3 Dec 2025 | Americas, News and features, United States
A year ago, I asked whether academic freedom could survive Donald Trump’s plans for thought control. We now have the answer. Trump’s most effective weapon to this end has been the financial mechanisms linking state and academia. In the first week of his presidency, Trump ordered a “temporary pause” on billions of dollars in funding for education and scientific research already approved by Congress. This was followed by a wave of 30 Executive Orders and legislation relating to higher education in the first 75 days of the new administration. Collectively, these have had a devastating impact on independent research, threatening to engineer compliant instruction in America’s universities.
The trend toward limiting academic freedom is not limited to the United States. In the United Kingdom, research intensive universities have begun to prepare for the worst. As reported in The Times of London this week, Cambridge University have been “cosying up” to Nigel Farage’s Reform Party, amid fears that it will copy Trump’s approach to academic freedom if they form the next UK government. During the electoral campaign last year, Reform promised to “cut funding to universities that undermine free speech [sic]”; with this threat in mind, Cambridge’s vice-chancellor Deborah Prentice warned the university’s governing council that “what the US example reminds you is you have to worry about what’s coming next.”
A mapping of the impact of the Trump administration’s cull by the Center for American Progress documented that it had targeted the termination of more than 4,000 grants across over 600 universities and colleges across the country, alongside funding cuts of between $3.3 billion and $3.7 billion. In the resulting fallout, clinical trials for cancer, covid and minority health have been stopped, satellite missions halted, and climate centres closed.
Funding freezes have been justified on the pretext of allegations of antisemitism in America’s universities, alongside claims that diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) practices constitute “discrimination” against some students. According to a memo dispatched by the Executive Office of the President in January 2025, “[t]he use of Federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies is a waste of taxpayer dollars that does not improve the day-to-day lives of those we serve.”
This dual framing produces contradictory and uneven demands: universities are under pressure to suppress some forms of free expression while tolerating others. In March, Trump warned institutions that a failure to crack down on “illegal protests” could jeopardise their eligibility for federal funding. DEI was cast as evidence of thought policing; professors have lost funding for researching “woke” subjects, and even been fired for allegedly teaching “gender ideology”. All this reinforces a climate in which activities or speech seen as “liberal” are punished, while opinions aligned with the administration are protected. This perception was reinforced by the firing of up to 40 educators for comments made on social media following the assassination of Charlie Kirk in September, leaving many professors unsure what they can say online.
The first casualty was Columbia University – $400m in grants were pulled over campus protests – the university settled, as did Brown. The Trump administration also dramatically ramped up enforcement of university reporting of large foreign gifts or contracts from countries like China and the Middle East. Several top institutions including Berkeley and Harvard are under active investigation. While donations can be an important vector for foreign influence, this escalation has unfolded within a broader pattern of punitive oversight including an Executive Order in January to resulted in a wave of foreign students being deported due to their involvement in Gaza protests. A District Judge recently ruled that targeting noncitizen students and faculty for deportation based on speech violated the First Amendment. Seen as a whole, the real function of these acts is making the university sector’s financial survival contingent on political alignment with the administration.
An article in Inside Higher Ed provides a vivid account from a PhD student of the impact of this squeeze on higher education in the United States. “Our institution is just scrambling to figure out what DEI is and what programs will be affected,” the doctoral researcher said. “I study the development of disease, which tends to affect populations of certain ethnic and cultural backgrounds more than others. Is that DEI?”
According to a poll of 1600 scientists conducted by Nature, three-quarters of respondents were considering leaving the United States following the Trump upheaval, with Europe and Canada cited as the most favoured destinations for relocation. This is hardly surprising, given the uncertainty of the moment. But is the grass truly greener on the other side? The events of the last year have sent tremors internationally, largely because of the influential status and respect accorded to US academia. As Rob Quinn, executive director of US body Scholars At Risk, told The Guardian, “We are witnessing an unprecedented situation – really as far as I can tell in history – where a global leader of education and research is voluntarily dismantling that which gave it an advantage.”
As noted above, there are fears of a similar attack on higher education in the United Kingdom. Universities are already facing similar dilemmas concerning contradictory interpretations of the right to free speech. The Office of Students has threatened to sanction universities if campus protests over Palestine and the war in Gaza are deemed to constitute “harassment and discrimination” – while in parallel rolling out similar sanctions against universities for actions taken to prevent transphobic abuse and harassment. Countries around the world are watching developments with apprehension and Scholars At Risk have warned that the Trump administration’s assault on universities is turning the US into a “model for how to dismantle” academic freedom.
