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Scientists in many countries are confronted with difficulties in research and teaching
Photo: Jens Kalaene / picture alliance / dpa
In some parts of the world, anyone who teaches and researches at a university faces considerable difficulties: because governments suppress undesirable scientific findings, because they harass researchers, or because they monitor very closely what teachers teach their students in seminars.
In 22 countries, everyday work for scientists has deteriorated compared to 2012.
This emerges from the new Academic Freedom Index, which the universities of Erlangen-Nuremberg and Gothenburg compile annually.
Clear downward trend in the US, China, India and Mexico
The authors of the study paid particular attention to four countries whose development is exceptionally important: In the USA, according to the paper, individual states are increasingly intervening in academic institutions.
Nine states, all Republican-governed, have passed policies banning the teaching of so-called critical race theory.
Conservative lobby groups put pressure on universities to stop providing financial support for research areas such as gender studies and environmental and climate protection.
In addition, some states allow lectures and seminars to be recorded or recorded – even without the permission of the teacher.
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In India, the downward trend is closely linked to the creeping autocratization of the Hindu nationalist government. The authors observed the first negative developments as early as 2009.
According to the report, governments in China and Mexico are also increasingly intervening in the higher education system.
Improvements in Gambia, Uzbekistan and Seychelles
In view of these drastic negative developments, the few improvements in global academic freedom are of little consequence: Academic freedom has improved in five countries compared to 2012.
However, these countries - Gambia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Montenegro and the Seychelles - are so small that together they represent just 0.7 percent of the world's population.
The authors of the study did not observe any significant change in 152 countries, not even in Germany, which, together with countries such as Belgium, Finland, the Czech Republic and Argentina, is in the top group of the ranking as one of the countries with the greatest freedom of research.
More than 2000 researchers worldwide are involved in the creation of the ranking, and the Volkswagen Foundation supports the project financially.
Universities and the federal government are responsible
In a guest article in the current issue of ZEIT, Katrin Kinzelbach, Professor of Politics at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and co-author of the study, writes that every region of the world and country of all forms of government is affected by the decline in academic freedom.
She also sees the federal government as having an obligation: previous efforts have focused on science communication, exchange and the protection of threatened researchers.
»Such protection programs are important because they can offer selected researchers a place to work temporarily;
However, they will not reverse the decline in academic freedom,” writes Kinzelbach.
reconsider partnerships
At the same time, universities should reconsider institutional partnerships with countries that have a very low index value, such as Egypt, China, Iran, Nicaragua, Russia, Saudi Arabia or Turkey.
"Red lines must not be politically decreed, the restraint must come from the science system itself."
In the past, partnerships between German universities and universities in Russia or China had been heavily criticized and discussed in this country.
Several German universities have stopped working with the Chinese Confucius Institute in recent years, partly because they saw academic freedom at risk.
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