Introduction
This article is based on the idea that the shape and strength of pressures acting against academic research are intimately related to democratic institutions and the values of academic freedom and institutional autonomy through which democracy is mediated. This does not mean that all kinds of pressure should be regarded as threats to research and academic freedom. Rather, we question whether democratic societies are sufficiently prepared to safeguard their academic institutions against recent developments such as the increased interest and diversity of stakeholders in academic research, the complexity and strength of expectations affecting academia, and current political developments that threaten democratic institutions. These developments have been in the making for decades, although they have become much more strongly felt during the last 10–15 years. To face them, better knowledge is required of the organizational mechanisms that are necessary to sustain democracy, institutional autonomy and academic freedom. Better knowledge is also required to enable key actors within and outside academic institutions to distinguish between harmful and ‘normal’ pressures, the latter being what any institution that is useful to society must expect and should accept.
The next part of this article seeks to clarify the concepts – academic freedom and institutional autonomy – that guide our argument. The third part deals with external pressures on universities. University research has always been and always will be exposed to external pressures of various kinds. Some kinds of pressures are to be expected and called for. They indicate that university research and the knowledge it produces are of value to society at large and to specific interest groups in society. To help distinguish between necessary and benign pressure from pressure that is harmful or destructive to academic research, I shall introduce a couple of distinctions that may serve this purpose. These distinctions do not correspond to the distinction between benign and harmful pressure but may help us analyse how the purpose of external pressure, the means by which it is exerted and its orientation may, for better or worse, affect academic institutions.
The fourth part will focus on how organizational changes in research institutions – with an emphasis on the research university – have affected their ability to handle external pressures. Here I discuss how changes in leadership and internal decision making have affected the vulnerability and capacity of institutions to resist or deflect harmful effects of pressures and sustain basic values of academic freedom and institutional autonomy. In the fifth part I will discuss the role of public policies and how they may sustain or jeopardize academic freedom, before drawing a prescriptive conclusion about the defence of academic freedom under democratic and authoritarian political conditions.
The Argument
The argument of this article centres on two concepts: institutional autonomy and academic freedom. Both are widely used, often poorly defined and strongly contested (Ben-David and Collins Reference Ben-David, Collins and Ben-David1991; Gerbod Reference Gerbod and Rüegg2004). In particular, the two latter characteristics make a discussion to clarify the issues involved difficult. One may also add that the organizational arrangements through which the ideals of institutional autonomy and academic freedom are realized vary considerably across countries and individual institutions within one country. Not least the fact that the phenomena they purport to grasp are complex and multidimensional (DeBoer and Enders Reference De Boer and Enders2017). Institutional autonomy and academic freedom used to be considered two sides of the same coin: the collective freedom of the academic community to make decisions on collective matters related to teaching and research, and the freedom of individual members of the community (professors) to conduct their individual teaching and research as they saw fit. In principle at least, institutional autonomy and academic freedom were mutually reinforcing principles. Following the university reforms that transformed universities in Europe and elsewhere from the 1980s onwards, leaders became increasingly powerful, administrative structures strengthened and representative decision-making bodies dismantled or transformed from decision-making to advisory bodies. Leaders, by the same token, were no longer elected members of the academic community (first among equals), but employed managers, hierarchically superior to academic staff, now increasingly regarded as employees (Bleiklie and Kogan Reference Bleiklie and Kogan2007). Gradually this caused institutional autonomy to be a privilege handled by institutional leaders increasingly removed from rank-and-file academic community members (Bleiklie et al. Reference Bleiklie, Enders and Lepori2017). Accordingly, a tension has emerged between institutional autonomy and academic freedom. It becomes clearly visible when increasingly powerful leaders are willing to use their power to discipline and limit the academic freedom of their academic employees. Finally, governments are now increasingly interfering not just with institutional autonomy through government regulations, but also by policy instruments that increasingly bear directly on the academic activity of individual faculty. In these efforts governments may put pressure on institutional leaders to direct or discipline their staff according to government preferences. Increasingly, various forms of political interference are seen to interfere with academic activities, and the interference is often undertaken using more intrusive policy instruments than before. Academic freedom and institutional autonomy are complex and multidimensional concepts (De Boer and Enders Reference De Boer and Enders2017). Their specific content has changed historically and varies across geographical space and institutional types. Giving a full account of how they are defined and used is not the purpose of this article, but rather to give an account of how the values and organizational arrangements that these concepts represent may be affected by external pressure on research as a core academic activity. Suffice it to say that academic freedom is not necessarily the same as freedom in general (Ben-David and Collins Reference Ben-David, Collins and Ben-David1991). It is circumscribed by a number of social arrangements defined and regulated by academic disciplines and institutions and concerns a specific set of activities: the freedom of teachers and students to teach, study and pursue knowledge and research without unreasonable interference or restriction from law, institutional regulations or public pressure (Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/topic/academic-freedom). Those who enjoy it must first go through a long socialization/formal education and comply with the norms of behaviour defined by the authorities of the academic community to which they belong. The focus here is on the decision-making authority enjoyed by academic institutions and by individual academics within them. Rather than considering institutional autonomy and academic freedom as static states, a set of fixed criteria with which academic institutions may or may not comply, they will be treated as variables. Both legislation and rules, available funds supporting students and research, as well as statements by actors who express themselves publicly on the matter, may serve as indicators of the extent autonomy and academic freedom are appreciated and enjoy the support of politicians, stakeholders and the public at large.
