Recent ratings by Visual Capitalist show America has plunged in ratings of academic freedom to near-authoritarian levels, easily the biggest decline among advanced developed democracies over the last ten years.
Here’s why it matters to you, and what can be done about such un-free policies.
Growing up, one of my favorite TV series shows was called “V” about an alien invasion of the Earth. My folks and grandparents told me it was to teach us kids about totalitarianism. The “visitors” come in with a charm offensive, and look like humans (with red uniforms) but in reality, they come in to take over us, take our resources, and eventually use us for a food supply.
Early on, working with politicians, the first group they go after are the academics, who seem a bit skeptical about whether the visitors are humans, and the motives of the visitors. They’re all locked up, or worse. My grandparents and parents said this is what happened when the Fascists and Communists would take over… they’d go after academics first. Later when I studied these, I found out they were right.
Sadly, that’s what’s happening in America. Visual Capitalist defines their academic freedom measures as “the extent to which universities and academics can operate independently of the state.”
The USA used to be fairly comparable in academic freedom with other advanced democracies. Data from Visual Capitalist shows a 57 percent decline U.S. academic freedom from 2015 to 2025, the same level of decline in Hong Kong as China took over, with the Chinese Communist Party squelching what freedom that island had.
It’s as bad a decline in academic freedom, or worse, than falling academic freedom in Venezuela, Indonesia, Russia, Pakistan, Iran, Cambodia, China — and in Hungary, although the toppling of Viktor Orban could improve the situation.
Only 11 countries of nearly 200 fell worse in academic freedom than the USA.
There are all kinds of executive orders designed to restrict what can be taught and researched. States are adding to it, with legislatures passing bills to abolish faculty senates and other university bodies, even though these shared governance bodies didn’t even have that much power. Tenure is next on the chopping block, thanks to unsupported myths about the political leanings of professors, and the false belief that you can’t fire a tenured professor (you can).
Why does this matter to anyone outside of academia? For academic freedom, America is now at the level of Thailand according to Visual Capitalist, which according to Freedom House, has an overall freedom score of 33/100 for everyone in the country.
Nazis and Communists and the “Visitors” were right: to steal everyone’s freedom, you start with the academics.
From the Alien and Sedition Act to the McCarthy Era, enemies of academic freedom sought to fire or imprison those who might critique the status quo. But brave men and women, and even those in the military and media, stood up to such undemocratic impulses.
For the sake of everyone’s freedom, let’s hope we reverse this un-free trend before it is too late for all of us.
John A. Tures is Professor of Political Science and Coordinator of the Political Science Program at LaGrange College, in LaGrange, Georgia. His first book, “Branded”, is available on Amazon. He can be reached at jtures@lagrange.edu.