The Harvard Educational Review is reported to have decided to cancel a special issue that was to focus on education in Palestine. Approved by its editorial team, it aimed to explore the destruction of Gaza’s education system in the wake of Israel’s military campaign.

The United Kingdom has joined the race to attract international research talent disillusioned by the Trump administration’s attack on science and universities in the United States. The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology is investing £54 million over the next five years.

Leaders in India, Hungary and the United States are using emotional appeals to nostalgia and nationalism to attack higher education institutions, based on both what they teach and research, and also on what – and who – research and innovation represent.

The United States government recently turned the screw two more times against Harvard University by announcing it was subpoenaing the university’s international student disciplinary records and by asking the New England Commission of Higher Education to decertify the university founded in 1636.

The University of Bremen has cancelled an event featuring renowned psychoanalyst Iris Hefets on its premises because she belongs to Jewish Voice for Just Peace in the Middle East, which is classified as ‘extremist’ by Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

The Trump administration significantly escalated its battle with Harvard University over how it addressed antisemitism on Monday, formally accusing the university of violating federal civil rights law and threatening immediate withdrawal of funding. But Harvard immediately pushed back via a revised filing to the Federal Court.

Refugees from all walks of life are being expelled from Iran. Among these are teachers, academics and students from Afghanistan, with an evident surge of tens of thousands of refugees fleeing Iran for Afghanistan in June after Israeli airstrikes hit Iranian military targets.

Two US universities find partner institutions in Toronto and London to offer academic shelter to students who are unable to study in America due to the Trump administration’s stringent visa regulations. Additionally, France’s AMU offers refugee US researchers a ‘safe place for science’.

Sweden’s minister for education indicated, shortly before stepping down, that a government investigation into the independence of the country’s universities is to go ahead despite recent pressure from opposing political parties and amid debate from stakeholders concerned to protect university autonomy and academic freedom.

The population of ‘black and brown students’ is going to drop at many United States universities, and LGBTQ+ students will increasingly be ‘less out’, for fear of ‘literal violence’ and ‘political violence’, amid the Trump administration’s drive against diversity, warns outgoing Rutgers University President Jonathan Holloway.

In response to threats to academic freedom, and geopolitical tensions, the return of flying universities – institutions created to provide an alternative, independent educational space free from political reprisals – offers fertile ground to investigate models of institutional resistance and the role of academic solidarity.

Students and faculty in universities in Belarus continue to face persecution for any form of criticism or dissent against the authorities, with most of the cases taken out being connected to past actions in the aftermath of protests in 2020 or the full-scale war in Ukraine.

Critics believe a new bill that will give the Ontario provincial government powers to set criteria and processes that the province’s post-secondary institutions use to determine entrance into programmes threatens academic freedom and echoes attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion in the United States.

The attack on Harvard’s ability to enrol international students is a bellwether case; a moment when the world’s most powerful university was made to kneel because of what it represents: porous borders, shared knowledge, and cosmopolitan belonging. What happens now will echo across institutions everywhere.

The Trump administration’s attempt to bar international students from Harvard is an act of political reprisal that strikes at the heart of the university’s global mission. Global engagement is not an ancillary value or an administrative preference – it is the engine of innovation and understanding.

India’s Supreme Court granted interim bail to a university professor arrested for what were considered controversial comments on social media in relation to India’s recent military operation against Pakistan. The arrest sparked a huge outcry over academic freedom and ‘politically motivated’ arrests.

Under the banner of ‘knowledge security’ and an increased focus on dual-use research, doctoral candidates and their research are increasingly becoming the focus of security policy debates and geopolitical strategies. If we let it, this could change the course and culture of doctoral education.

The Trump administration’s global campaign against diversity, equity and inclusion policies threatens core European principles of inclusion and sovereignty. While defiance from governments, universities and corporations is growing, a unified Western response remains elusive, and a fragmented response risks emboldening extraterritorial overreach.

The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has called on US-based scientists whose work is under threat from President Donald Trump’s executive orders slashing science and undermining research freedoms to relocate to Europe and has unveiled a package of incentives.