Pressures
Academic freedom is exposed to external pressure. It is also constrained by internal norms and regulations of academic institutions and disciplines, sometimes to the detriment of innovation and academic excellence (Gerbod Reference Gerbod and Rüegg2004). External pressure is different from such constraints because it is exerted by a variety of actors such as governments, business enterprises or associations, interest organizations or media organizations. Again, such pressure may promote and support academic freedom, and at other times the opposite. Thus, the purpose of the pressure, the means that are used to put it into effect as well as the scope of its orientation may bear on how it affects academic freedom.
Purpose
One important distinction can be drawn between utilitarian and ideological pressure. The former tends to refer to operational (in principle at least) goals such as research output (measured by number of publications or patents), research qualifications (number of PhD candidates), research excellence (publications in prestigious journals, position of individuals or institutions on research rankings, prestigious research project grants and prizes), research relevance (funding and employment opportunities). These are outputs that can be measured and the expectations and pressure that lie behind are often based on perceived needs in society, in specific industries or public services for highly educated labour, research services or technologies. Utilitarian pressures are part and parcel of day-to-day research and higher education politics. They express needs that in turn may lead to increased investments in research and higher education, but also to changing priorities favouring some disciplines and research areas to the detriment of others. External utilitarian pressure against research is part and parcel of democratic politics, and necessary to mobilize support for research and advanced education. It may also be detrimental to research if strong pressures from narrowly defined social needs and interests or managerialist efficiency considerations colonize academic institutions (Leišytė et al. Reference Leišytė, Marquina and Jones2025).
Ideological pressure is different. Unless the ideology in question turns on beliefs in academic and democratic ideals, ideological pressure tends to be based on criteria that are only indirectly related, or unrelated, to the research and teaching it seeks to affect. Ideological pressures tend to be disconnected from academic output of research and educational activities, apart from how they might affect the power of the authority in question in terms of obedience and adulation. Historically, supervisory authorities, be they ecclesiastical, political or other organized social groups, have circumscribed the activities of universities and academics to varying degrees. Relations between universities and authorities have often been riddled with tensions. While the medieval Catholic Church often demanded obedience and recognition of its religious tenets, secular authorities might be more concerned with academics who did not demonstrate obedience to the ruler and ruling values in speech or writing.
Although these constraints limited academic freedom and institutional autonomy, they did so to varying degrees across time and space. While a certain amount of academic freedom was made possible in medieval Europe by fragmented authority structures already from the foundation of the first universities around ad 1200, it was also the case that by ad 1500 the autonomy of academic institutions and learned activities gradually became an increasingly accepted norm (Perkin Reference Perkin, Forest and Altbach2007). Although public authorities tend to recognize these values even more today, there have been strong backlashes over the last one hundred years in countries such as the Soviet Union, in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy (Gerbod Reference Gerbod and Rüegg2004), and more recently in Hungary (Majtényi and Ryder Reference Majtényi and Ryder2025), the USA, India and elsewhere (Academic Freedom Index Update 2025; Greenfield Reference Greenfield2025a, Reference Greenfield2025b).
Such backlashes may occur in their most extreme forms when academic institutions and individual academics must declare their personal loyalty to the authorities, regime or ruler in question. They must also accept that all academic activities be monitored by the authorities looking for possible signs of disobedience or deviation from official doctrine or preferences. Thus, research and scientific quest for the truth is no longer possible, as scientific knowledge must be certified as consistent with the ruling ideology before being accepted as legitimate by the ruler.
