Academic freedom is founded on two fundamental principles: professional autonomy and the public good. These dual foundations are necessarily in tension with each other. Academic freedom is not a civil right, as is freedom of speech, nor is it an individual employment benefit provided to those in a restricted number of academic appointments. It is, instead, a freedom belonging to the academic profession collectively to pursue inquiry and teach freely, limited and guided by the principles of that profession and of a scholar’s respective disciplines. Academic freedom guarantees both faculty members and students the right to engage in intellectual inquiry and debate without fear of censorship or retaliation. It grants considerable scope to the consciences of individual teachers and researchers, but functions ultimately as the collective freedom of the scholarly community to govern itself in the interest of serving the common good in a democratic society. Academic freedom must protect not only independent research and classroom teaching, but a scholar’s expression as a citizen of both the university and the broader polity. Hence, to thrive, academic freedom depends on a democratic and constitutional system that guarantees the rule of law. Academic freedom has always been contested and vulnerable, to be sure, but in recent years it has faced a series of escalating challenges almost everywhere, amounting to a major crisis. In this context, calls for ‘institutional neutrality’ must be critically examined.

Academic freedom is widely accepted both as a fundamental value of present-day higher education and as a prerequisite for well-functioning democratic societies. Yet, in recent years, major concerns about the state of academic freedom in Europe have been raised by higher education stakeholders, including policymakers and members of the academic community. In response to these concerns, the European Parliament launched in 2022 its Academic Freedom Forum. The studies undertaken for the Forum show that academic freedom is eroding in practically all EU Member States. In this article we will discuss these studies and, on the basis of their findings, introduce six categories of threats to academic freedom in Europe. These categories allow for more structured studies on academic freedom in Europe and can contribute to a better understanding of differences and similarities in academic freedom trends among European countries.

Attention has customarily centred on the academic profession’s ability to carry out its work in light of external threats to academic freedom. This article draws attention to internal threats − what the academic profession does to impair itself. Self-regulation is a central attribute of professions. In the absence of professional control, quality of practice is thrown into question. Like academic freedom, self-regulation is a principle and not always a practice. Focused on the academic profession’s teaching role, this article examines two types of problems in professional control that impair academic freedom: slippage and overreach. Both are instances of organizational deviance and abrogation of professional ethics. It is argued that the patterns threaten the structural integrity and public confidence of faculty, fields and higher-education institutions and thereby compromise the profession’s capacity to persuasively defend itself.

I argue that the respective understanding of value discriminates between two forms of ‘strong university leadership’: one that is incompatible with academic freedom, one that is compatible with, if not necessary for it. The structural evolution of modern science implies that present-day sciences understand their path of knowledge creation in terms of the enhancement of measurable functional control over effects with regard to problems of life. Consequently, measures, parameters, quanta – in short: values – are a condition of ‘scientific progress’. If we understand academic freedom as the openness to a fundamental transformation of knowledge, in the domain of value-driven science, the scope of freedom is therefore structurally narrow. However, a particularly pernicious threat to academic freedom arises when scientific practice is controlled by a-scientific values. Once a-scientific metrics gain the upper hand over scientific values, academic freedom is out of play. University leaders who cannot discriminate between scientific ‘thinking in values’ and a-scientific ‘evaluating’, will likely adhere to the latter. ‘Strong university leadership’ will then merely consist of the authority to exercise an indiscriminate, arbitrary prerogative in deciding the ‘what’ and ‘who’ of scientific research and education. The effects on academic freedom of such ‘strong leadership’ can only be detrimental.

Everywhere in the world, higher education is in crisis, and institutional autonomy and academic freedom are under threat. In this article, I propose a continuum of university autonomy in relation to academic freedom, with ‘little or no autonomy’ on one end, followed by ‘low autonomy’, ‘somewhat-balanced autonomy’, and with ‘balanced autonomy’ on the other end. Then I analyse the role of the government in influencing institutional autonomy and academic freedom. My conclusion is that the government plays a key role in determining what kind of autonomy a university enjoys, and balanced autonomy can be achieved if higher education is operated as a federation where different actors, including the government, the board of trustees, the president, faculty and students, work together, one way or the other, as partners. Only then can the university as a public good rightfully fulfil its aims and purposes for the benefit of all humanity.

In an international comparison, Sweden’s state higher education institutions are characterized by their form of association, as they are formally administrative authorities. An administrative authority under the government is subordinate to the government and is normally tasked with carrying out the tasks decided by the Riksdag and the government, which are communicated via regulations, instructions to authorities, letters of appropriation and specific assignments. It is easy to see that the stated relationship of obedience to the government does not sit well with the idea of universities being free from politics and the market. In this article the weak constitutional support of academic freedom in Sweden will be displayed and problematized, and a historic account of how Swedish universities have ended up with the same legal status as the state will be given. It is exposed how academic freedom is undermined not because of illiberal ambitions, which are often at the centre of this type of analysis, but rather due to a lack of understanding for the specificity of the university by the political and administrative sphere.

