\n<\/p>\n
A global academic freedom group has warned that the Trump administration\u2019s assault on universities is turning the US into a \u201cmodel for how to dismantle\u201d academic freedom.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are witnessing an unprecedented situation \u2013 really as far as I can tell in history \u2013 where a global leader of education and research is voluntarily dismantling that which gave it an advantage,\u201d said Robert Quinn, executive director of Scholars at Risk (SAR).<\/p>\n
In its annual Free to Think report, the Academic Freedom Monitoring Project at (SAR), an international network devoted to the promotion of academic freedom worldwide, counted some 40 attacks against academic freedom in the US in the first half of 2025, ranging from the government\u2019s revocation of research funds to the detention and attempted deportation of foreign scholars over their political views, as well as a \u201ctorrent\u201d of executive, legislative and other actions targeting diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and other programs.<\/p>\n
The report noted that the data points to a continued erosion of academic freedom in the US after it counted 80 instances of pressure against universities in the prior year. While most of those came from state governments and local actors, the \u201cnature of these attacks shifted after January 2025\u201d to pressure from the federal government following the re-election of Donald Trump, and his administration\u2019s efforts to control university admissions, hiring, research, teaching and disciplinary processes, the report noted.<\/p>\n
The SAR report analyzed 395 attacks on higher education leaders, faculty, staff and students in 49 countries between mid-2024 and mid-2025, including targeted killings, disappearances, arrests and prosecutions, as well as firings, travel restrictions and administrative measures. In addition to the US, the report highlights \u201cconcerning developments\u201d in 15 other countries \u2013 including Bangladesh, where student-led anti-government protests were met with a brutal crackdown that led to the deaths of up to 1,400 people, and Serbia, where authorities threatened to defund public universities and withheld the salaries of faculty who supported a student-led movement against government corruption.<\/p>\n
Globally, the picture for academic freedom painted in the report is grim.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe space for academic freedom has shrunk at an accelerating pace over the past decade,\u201d the report concludes. \u201cEven 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.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n In the US, the war in Gaza, and widespread campus opposition to it, has offered a pretext for the targeting of universities, students and faculty whose values and views don\u2019t align with the government\u2019s agenda. Before 2023, SAR tallied an average of 15 to 20 attacks on academic freedom, many driven by elected officials at the state and local levels.<\/p>\n \u201cThe pressure on the higher education space has been going on for decades,\u201d said Quinn, noting that before the targeting of pro-Palestinian views and diversity initiatives, universities and scholars faced attacks over critical race theory and gender studies. \u201cThat being said, there\u2019s no question that the administration is using as a bold pretext the allegations of antisemitism centered around the Palestinian issue to justify in many cases extralegal activity to crack down on the space for independent thought.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s return to power marked a \u201cturning point\u201d, the report notes, including more than 30 pieces of legislation related to higher education introduced during the first 75 days of his administration, executive orders eliminating diversity and gender equity programming, antisemitism investigations of more than 60 universities that flouted established processes, the freezing of billions in federal research funds and new caps on student loans and restrictions on Pell grants\u2019 eligibility.<\/p>\n The report also underscored the negative impact on global education of the Trump administration\u2019s abrupt cancellation of international students\u2019 visas and new restrictions for foreign applicants, as well as cuts at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) that devastated higher education and research initiatives from Africa to Afghanistan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A global academic freedom group has warned that the Trump administration\u2019s assault on universities is turning the US into a \u201cmodel for how to dismantle\u201d academic freedom. \u201cWe are witnessing an unprecedented situation \u2013 really as far as I can tell in history \u2013 where a global leader of education and research is voluntarily dismantling<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25051,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[4106,15161,5874,1123,1936,145,489,3199,1060],"class_list":{"0":"post-25050","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-academic","9":"tag-dismantling","10":"tag-freedom","11":"tag-global","12":"tag-group","13":"tag-history","14":"tag-universities","15":"tag-unprecedented","16":"tag-warns"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}