Jon Fansmith, senior vice president for government relations and national engagement at the American Council on Education, has argued that the Trump administration’s actions are not in accordance with the law. “They don’t have any statutory or regulatory authority to suspend research on the basis of accusations.” Fansmith sees the freezes as a way “to force a negotiation so they can claim victory when they lack any sort of authority or any sort of evidence that would allow them to do it in the appropriate way.”
In October, dealmaker-in-chief Trump offered a “compact” to nine universities, offering them preferential funding arrangements if they acceded to a list of demands. These, PEN America reported, included a prohibition on employees “making statements on social or political matters on behalf of the university”, and screening international students for “anti-American values.” Other requirements included an enforcement of a binary definition of gender, a freeze on tuition rates charged to American students for five years, and the removal of diversity as a factor for consideration in admissions decisions. Seven of the nine targeted institutions declined the offer and no major research universities agreed to sign; it seems clear that entering into such a compact would, in effect end academic independence and institutional autonomy.
The Trump administration’s tactic of extracting concessions by manufacturing crises that it then offers to resolve has had some wins though, with some universities “obeying in advance” as Timothy Snyder might say. Under significant pressure – by way of a $790 million funding freeze and a Title VI civil rights investigation – Northwestern University recently reached a $75 million settlement (albeit without conceding liability) with the Trump administration. As part of the settlement agreeement, Northwestern agreed to investigate claims of antisemitism and make statements on transgender issues that reflected Trump’s Executive Order on the issue, and promised that admissions procedures will no longer take into account “race, color, or national origin”.
Beyond funding, accreditation has become another pressure point, with professional bodies being pushed by authorities to eliminate requirements relating to diversity or social justice. The American Bar Association, for example, is reviewing its accreditation standards and has suspended enforcement of its DEI standard for law schools – an indication of the federal government’s success in pushing accreditation bodies into shifting existing norms.
All this said: in the face of potentially dire outcomes, a number of states, universities and grantees have challenged the Trump imperative in court, offering to the academic community examples of principled resistance and coalition building. Even as UCLA continued to negotiate a $1 billion fine levied on it by the administration, its frustrated faculty launched a suit to defend the institution, successfully securing a preliminary injunction preventing Government from using funding threats to override the First Amendment.
Mechanisms like regulatory friction, funding conditions, and culture war mobilisation do not need to eliminate dissent for their effect to be felt. They only need to make dissent administratively burdensome and financially risky. Academic freedom in a democracy dies not through troops taking direct control of campus, but in thousands of bureaucratic changes and risk-averse decisions – each justified as temporary, each rationalised as necessary. University administrations tend to see a clear strategic trade-off between short-term compliance and securing resources for the longer term. But the cost of this trade-off is sacrificing the freedom to think and speak that would be impossible to reverse: turning independent research, in effect, into a theatre of political compliance. When the world’s most powerful research sector is pressured into ideological alignment, it also sends a powerful message to far right political movements in the United Kingdom and everywhere else: independent scholarship can be subordinated, teachers tamed, compliance secured, if you simply follow the Trump model. The stakes could not be higher, and American universities must unite in support of their faculty to both defeat the current assault and win the larger war.
10 Nov 2025 | Asia and Pacific, China, Europe and Central Asia, News and features, United Kingdom
Last week was a bad press week for Sheffield Hallam University after it was revealed they paused research into human rights abuses in Xinjiang because of a run-in with Beijing. Following research by Professor Laura Murphy on Uyghur forced labour, the university experienced threats against its China-based staff and blocked access in China. The university’s insurer pulled back and then university administrators barred her from continuing the work, at which stage Murphy threatened legal action for violation of academic freedom. The university has reversed its decision, albeit only after an unnecessary struggle. A shocking story for some, but not for us, and indeed the many other UK academics who came forward this week with similar stories.
People often ask me about “cancel culture” on campus. My usual response is: yes, it’s a problem but you know what’s also problematic and not talked about nearly as much? Chinese influence. We’ve been shouting about this for ages, and have dug deep via reports, follow-ups and panel discussions. As was the case with Sheffield Hallam, the influence is usually exerted through stick and carrot: the stick = harassment of students and staff, the carrot = access to China’s lucrative market. Given the growing number of Chinese students in the UK and the proliferation of UK joint institutes in China, we urgently need to address this problem. China is an incredibly important story. It can’t be airbrushed.