Means
In the context of this article, it is useful to draw a distinction between obtrusive and unobtrusive means with which pressure may be applied. Pressure by obtrusive means occurs when the principal (usually governments in public higher education systems) defines both the goals and means of academic activities. Unobtrusive means are those where the principal may outline goals for academic institutions (target groups) and scientific activities but leave the choice of means to academic institutions and individual academics.
Higher-education institutions until about 1980 were regulated by legislation setting formal parameters for individual higher-education institutions and academic staff, buildings and other infrastructure needed to undertake their mission. The other important instrument was funding, often based on the number of professors or to some extent student number. As a rule, these instruments were used in an unobtrusive manner in connection with the running of education programmes and research. Decisions on these academic matters were left to the institutions or individual academics. The role of the government was to provide funding and make decisions on the scope of activities, and on establishing new institutions and academic disciplines and programmes.
Since 1800 these practices – apart from the historical periods of authoritarian rule mentioned above – have been based on the Humboldtian norm that the role of the state is to protect academic activities from undue outside interference and pressure (Ben-David and Zloczower Reference Ben-David, Zloczower and Ben-David1991). Intrusive government use of traditional policy instruments such as funding or legislation by removing funding from departments, terminating employment contracts of specific individuals, censoring or disciplining individual academics has not been common. Typical issues of contention between higher education institutions or the entire sector and public authorities have rather turned on priorities in terms of disciplinary emphasis and emphasis on short-cycle and long-cycle programmes in connection with the establishment or closing of specific academic units.
If we consider the development of policy instruments available to steer higher education institutions, there has been an unprecedented differentiation of the number and type of instruments in the last decades. Since the 1980s, the range of policy instruments has grown following the new public management style of higher education reforms. Over the last decades there has been a strong development whereby governments have deployed several new policy instruments in addition to legislation and rule-based funding, such as incentives, evaluation, competition, persuasion, contracts and negotiation between individual institutions and higher-education authorities. Thus, there is a range of new arenas where combinations of policy instruments are involved (Bleiklie et al. Reference Bleiklie, Enders and Lepori2017).
Therefore, over the last few decades it is reasonable to assume that governments are better able to affect academic activities in various ways by sophisticated combinations of incentives, evaluation, negotiation, persuasion and regulation. Comparative studies also indicate that government pressure through more elaborate higher-education policies is stronger than a couple of decades back (Bleiklie et al. Reference Bleiklie, Enders and Lepori2017).
Orientation
Since 1990, higher-education policies in Europe, North America and Australasia have been driven by the idea that the quality of higher education is crucial to the economic competitiveness of nation states on the international marketplace (Bleiklie and Kogan Reference Bleiklie and Kogan2007). The quality of higher education in turn depends on academic excellence, i.e. the quality of research and research-based education. Internationalization is part and parcel of this agenda. Academic excellence can only be measured by international quality standards, and the research effort recognized through publication in internationally recognized high-quality journals or publishers. The behaviour that best promotes research excellence is participating internationally by going to international conferences, presenting and discussing research work, establishing contacts with scholars that can develop into lasting research networks, for instance, by developing joint projects funded by international grants such as EU Horizon or ERC.
The academic excellence orientation that has been behind much government pressure on higher-education institutions has been driven by this idea. Academic excellence thus became the major ambition of most academic institutions and has been a major driver behind processes of ‘academic drift’. Thus, while research universities typically have struggled to improve their positions in research ranking exercises (Paradeise and Thoenig Reference Paradeise and Thoenig2015), non-university higher education institutions have aimed at being upgraded from college to research university status (Bleiklie et al. Reference Bleiklie, Frølich and Michelsen2024). Since high-quality research, according to this orientation, often requires resources and disciplinary groups of a certain size, HE institutions should also be sufficiently large and resourceful to sustain high-quality research groups.
In the last few decades there have been signs of a competing orientation gaining hold. According to this orientation, fulfilling current national needs is the core activity of academic institutions. Thus, the national service orientation focuses on regional and national needs, with educating professionals as a central concern. The last decade has seen increasing signs of government and interest group pressure in this direction in countries such as Denmark (Wright Reference Wright2022), the Netherlands (Løkeland-Stai Reference Løkeland-Stai2023) and Norway (Bleiklie Reference Bleiklie2025). Among the issues of contention and political measures, five stand out:
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(a) Immediate rather than long-term needs. Reduced research funding, partly justified in terms of more pressing national needs that should divert funds to vocational programmes, educating professionals such as nurses, teachers, engineers and social workers.