Authoritarian populism can be defined by anti-establishment attitudes, exclusionary identity politics and anti-pluralism. It denies and derides diverging opinions. Authoritarian populism rejects the legitimacy of opponents, both political and academic, and is susceptible to post-truth politics often steered by tropes and conspiracy theories. It poses a real danger to academic freedom and scientific standards. This article supports this assertion and describes higher education under the authoritarian populist government of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. He has centralized the authority over higher education, and has in effect created a deep state, nurturing not just cronyism, but efforts to reorient the mindset of a generation of young Hungarians in an attempt to guarantee the populist and traditionalist ideological legacy of his regime. The article notes that forms of hierarchal political control over the universities and research institutes are falsely presented under the facade of the global process of marketizing universities. However, even in authoritarian Hungary, prompted by dissonance and commitments to academic freedom and scientific standards, there have been progressive counter-movements. These counter-movements provide insights into alternative visions of higher education that seek to preserve the integrity of academic standards, deliberation and intellectual plurality.

A fundamental question in relation to academic freedom is the setting of research agendas. In relation to this issue, this article first points to the great diversity of research as a result of the complex structure of the research ecosystem. Against this backdrop, the article continues by discussing six different steps in setting a research agenda. This, in turn, leads to a comparison of the two main approaches to set up a research agenda: bottom-up and top-down. Finally, the article presents recent tendencies and limitations to research agendas.

Who should decide a scientist’s research agenda? The scientist him- or herself? Superiors, such as science ministries or university management? Sponsors, such as funding organizations or industry? Interest groups, such as churches, political parties, animal rights organizations or patient initiatives? What is the right balance between the scientist’s autonomous decision on the one hand and players’ interests on the other? These questions will not be answered here, but reflected upon with regard to the difficult trade-offs involved and the threats to scientific freedom that can result from them. For this purpose, I propose an analytical framework that conceptualizes the thematic autonomy of science as a gradual interplay of individual choices of research topics made in the context of the respective scientific community, on the one hand, and external constraints, on the other. With regard to them, seven basic levers will be distinguished. This framework will be applied to the current state of German professors’ freedom to choose their research agenda.

This article addresses the question of whether the ‘freedom of science’ (or ‘academic freedom’) is affected by the various measures of evaluation and performance measurement that have been introduced into research and higher education. The assumption is that the political, economic and technical changes that have taken place over the last three quarters of a century have had profound effects on the communication of science in general and on scientific publishing in particular. The crucial developments are: overall growth of science, the change of science policy in response to it, especially with respect to the governance of universities; the commercialization of academic publishing companies and the concentration of the journal market; the digitization of academic publishing and the capture of the process of evaluation internal to science by the publishing companies via the production of performance indicators, as well as of communication on digital platforms. All of these developments are interrelated in specific ways and, as such, unfold their effects on the publishing process and specifically on the publishing behaviour of academics. Rather than concluding that academic freedom is curtailed by evaluations and the application of performance indicators, these have led to a fundamental change of the publishing behaviour of scholars, and more generally of the culture of communication in science.

This article investigates the evolving dynamics of global scientific production and collaboration from 2000 to 2022, focusing on the impact of geopolitical changes on academic freedom and international research collaboration. Historically dominated by Western liberal democracies, the global scientific landscape has seen a significant shift with the rise of emerging economies, particularly within the BRICS group. This transition reflects broader changes in wealth distribution and scientific output, with China emerging as the largest scientific system. The analysis employs bibliometric indicators and political metrics, including the V-Dem’s Liberal Democracy Index and the Academic Freedom Index, to assess changes in scientific output, academic freedom, and international collaboration. Results reveal a decline in academic freedom and liberal democracy in major science-producing countries, coinciding with increased scientific output from nations with lower academic freedoms. The study also examines international collaboration patterns, highlighting a shift away from traditional Western partners towards increased collaboration within the BRICS group. This shift is particularly evident in the growing partnerships between China, India and Russia. Despite the increased scientific output from these countries, Western countries, particularly the USA and European nations, remain pivotal in global scientific networks. In summary, the findings suggest a move towards a more multipolar scientific world, where the balance of power is shifting away from traditional Western hegemony. However, this shift comes with significant challenges, particularly concerning the erosion of academic freedom in many of the expanding scientific regions.