New legislation affecting post-secondary institutions in Nova Scotia drew the ire of members of the Canadian Association of University Teachers at a meeting this weekend in Ottawa, writes Vernon Ramesar for CBC News.

The proliferation of new threats against academic and intellectual freedoms across Africa has emanated from the deepening of neoliberal cultures in society and in higher education institutions. Against this backdrop, there is an urgent need for a drive to safeguard these freedoms across Africa.

Thailand’s Attorney General’s office announced it will not prosecute university academic Dr Paul Chambers, a political scientist and US citizen accused of defaming the monarchy under the country’s strict lèse-majesté law – a decision Chambers’ legal team said underscored the weakness of the case.

The Academy of Science of South Africa, the country’s official national science academy, has issued a sharply worded public statement warning that science – and the international systems of scientific collaboration that sustain it – are “under threat” from the actions of the current United States administration under President Donald Trump.

As higher education internationalisation faces scrutiny regarding its saliency, cost-effectiveness, staying power and motivations, internationalists need to step up their action and rhetoric rather than dithering under a banner of ‘woe is us’. The job is tougher than it was, but is still there to do.

Academics in Sweden have welcomed a government investigation aimed at strengthening academic freedom but argue the probe fails to take account of threats to academic freedom from the political establishment itself – threats that call for academic freedom to be enshrined in the constitution.

America’s abdication from leadership in the internationalisation of higher education does not come as a complete surprise, but the speed and magnitude of the decline are especially concerning and will have lasting implications for the United States and for the rest of the world.

Faculty members from universities in the United States – including public ones which do not receive endowments – are banding together in attempts to resist the Donald Trump administration’s attacks on academic freedoms, writes Maya Yang for The Guardian.

The European Union has struck a deal with Egypt allowing it to associate to Horizon Europe, despite concerns from members of the European parliament and former diplomats about restrictions on research in the country, writes David Matthews for Science|Business.

Indian higher education has become fundamentally politicised in the current era of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, posing a grave danger to academic institutions, the academic profession and intellectual life, particularly as India seeks to build world-class universities and engage with the world’s best.

Germany and Ukraine face different pressures when it comes to academic freedom, but by discussing the challenges and opportunities and learning from each other’s successes and setbacks, countries can develop more equitable, inclusive and resilient higher education systems that advance scientific and societal progress.

Nearly 900 scientists have signed a petition demanding that UNIFI, the Council of Rectors of Finnish Universities, and Arene, the Conference of Finnish Universities of Applied Sciences, take action to defend academic freedom in Finland from interference by the Trump administration in the United States.

A recent study in the United States shows that many faculty teaching about race and racial disparities reported making changes to their courses and research, not because they were legally required to, but because of uncertainty – driven largely by the silence and inaction of senior university leadership.

Trump’s executive order on patriotic education in schools is ‘more frightening’ than what happened during the McCarthy era and signals what is to come for universities and colleges, says one of the challengers to the use of loyalty oaths in education institutions in 1967.

The Taliban regime in Afghanistan has signalled its intention, via a string of back-to-back policies and directives issued to universities, to speed up the ‘Islamisation’ of public universities, allowing Taliban-linked religious figures without the requisite academic qualifications greater rights to intervene in academic matters.

New legislation before parliament that obliges the Research Council of Finland – previously the Academy of Finland – to fund only research aligned with Finland’s national security and foreign security policies has drawn criticism from several academics who say it threatens academic freedom.

A requirement by the arts and social sciences faculty at Singapore’s top university that anyone invited to speak on campus be assessed for perceived political risk has raised concerns among academics about subjective or politicised judgements that could threaten academic freedom.

Politicians, senior government officials and university managers often undermine academic freedom at higher education institutions in Africa, according to the contributors to Academic Freedom in Africa: The struggle rages on, a new book providing a health check on intellectual liberty on the continent.

Surprisingly, many in the global higher education and research community are still feeling pretty good about future trends. But the sector, especially its leadership, needs to be aware of the challenges from the political shift to the right and act responsibly in addressing them.

