‘Unprecedented in history’: global academic freedom group warns of dismantling in US | US universities

A global group of academic freedom has warned that the assault on the Trump administration against universities transforms the United States into a “model to dismantle academic freedom”.

“We are witnessing an unprecedented situation – really as far as I know in history – where a world leader in education and research voluntarily dismantles what gave it an advantage,” said Robert Quinn, executive director of Scholars at Risk (SAR).

In its annual report Free to Think, the project to monitor academic freedom in (SAR), an international network devoted to the promotion of academic freedom worldwide, counted around forty attacks against academic freedom in the United States in the first seme inclusion initiatives and other programs.

The report noted that the data indicates a continuous erosion of academic freedom in the United States after counting 80 cases of pressure against universities in the previous year. While most of them came from the governments of states and local actors, the “nature of these attacks moved after January 2025” to the pressure of the federal government following the re -election of Donald Trump, and the efforts of his administration to control university admission, hiring, research, teaching and disciplinary processes, noted the report.

The SAR report analyzed 395 attacks on leaders of higher education, teachers, staff and students in 49 countries between mid-2010 and mid-2025, including targeted murders, disappearances, arrests and prosecution, as well as dismissals, travel restrictions and administrative measures. In addition to the United States, the report highlights “developments” in 15 other countries-including Bangladesh, where anti-government demonstrations led by students were greeted by a brutal repression which led to the death of 1,400 people, and Serbia, where the authorities threatened to undo public universities and public corruption and the wages of the teachers who supported a movement Government bullfighting.

On a global scale, the image of academic freedom painted in the report is dark.

“The space for academic freedom has shrunk at an accelerated rate in the last decade,” concludes the report. “Even in societies that have long had solid and stable democratic institutions, elected officials with autocratic impulses use both the levers of democracy and extralgal administrative measures to undermine democratic institutions, including universities.“”

In the United States, the war in Gaza, and a widespread opposition on the campus, offered a pretext for the targeting of universities, students and teachers whose values ​​and opinions do not align with the government’s agenda. Before 2023, SAR had an average of 15 to 20 attacks against academic freedom, many motivated by elected officials at state levels and local.

“The pressure on the higher education space has been lasts for decades,” said Quinn, noting that before the targeting of pro-Palestinian views and diversity initiatives, universities and academics have been faced with attacks on the critical theory of race and gender studies. “That said, there is no doubt that the administration uses the allegations of anti -Semitism centered on the Palestinian issue as a daring pretext to justify in many cases an extralegal activity to suppress space for independent thought.”

The return of Trump in power has marked a “turning point”, notes the report, including more than 30 laws related to higher education introduced during the first 75 days of its administration, decrees carrying out diversity and programming by joint -sex, anti -Semitism surveys of more than 60 universities that have hacked the established processes, freezing of billion federal funds and new caps Restrictions on the advantages of the Pell.

The report also underlined the negative impact on global education in the steep cancellation of the Trump administration of international students and new restrictions for foreign candidates, as well as reductions from the American Agency for International Development (USAID) which has devastated higher education and Afghanistan research initiatives.