PARIS: According to an annual index warning that academic freedom is diminishing worldwide, notably in Russia, China, and India, just one in three people live in a country that protects the independence of institutions and research.
“Academic freedom globally is under threat,” according to the report, in a number of ways, including intervention at universities, attacks on freedom of expression, and the incarceration of scholars.
The Academic Freedom Index, which was developed using feedback from over 2,300 academics in 179 nations, was released last month as a component of a study on democracy by the University of Gothenburg in Sweden’s V-Dem Institute.
It uses five indicators—freedom of research and teaching, academic exchange, academic and cultural expression, institutional autonomy, and campus integrity—to assess trends in research and higher education during the past 50 years.
The first, second, and ninth most populous countries, respectively, India, China, and Russia, had notable decreases that Kinzelbach referred to as “clear examples of autocratization.”
One of the index’s organizers, Katrin Kinzelbach, a professor at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany, stated that 171 states have ratified a human rights convention pledging them to uphold the independence of scientific inquiry.
However, she noted that “only every third person in the world today lives in a country where research and higher education enjoys a high degree of freedom” due to recent “significant deteriorations” in populous nations.