The rapid relocation of the American University of Afghanistan to Qatar after the fall of Kabul is enabling students to beat the Taliban’s ban on women going to university. University World News visited the campus to speak to some of the Afghan women able to continue their education.

Bureaucratic and legal threats by governments, weaponising the law to control the curriculum and curtail critical analysis, anti-intellectual, populist and authoritarian rhetorical attacks and crackdowns on professors and their expertise, as well as increasing pressure to self-censor, have put academic freedom in decline worldwide.

Academic freedom in universities in Africa has dipped significantly in the recent past as a result of threats by political systems, according to researchers. According to them, violations against academic freedom have become a common phenomenon across public universities in Africa.

On 16 March librarians and academics at universities and research institutions in several countries received notices that some access to China’s largest database of academic papers would be ‘temporarily’ curtailed from 1 April. The notifications arrived without clarifying how long this would be.

Over the past decade, academic freedom has declined in more than 22 countries, including India, China, Mexico, the United Kingdom and the United States, according to the Academic Freedom Index: Update 2023, which claims to be the ‘first comprehensive overview of academic freedom worldwide’.

Suppression of freedom of speech and free elections are acknowledged as warning signs of democratic erosion. It is time for us to recognise attacks on academic freedom in a similar fashion and strengthen understandings of academic freedom as a foundational element of democracy.

An organisation representing nearly a million doctoral candidates and postdocs across Europe has called on academic institutions and governments to improve conditions for early career researchers, arguing that their precarious existence endangers academic freedom, which is already under attack in many European countries.

Michael Ignatieff, former vice-chancellor of the Central European University or CEU, says the way CEU was forced out of Hungary by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is serving as a script for today’s culture war on universities in Florida and Governor Ron DeSantis’s re-election last fall and presidential ambitions for 2024.

Too many external restrictions and ‘excessive and unnecessary’ interference from governance arrangements are preventing universities from realising their full potential, according to the European University Association’s latest Autonomy Scorecard, which compares 35 higher education systems across the continent for university autonomy.

Singapore universities’ contribution to the country’s intellectual life is more modest than their outstanding global competitiveness might suggest because of a structure of incentives and disincentives that has nudged individuals and institutions away from public-facing scholarship that could illuminate key issues facing society.

Key drivers behind pervasive and at times deadly attacks on scholars and students worldwide include not just overt conflicts but also oppressive tactics by authorities, constricting the freedom to question. Some important examples can be found in West and South Asia, where attacks often go under-reported.

The Scholars at Risk Network, in its latest Free to Think report, has called on the international community, governments and universities to improve reporting of attacks on higher education and threats to academic freedom, and research into their causes and impacts and potential responses.

Attacks on scholars, students, academic freedom and tertiary education institutions remain pervasive in Africa, with a high frequency of incidents undermining higher education in countries such as Egypt, Ethiopia and Nigeria, according to Scholars at Risk, a network that provides sanctuary to threatened academics around the world and campaigns for freedom to think.

Salma al-Shehab, a PhD student at Leeds University in the United Kingdom and lecturer at a university in Saudi Arabia, has been sentenced to 34 years in prison in Saudi Arabia for tweets in support of greater freedoms and human rights and those who advocate them. Human rights organisations described the sentence as a “dangerous precedent”.

The rector of the Central European University, or CEU, has called for the immediate release of a CEU masters student engaged in research into women’s reproductive rights, who was given a three-year sentence for ‘spreading false news’ by an Egypt court on 4 July.

Academics fear that the incoming chief executive for Hong Kong, a former secretary for security who oversaw the authoritarian crackdown on pro-democracy protests in 2019 and is known for his loyalty to Beijing, will adopt an even harsher line towards universities.

What is happening now in Russian universities – where Russian academics must either abstain from calling the war ‘the war’ or face a punishment with up to 15 years in prison – shows the need to redouble our efforts to protect all universities against the threat of totalitarianism.

The recent dismissals of academics and senior leaders at Bogazici University represent an authoritarian attack on free speech and democratic values with wide-ranging consequences for academic freedom, as the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is trying to establish a clear chain of command over universities.

