of restrictive higher education policies at state level, together with the more recent, unprecedented attack on free science at federal level, gives rise to serious concern regarding the future of academic freedom in the United States. In light of the prominent role that U.S. academia plays in the global science system, this development impacts not only a large population in the United States, but arguably scholars across the world.

Across the 2025 AFI report, and the 2022 publication mentioned above, the authors note a clear association between governments and academic freedom. Specifically, academic freedom is likely an outcome of democratic, pluralistic governments.

In the U.S., we are currently experiencing widespread government intervention with regard to the dismantling of federal science relationships with universities and the imposition of government oversight on university operations (even at private institutions). This pattern of federal actions, along with the flood of state and federal higher education policies that have been put forward in recent years, notably beginning with the Stop WOKE Act in Florida, signal that the U.S. period of decline of academic freedom appears likely to be ongoing for several more years at least.