Global geopolitical uncertainty and its damaging consequences for the production of scientific knowledge can be read right from the introduction to the 2025 report of the Index of Academic Freedom published on Thursday, March 13 by a team of German-Swedish researchers. The indicator they produce each year in 179 countries continued its average worldwide decline in 2024: 34 countries saw their index fall substantially, including the US, Argentina, Georgia, Finland or Israel, while only eight countries saw it improve.

"Unfortunately, positive developments are identified in sparsely populated countries and few people benefit from them," said Katrin Kinzelbach, a specialist in international human rights policy at Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg (Germany) and initiator of this research work. A year ago, this team had highlighted another alarming trend: One in three citizens lived in an academic freedom zone, compared with one in two in 2006.

To achieve such results, these researchers worked with 2,300 national experts who shared their assessments on five parameters: freedom of research and teaching, freedom of academic exchange and dissemination, freedom of academic and cultural expression, institutional autonomy of universities and campus integrity. The assessments in the new report were completed in calendar year 2024. For all that, the document has not failed to highlight the unprecedented pressure put on science by the Trump administration since January 20, 2025.

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