The removal of major artworks and memorials on Hong Kong university campuses commemorating the June 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre of pro-democracy student protesters in Beijing is a violation of freedoms and university autonomy and an attempt to censor memories and debate, Hong Kong students say.

The state of academic freedom in Bangladesh is worrying, said the Scholars at Risk this week. The global network is “concerned about attacks on scholars’ and students’ peaceful, expressive activity” and called on the authorities to commit to protecting and promoting academic freedom and institutional autonomy.

Universities in Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, Madagascar, Nigeria and Yemen have been highlighted as institutions where academics or students have been killed because of their beliefs or activism in the past academic year, in a just-published report from international campaign group Scholars at Risk.

The international academic network Scholars at Risk published its annual Free to Think report on 9 December. It describes a disturbing litany of attacks on academic freedom. While life on many campuses around the world may be safe and enriching, for academics and students in scores of countries, having a curious and critical mind and a social conscience can be a dangerous thing.

Our current ‘free speech’ model of academic freedom is grounded in law and is too restrictive and passive. We need a new model, located within professionals exercising their independent judgment, that broadens the definition and is not limited to what academics can and cannot say.

The use of force, arrests, mass suspensions and dismissals, campus raids and occupations, and other coercive legal actions by the military and police against students and scholars since the February 2021 military coup “represent a resounding attack on the human rights, academic freedom and institutional autonomy” of higher education in Myanmar, said Scholars at Risk this week.

Several African governments are restricting and curtailing the freedom of movement of academics and students through targeted actions, policies and practices that have frustrated the free flow of ideas, according to a report by Scholars at Risk on academic freedom and open public discourse.

Academic freedom continued to be eroded in India during 2021 against the backdrop of a years-long crackdown on dissent under the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. More than a dozen scholars have been prosecuted under anti-terror laws.

An unremitting and destructive deluge of attacks on scholars, students and higher education institutions around the world – 332 in 65 countries over the past year – is described in the latest report by Scholars at Risk published this week. The incidents range from laws restricting discussion to armed raids on campuses and assassinations.

Higher education has a vital role to play in actively, aggressively defending democracy – not just because it is the right thing to do, but because otherwise the rise of authoritarian, anti-knowledge movements will put democracy at further risk and threaten higher education itself.

The University of Florida is struggling to diffuse the furore over its attempt to prohibit three professors from testifying as expert witnesses in a voting rights lawsuit against the state of Florida, fundamentally damaging the relationship between the university as an institution and academic freedom.

Hong Kong higher education may be thriving under a regime that is willing to pay for the research and development that it needs in order to stay in power, but from an academic freedom point of view, what is left is a regime-directed factory of higher education.

The article titled ‘What is the fate of Hong Kong’s universities under Xi?’ has shown a profound misunderstanding of the higher education system in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. The government treasures academic freedom and institutional autonomy, says Hong Kong’s secretary for education.

The significance of scholars and intellectuals to support democratic institutions in African societies and “speak truth to power” – as enabled by academic freedom – has been reiterated in a study at a time when democracy has been under attack in several countries on the continent.

Universities in Hong Kong have undergone a significant change in their governance and management under Xi Jinping’s presidency which impinges on academic freedom. The future under the constraints of the National Security Law is unclear, but the city-state’s universities will never be the same.

“My political freedom is unlikely to endure long if I’m unwilling to defend your freedom,” Michael Ignatieff, former rector of the Central European University, which was forced out of Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, told the inaugural lecture of the University of Ottawa’s Global Ideas Lecture series.

The cancellation of events at two German universities promoting a book on China’s leader Xi Jinping, allegedly due to pressure from Chinese diplomats, has reopened the debate about university-hosted Chinese Confucius Institutes and renewed calls for government funding of more independent China research at universities.

Academic freedom is – or should be – central to the functioning of universities in all but those countries with repressive governments. Nowhere, however, are there more skirmishes about the meaning of ‘academic freedom’– and the practical consequences of its definition – than in the United States.