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(b) National orientation with stronger support for national language by closing English-language teaching programmes, while introducing stricter requirements for foreign faculty to learn and teach in the national language.
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(c) Changing attitudes and restrictions on faculty and student exchange through stricter visa procedures and reduced funding. Where exchange used to be considered an unquestionable benefit to universities, now this is being questioned due to security concerns. The EU/EEA-area is here an exception, as exchange within the area is still supported by long-established structures and resources that have not been called into question.
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(d) Decentralization – the national service orientation stems from a vision that emphasizes geographic proximity and closeness between higher education institutions and their students as well as the local or regional industries and public institutions that need higher education and applied research services. The national service orientation may favour a decentralized HE system because HE institutions should be located ‘where the students live’ and make sure they are able to meet local labour market and business needs.
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(e) The national orientation is more politically driven as politicians are more inclined to interfere directly with higher education systems and institutions.
The two orientations – international excellence and national needs – are not mutually exclusive but represent different priorities and emphases along several interconnected dimensions: research vs. teaching, curiosity driven vs. applied research, disciplinary vs. vocational teaching, national vs. international study programmes. The orientations are complex and manifest themselves differently in different locations. There is a clear difference between English-speaking countries – Australia, UK and US – where international higher education is a major industry depending, on one hand, on large foreign student populations and the attraction of large numbers of scholars from around the world, and smaller nations with comparatively small international student populations and fewer foreign scholars on the other hand. Nevertheless, tougher visa rules and funding limitations have affected international mobility patterns of students and faculty severely (Bleiklie Reference Bleiklie2025). There is also a clear difference between these groups of countries as regards national political traditions in terms of centralization and decentralization of the higher education system.
While the orientations reflect two sets of relatively recognizable preferences that have a long history, the question of how they may shape the future of HE remains. At the moment, policies seem to shift towards a national service orientation. This is partly driven by international tensions with stronger rivalry between major powers such as China and the USA, and violent international conflicts (Ukraine, Gaza and elsewhere) contributing to making internationalization an apparently riskier and less rewarding enterprise than it used to be. Partly, it is driven by right-wing populist movements and policies where autocratic leaders seek to control and sensor universities and academics, regarding academic freedom with suspicion and scepticism (Douglass Reference Douglass2025).
Developments Since the 1980s
We have seen movements in the direction of increased pressure, both utilitarian and ideological. Increased utilitarian pressure has followed from the formidable growth of higher education and research since the latter decades of the twentieth century. In recent years, ideological pressures from autocratic leaders in countries such as the USA, Hungary and India (Altbach and Mathews Reference Altbach and Mathews2025; Douglass Reference Douglass2025; Majtényi and Ryder Reference Majtényi and Ryder2025; Sharma Reference Sharma2025) overshadow utilitarian pressures. Such ideological pressures are sometimes detrimental to the ability of academic institutions to satisfy utilitarian needs that until recently would have been given priority.
With the formidable growth of higher education and research, the economy and public services have become dependent on a highly educated population as well as research-based services and products. Thus, higher education and research are surrounded by an increasing diverse set of ‘stakeholders’ facing the system and individual universities with an increasing array of expectations and pressures. Finally, with the emerging national orientation gaining influence in higher education policies, governments in Europe have expanded the array of policy instruments at their disposal. They have become able to put more complex and manifold pressures on universities, as government measures to achieve compliance with policy goals have become more diverse, more powerful and arguably more intrusive. Owing to the increased diversity of policy instruments, it has also become more difficult to make a sharp distinction between obtrusive and inobtrusive policies (Bleiklie et al. Reference Bleiklie, Enders and Lepori2017).
In sum, utilitarian as well as ideological pressures against universities have, for better or worse, increased. The means by which pressure is exercised have become more diverse, particularly as public policy instruments have proliferated. Although it may be increasingly difficult to pinpoint to what extent specific instances of public higher education policies have become more obtrusive, evidence points to a clear increase in the obtrusiveness of public policies (Leišytė et al. Reference Leišytė, Marquina and Jones2025). Governments are increasingly willing to engage not just in terms of legislation, funding and management of academic institutions, but also in the content of their research and teaching portfolios. The rise of right-wing populism with ideologically motivated measures against higher education institutions has without a doubt added to these pressures in several countries (Academic Freedom Monitor 2024).
