PARIS: Just one in three people live in a nation that guarantees the independence of universities and research, according to an annual index warning that academic freedom is declining worldwide, particularly in Russia, China and India.

Attacks on freedom of expression, interference at universities and the imprisonment of researchers are just some ways that “academic freedom globally is under threat”, the index said.

The Academic Freedom Index — based on input from more than 2,300 experts in 179 countries — was published last month as part of a report on democracy by the V-Dem Institute at Sweden’s University of Gothenburg.

It measures changes in higher education and research over the last half century by looking at five different indicators: freedom of research and teaching; of academic exchange; of academic and cultural expression; of institutional autonomy and campus integrity.

Significant declines were particularly seen in India, China and Russia — the first, second and ninth most populous nations — which Kinzelbach called “clear examples of autocratisation”.

Katrin Kinzelbach, a professor at Germany’s University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and one of the organisers of the index, said 171 states had ratified a human rights treaty which commits them to respect the freedom of scientific research.

But because of recent “significant deteriorations” in countries with large populations, “only every third person in the world today lives in a country where research and higher education enjoys a high degree of freedom”, she said.

Published in Dawn, April 5th, 2024