Questions about academic freedom aren’t confined to China-related issues or to cancel culture, as another academic freedom story from this week reminded us. This one concerns SOAS, who next June plan to host a conference by a group called Brismes, a well-respected UK-based organisation within the field of Middle Eastern studies. SOAS isn’t just renting a space to Brismes. They’ve issued the call for submissions on their own site too. As part of that call, participants are asked to declare whether their university is “built on captured land”. Several organisations that campaign for academic freedom have accused them of breaking free speech rules. They’re right to make the accusation. It’s a thinly veiled attempt to exclude Israeli and Israeli-Palestinian academics, who either might not support the framing or might find themselves in jeopardy if they do.
I have issue with compelled speech, as I’ve written about. It mirrors the tactics of authoritarian regimes, not open democracies. And in a university environment, it’s especially problematic. They should be about dialogue not dogma. Sadly such ideological purity tests (as one academic I spoke about this story called it) aren’t unique to SOAS or to this specific issue, which I reference to provide context not justification.
Of course there are usually other universities people can speak at, just as there might be other universities one can research China’s human rights abuses. But is that the point? Any university closing its doors to academics – whether out of fear of losing funding or because of demands for thought conformity – is bad, made all the worse because it’s part of a broader pattern.
20 Jun 2025 | Cambodia, India, Iran, Israel, News and features, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, United Kingdom
In the age of online information, it can feel harder than ever to stay informed. As we get bombarded with news from all angles, important stories can easily pass us by. To help you cut through the noise, every Friday Index publishes a weekly news roundup of some of the key stories covering censorship and free expression. This week, we look at how Israel has targeted Iranian media in bombing strikes, and the state execution of a Saudi journalist.
Bombed live on broadcast: Israel strikes Iranian state media
In the early hours of Friday 13 June, Israel launched strikes against Iran which has since escalated into a larger conflict, with major population centres such as Tehran and Tel Aviv facing missile attacks. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claims the initial attack, dubbed Operation Rising Lion, was pre-emptive to prevent Iran from producing a nuclear weapon which Israel believed was imminent – a claim that is not backed up by US intelligence. Beyond nuclear targets, Israeli missiles have targeted another facet of the Iranian state: the media.
On 16 June, the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting’s (IRIB) TV channel was broadcasting live news coverage of the conflict when an explosion rocked the studio, forcing the presenter to flee and the broadcast to cut to pre-recorded bulletins. Israel had bombed the studio live on air in a direct attack on Iranian media. Israeli defence minister Israel Katz described the attack as a strike on the “propaganda and incitement broadcasting authority of the Iranian regime“, while an Israeli military spokesperson alleged that IRIB was aiding the Iranian military “under the cover of civilian assets and infrastructure“. Iranian officials described the attack as a war crime, while the head of IRIB Peyman Jebelli stated that the studio was damaged, but vowed that broadcasting would return. Local media reported that three members of staff were killed in the attack, including a senior news editor.
“High treason” or Twitter?: Saudi journalist executed after social media posts
On 14 June 2025, the Saudi Interior Ministry announced on X that it had carried out the death penalty on Saudi journalist Turki al-Jasser, who stood accused of high treason and terrorism charges, in the first high-profile killing of a Saudi journalist since Jamal Khashoggi. But campaigners close to the case believe that the true reason for al-Jasser’s arrest and execution in 2018 was his posts made on X (then called Twitter).
Al-Jasser reportedly had two accounts: one under his real name, and a second, anonymous account that was critical of the Saudi government, accusing the Saudi royal family of corruption. The Saudi government is thought to have identified al-Jasser as someone involved with attempting to topple the government because of his posts; Saudi Arabia allegedly infiltrated Twitter’s databases to access information about anonymous users in 2014 and 2015, and could have identified Al-Jasser using a similar method. It has been reported that Al-Jasser, who founded the news website Al-Mashhad Al-Saudi (The Saudi Scene), was tortured during his seven-year detention.
Changing views: Reforms to freedom of expression on UK campuses
The university campus is often considered a battleground for free speech, with conflicting ideals constantly in debate and student protests making national news. Universities are often caught between supporting staff or students, and are frequently criticised for giving or denying controversial speakers a platform.
Following some high-profile incidents, universities have asked for clarity. Kathleen Stock, a philosophy professor at the University of Sussex, resigned in 2021 following protests on campus regarding her gender-critical views, for example. The Office for Students (OfS) fined the university £585,000 for the poor handling of her case and failing to uphold free speech.
A set of new OfS guidelines are intended to provide clear advice on what is permitted and what is not. In the guidelines, the OfS has ruled that universities in England will no longer be able to enforce blanket bans on student protests. This follows a wave of pro-Palestine student protests, with encampments appearing on university grounds across the country. Some universities have looked to prohibit such demonstrations, as Cambridge University did when a court ruled to block any further Israel-Palestine protests until the end of July.