The House of Representatives of the Philippines has unanimously approved a bill to ensure state security forces will not be allowed to enter any of the University of the Philippines’ eight campuses without prior notice, eliminating a key hurdle on the bill’s path to becoming law.

Hand in hand with the retreat of democracy over the past decade in parts of Africa and Asia, many post-colonial universities are only pretending to encourage critical thinking, in an effort to do better in university rankings, while remaining dominated by ‘state-think’.

While Singapore’s publicly funded universities are described as autonomous, a just-released survey of some 200 academics at Singaporean universities found that political pressure exists but is indirect, often invisible and confined to a few ‘sensitive’ areas. More concerning, pressure is institutionalised in a way that undermines university autonomy.

Government attempts to control academic autonomy and freedom are growing in India amid instances of interference in the appointment of vice-chancellors, increased pressure to sack critics of government policy and greater centralisation of regulation. And all the while freedom of the press is under threat.

The overwhelming endorsement by Danish MPs of a motion calling on universities to avoid “excessive activism in certain research environments” and ensure free and critical scientific debate has been criticised in an open letter signed by thousands of academics, who see it as a threat to academic freedom.

A prominent historian, whose work has influenced youth and student protesters in Thailand demanding reform of the country’s monarchy, is being investigated by the university where he did his PhD after criticism from pro-royalists, in part attempting to limit its impact on young protesters.

China’s recent imposition of sanctions on European academics dramatically illustrates how procedures for protecting academic freedom are no longer fit for purpose. Universities must include their academics who are involved in internationalisation in discussions about how best to manage future academic freedom risks.

The resignation of two distinguished academics after facing pressure from Ashoka University not to criticise the government has stunned the university’s students and faculty as well as the academic community across India and overseas, intensifying concerns for academic expression and freedom in India.

The shifting of learning and collaborations online during the COVID-19 pandemic has led to new threats to academic freedom, including increased opportunities for surveillance of research, teaching and discourse, as well as restrictions, self-censorship and isolation, new data from the Academic Freedom Index 2020 shows.

In a rare televised cabinet meeting in February 2021, Ethiopia’s Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed, revealed the government’s readiness to grant full autonomy to universities in an effort to reduce their financial dependence on the government. Whereas the announcement should be hailed as one of the most significant gestures towards universities in a long time, institutions may still face an uphill battle to become autonomous.

Companies in China’s Xinjiang province have reportedly filed a domestic civil lawsuit against a high-profile United States-based academic whose research into the treatment of China’s Turkic minority Uighur population, including alleged forced labour, has angered the Chinese authorities. The Chinese government supports the lawsuit.

Rights groups and civil society organisations have called for the release of a former Delhi University professor currently serving a prison term in India, who recently tested COVID-19 positive, which could be life-threatening given his existing conditions and lack of adequate medical care.

Iranian-born British social anthropologist Kameel Ahmady trudged through mountain snows to slip across Iran’s border rather than face more than nine years in jail after trial without legal representation, after researching and lobbying for raising the age limitation on child marriage.

Hong Kong has provided a rare refuge of academic freedom in Greater China for decades of researchers. As that freedom slips away, it is time for universities elsewhere to return the favour by stepping up, speaking out and offering refuge to Hong Kong’s scholars.

The European Union and an international network of thousands of academics have condemned the arrest of two students in Turkey over a poster promoting LGBT viewpoints, the detention of hundreds of students who protested against the arrests and anti-LGBT hate speech by politicians and officials.

Candidates for student union leadership positions in Hong Kong are facing increased pressure over campus activities in the wake of the new Beijing-imposed National Security Law. Warnings from university management and fears of being individually targeted have meant few students are willing to stand for union positions.

India’s government has made it mandatory for academics and organisers to obtain prior clearance from the Ministry of External Affairs to hold international webinars or online seminars on topics touching on India’s security and internal issues and on subjects the government believes are sensitive.

The abrogation of the accord on the right of the military to enter the University of the Philippines marks an attack on academic freedom, given the university’s history as a place of sanctuary for indigenous communities protesting against authoritarian regimes, say members of its community.