Collaborative Science Under Threat: How Attacks on Academic Freedom Endanger Global Research

Collaborative science under threat — attacks on academic freedom endanger vital research

Since President Donald Trump began a second term, many scholars across disciplines have seen funding cut amid accusations of ideological bias, a trend worsened by the extensive 2025 federal shutdown. As sociologists who study universities, higher education policy and administration, academic freedom, and the production of science, we view these cuts as part of a broader international decline in academic freedom. From the mid-2000s onward political pressure on higher education has risen in numerous countries, weakening academic freedom in places as diverse as India, Israel, Nicaragua and the United Kingdom.

High-profile cases and the global context

Consider well-documented examples: Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán repeatedly accused Central European University of "liberal bias,” ultimately forcing the institution and some faculty to relocate to Vienna by 2019. In Argentina, President Javier Milei has frequently portrayed academics as corrupt elites since taking office in 2023, using that narrative to limit university autonomy and curtail research funding. These are not isolated incidents — they reflect a larger pattern of political interference that damages universities’ ability to carry out independent research.

Why academic freedom matters for collaborative research

Most contemporary scientific research is collaborative. The scale and complexity of teams that pool human and material resources have grown dramatically and now produce a substantial "collaboration dividend" — higher productivity and higher-quality discoveries achieved through international partnerships. Collaborations have been central to major achievements, from rapid COVID-19 vaccine development to advances in renewable energy. When individual scholars’ freedoms are curtailed and institutions lose autonomy, that collaboration dividend erodes, reducing both the quantity and quality of scientific discovery worldwide.

International norms and data

UNESCO’s Recommendation concerning the Status of Higher-Education Teaching Personnel, drawing on Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, urges states to protect academics from political surveillance and interference in two ways. First, UNESCO affirms individual faculty rights to teach, pursue research, publish results and offer expert opinions free from political coercion. Second, it defends institutional autonomy, arguing that universities should be able to decide how to support research, hire and promote staff, and set curricula without undue state interference.

Data from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project show long-term international trends in academic freedom. V-Dem is a widely used, expert-coded dataset that tracks infringements and protections of political rights across countries over the past century. The academic freedom index we used captures multiple dimensions of these protections and their erosion.

Historical arc and recent reversal

Academic freedom was severely suppressed in the 1930s amid global depression, the rise of fascism and mounting military conflicts, reaching a nadir during World War II. After the war it recovered and expanded. From roughly 1980 through the mid-2000s, many countries invested in university research capacity and cross-border collaboration. This expansion, often backed by international agreements such as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, coincided with the largest historical growth in global STEMM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine) research capacity.

Over the past decade, however, protections for faculty and institutional autonomy have weakened in many countries, including the United States. University-based scientists now co-author approximately 85%–90% of the several million annual STEMM papers. Large, complex collaborations are increasingly the engine of discovery, and a global environment that protects academic freedom is essential for tapping the growing collaboration dividend.

Evidence from recent studies

• In studies published between 2024 and 2025 we documented troubling trends of declining academic freedom, weakened collaborations and falling scientific output at universities worldwide.
• Analyzing 17 research-productive countries from 1981 to 2007, we found that stronger protections for individual academic freedom are associated with increases in both the quantity and quality of STEMM research; infringements have the opposite effect.
• Separately, safeguarding universities’ organizational autonomy independently raises the volume and excellence of a country’s STEMM output, even after accounting for government research spending, national wealth and university enrollment.
• Complementary research shows that restrictions on academic freedom reduce scientists’ and institutions’ ability to participate effectively in international collaborations.

Taken together, these findings show that academic freedom enables participation in complex, global research networks that amplify scientific production. These networks are sustained not only by individual researchers but by institutional ties between universities; when academic freedom at the university level declines, those ties and the projects they enable become vulnerable.

The rise of super-collaborations and geographic hubs

The popular image of the solitary genius is increasingly a myth. Research teams have grown steadily, and "super-collaborative" groups of hundreds or even thousands now tackle major projects. Because individual researchers’ output tends to be relatively steady over a career, overall gains in scientific productivity now depend heavily on global collaboration and pooled resources.

In the early 1980s three geographic superhubs of university-based collaborative research emerged: Europe, North America and a rapidly expanding East Asia. By 1980 universities in the European and North American hubs were co-authoring publications with scientists in roughly 100 other countries; that figure rose to 193 countries by 2010. Today more than one-quarter of annual STEMM papers result from international collaborations. These hubs can also help universities in other nations "leapfrog" into greater centrality — South Korea provides a clear example of such a trajectory.

Consequences and stakes

The global research system’s collaborative capacity has produced millions of co-authored papers and major advances, including the rapid development of COVID-19 vaccines. Because collaborative networks depend on institutional support as well as individual researchers, declines in university-level academic freedom make these networks fragile. Alarmingly, since early 2025 about three-quarters of U.S.-based scientists have considered leaving the country in response to perceived threats to academic freedom.

What is at stake is not only scholars’ and institutions’ rights but the future of discovery itself. Academic freedom is essential for scientists worldwide to collaborate and produce the breakthroughs that drive technological innovation, medical progress and solutions to social and environmental challenges.

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Authors: Volha Chykina (University of Richmond); David P. Baker (Penn State); Frank Fernandez (University of Wisconsin–Madison); Justin J. W. Powell (University of Luxembourg).

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization providing facts and analysis to help readers better understand complex issues.

Funding disclosures: Volha Chykina and Frank Fernandez have received funding from the Mellon Foundation / Scholars at Risk. David P. Baker and Justin J. W. Powell have received funding for higher education and science research from various national research agencies and foundations.