The OfS guidelines also address the protection of viewpoints by staff and students that some may find offensive. Arif Ahmed, director for freedom of speech and academic freedom at OfS, stated that students “have to accept that other people will have views that you find uncomfortable” when attending university. The guidelines come into effect in UK universities on 1 August.
No more soap operas: Cambodia bans Thai TV in border dispute
Since a clash at a disputed border area between Cambodia and Thailand claimed the life of a Cambodian soldier on 28 May, the two southeast Asian nations have seen tensions escalate. Each side blamed the other for the skirmish, which has resulted in an increased armed presence at the border and the introduction of retaliatory measures by both governments. With neither side looking to back down, the Cambodian government has taken a further step to sever ties with its neighbour by banning Thai TV and movies from being shown in Cambodia.
The ban also includes a boycott of any Thai internet links; a move that Cambodia’s minister of post and telecommunication Chea Vandeth claimed would cost Thailand hundreds of millions of dollars. Every cinema in the country has been informed that import and screening of Thai films is strictly prohibited as of 13 June, and Thai TV broadcasts – such as Thai soap operas, which are especially popular in Cambodia – must be replaced with Chinese, Korean or Cambodian dramas. Tensions continue to rise, and Cambodia instituted a ban on Thai fruit imports on Tuesday.
Citizen journalism under fire: Government of Jammu and Kashmir has YouTubers and online content creators in their sights
The government of Jammu and Kashmir has issued an order targeting those it deems to be “impersonating journalists”, including content creators on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. The order restricts speech vaguely defined as “provocative” or “false” content, and content creators reporting on political affairs in the region could be classified as “impersonating a journalist”. The order comes with significant legal threats such as fines, imprisonment and the confiscation of electronic devices, allowing for anyone deemed to be “disrupting public order” to face consequences.
Threats to free speech in Jammu and Kashmir have been prevalent since a deadly terrorist attack in Indian-controlled Kashmir in April claimed 26 lives. Journalist Rakesh Sharma was physically assaulted while covering a protest in Jammu and Kashmir, and following the terrorist attack, the Indian government implemented widespread digital censorship on Pakistani and Muslim content on social media. With the new order, it will be even harder for residents of Jammu and Kashmir to stay informed.
8 May 2025 | Europe and Central Asia, Hungary, News and features
This week, academics from all over Europe are gathering at the Times Higher Education Europe Universities Summit in Budapest.
The conference has the strapline, “Pairing higher education excellence with world-leading research and innovation” and professors and academics including a pro-vice chancellor of Oxford University Anne Trefethen are speaking.
So far, so dull. Except behind the headlines, this appears to be an expensive exercise in academia washing, with Times Higher Education having struck a deal with the Hungarian government to rehabilitate the reputation of Hungary’s universities, with the conference seemingly being a key part of that strategy.
This is a tale of once-respected institutions being captured by power and money. Ancient Hungarian universities taken over by the cronies of an autocratic government that wants to control what is taught and researched, and a respected and once independent UK higher education magazine, bought by a private equity company keen to monopolise on the magazine’s most valuable asset – its global universities ranking list. The biggest losers: those who believe in academic freedom.
Hungary has been under increasingly autocratic rule since the leader of the Fidesz party, Viktor Orbán, became prime minister in 2010. Orbán has spent the past 15 years bringing independent institutions in the country under the control of his party. Public broadcast channels have been turned into propaganda machines and oligarchs with ties to the government have bought up most private media outlets. According to the latest country report from Reporters Without Borders (RSF), those oligarchs now own 80% of the media.
Orbán and his party have now turned their attention to universities. In 2017, Orbán’s first move was to pass a law (subsequently found to be unlawful under EU legislation) that effectively banned the Central European University from operating in Hungary. The CEU’s main crime was to be independent, a US institution and founded by the financier George Soros.
Orbán then turned his attention to troublesome domestic universities. In 2021, the government transferred 11 state universities and billions of euros of state assets to asset management “foundations” run by loyalists of the Fidesz party. Orbán claimed that this guaranteed the independence of state universities, while most people saw the move as a way of giving Fidesz loyalists a stranglehold on academia. Another slew of universities were later “foundationalised”, meaning they are also now managed and funded by foundations rather than directly by the state, and the small number of public universities remaining in Hungary are now starved of funds. For academic freedom, foundationalisation was disastrous. Hungary’s universities have plummeted to the bottom 20 to 30% of this year’s Academic Freedom Index (along with Chad, Libya, Vietnam and Djibouti).
The takeover and asset stripping of most of Hungary’s state universities by friends of the government set the country on a collision course with the EU. In early 2023, the European Commission excluded 21 of the privatised universities (though not individual academics) from EU Horizon Europe funding for research and innovation, and from Erasmus+ funding for academic mobility, over concerns around corruption and public procurement. Hungary challenged the ruling, but in December 2024, the European Commission upheld its decision. Increasingly isolated and now a pariah in the academic world, the Hungarian government desperately needed help to rehabilitate the image of its universities.
The Times Higher Education (THE) Supplement has an illustrious history. It was founded in 1971 and was a sister paper to the Times Educational Supplement (TES), part of The Times stable. The first editor Brian MacArthur recruited some of the most talented young journalists of their generation including Christopher Hitchens, Peter Hennessy, David Henke and Robin McKie to report on the growing university and polytechnic sector in the UK.
With the early 1990s, came university league tables. By 2019, and several venture capital owners later, THE was carved out from the TES family and taken over by the private equity company Inflexion. Why? Because THE’s Global University Rankings had become big business, influencing everything from university funding and student numbers to UK student visas. There is a lot of money to be made in offering consultancy to universities to help them improve their place in the rankings, or in the words of THE’s website: “we have experienced a growing demand for bespoke, practical insights to help universities and governments alike drive strategic planning and growth across a range of interests in higher education.”
In April 2024, the Hungarian government’s Ministry of Culture and Innovation and THE signed a “groundbreaking deal” . THE, under the leadership of its chief global affairs officer Phil Baty, said it was going to “carry out a detailed analysis of Hungary’s higher education system, analysing its current performance and benchmarking it with successful global education hubs based on THE’s gold standard World University Rankings and review this in light of the ministry’s ambitions”.
Hungary’s Minister of Culture and Innovation Balázs Hankó was more explicit, saying the aspiration was to increase the number of foreign students at Hungarian universities, and have a Hungarian university in the world’s top 100 by 2030. Luckily for Hungary, academic freedom is not one of the measures used in THE’s rankings system.
THE’s deal with Hungary did receive some attention but only on specialist websites such as University World News, which highlight the conflict of interest between running a rankings system and a consultancy to help universities improve their rankings. THE is not the only rankings organisation to do this; QS also run a rankings system and consultancy, but in THE’s case there’s a potential further conflict because the company still publishes an online magazine which is one of the most trusted sources of information in the higher education sector, especially in the UK. Additionally, THE has also recently acquired Inside Higher Ed and Poets&Quants, both large US-based higher education publishers and sources of news.
A research paper by King’s College from 2022, From newspaper supplement to data company: Tracking rhetorical change in the Times Higher Education’s rankings coverage, tracked how over the past 20 years, THE had gradually prioritised being a data company over a journalistic outlet. And what chance is there of THE’s editorial team now running an exposé of Hungary’s university system? Very little, I believe. In fact, in November 2024, THE ran a sympathetic interview with Hungary’s culture minister Hankó without mentioning the contract he had signed with THE’s consultancy arm only months before. However, a cursory search of “Hungary” on THE’s online archive does bring up some past articles that report on and scrutinise the country’s free expression landscape, including a piece from 2017 on the state of higher education in Hungary, and a piece from 2021 on the repercussions of the university privatisation scheme.
Should professors and academics from Oxford and Durham universities and King’s College London be participating in what amounts to an academia-washing exercise by THE and the Hungarian government in Budapest this week? I don’t think so. Ironically, THE columnist Eric Heinze was in two minds about attending a conference about free speech in Hungary back in 2017.
While some in the field believe it is valid for individual universities to buy consultancy services from rankings organisations like THE to help them smooth out problems such as data organisation or ensuring consistent spellings of their name, THE collaborating with authoritarian governments, which have sought to control what their universities can teach, is surely of a different order. What is the point of universities if they are not institutions that can decide their own research and teaching programmes, independent of the government and government appointees?
And surely universities which score badly in the Academic Freedom Index shouldn’t be in the rankings at all. As Donald Trump tries to wrest control of universities in the USA (which regularly top the rankings) and Chinese universities are increasingly shooting up the tables, academic freedom is going to become an increasing issue.
THE is a trusted source of news in higher education, as is the US equivalent, Inside Higher Education. But there’s a threat to independent journalism, and academic freedom, when the company that owns these magazines collaborates with countries like Hungary, which consistently try to control freedom of expression.
Index on Censorship contacted the Times Higher Education (THE) Supplement press office for comment but aside from an automated acknowledgement email, it did not respond by the time of publishing.