The Organizational Preparedness of Academic Institutions
Since the 1980s, new public management (NPM)-inspired higher education governance reforms have sought to make universities and university systems better equipped to handle outside pressures and act independently and strategically. To this end, leadership and management structures have been strengthened while elected bodies have been abolished or had their role reduced. At the same time, national higher education systems have become more standardized and tightly integrated at the national level. This movement has been exacerbated by comprehensive merger processes across Western Europe. Thus, higher-education systems and individual universities have become both more standardized at the national level and more diverse. They tend to be made up of fewer and larger institutions with similar leadership and organizational structures, standardized degree and grading systems, as well as funding and evaluation systems. Yet, they cater to a wider array of users in terms of subjects, vocational orientation, educational traditions and academic ambition. The idea was that this would make individual university organizations more ‘robust’ as today’s larger and more complex institutions are supported by tighter management and a more solid funding base (Leišytė et al. Reference Leišytė, Marquina and Jones2025; Pinheiro et al. Reference Pinheiro, Geschwind and Aarrevaara2016). The more tightly managed institutions thus also involve a larger and more diverse set of stakeholders.
This may be reflected in institutional boards with stronger external representation, partly in indirect influence through funding arrangements, evaluation exercises and relations between employers and higher education institutions and partly through more varied sets of funders in addition to national authorities, such as the EU/ERC, and private-sector funds, each with their own sets of conditions and valuation criteria (Bleiklie et al. Reference Bleiklie, Enders and Lepori2017; Kvilhaugsvik Reference Kvilhaugsvik2022; Paradeise and Thoenig Reference Paradeise and Thoenig2015). Universities tend to be exposed to multiple pressures where strong top-down management is partly offset by complex external relationships that increase the dependency on the environment through funding, evaluation, interest group politics and media pressure. Conflicting interests and values are pitted against one another, and institutional leaders may easily find themselves in situations that are difficult to navigate.
A couple of cases from Norwegian higher education may illustrate this kind of situation. These cases also illustrate that basic academic values usually considered vital to the mission of higher education institutions may become victims when money or demands from important stakeholders are involved. Two cases from recent years concerned complaints by students against professors who, according to the students, had offended them. In both cases university leaders first acted swiftly and decisively to discipline the professor at the behest of students, in one case by imposing a gag order on the professor against the type of statements that one student disliked and, in another case, to terminate the employment contract of the professor. After lengthy proceedings involving multiple actors, the professors’ unions, lawyers on both sides, mass media in both cases raised the question of academic freedom of the professors. The leadership in both cases finally caved and ended up settling the cases by compensating all involved parties for pain and suffering (Bleiklie Reference Bleiklie2022; Lie Reference Lie2025).
Another example of a challenge is often presented by demands from external research funders that involve requirements incompatible with academic freedom, typically secrecy requirements preventing research outcomes from being publicly known. In this case, however, the Norwegian oil producer, Equinor, had made a research funding agreement with several Norwegian universities in 2019. Three years later, in 2022, it was pointed out by some media that the universities cooperating with Equinor had accepted a clause obliging them to mention the cooperation with Equinor exclusively in positive terms.
By accepting the terms of the agreement, it turned out that the Norwegian universities involved had their North-Korean moment. Some of the universities involved moved swiftly to have the clause removed, while others hesitated. Equinor issued a public reassurance that they had no objection if an institution chose to remove the clause. Again, it is striking that Norwegian academic institutions, including the leading research universities, accepted the agreement without challenging a clause that deprived the researchers and the institution of basic academic freedom. In all three cases, the media turned out to be the staunchest defenders of academic freedom in the face of wobbly academic leaders more inclined to discipline their employees and make stakeholders happy – be they students or research funders – than to defend basic academic values (Bleiklie Reference Bleiklie2022).
The above examples illustrate possible outcomes of the general development of organizational changes in university organizations that combine stronger top-down management and increased dependence on the environment. If academic organizations, in their current configurations, prove to be poorly equipped to defend their basic values, one option one might pursue is a better protection of academic values through public policies. After all, the classical arrangement of the Humboldtian model made it the responsibility of the state to protect institutional autonomy and academic freedom (Ben-David and Zloczower Reference Ben-David, Zloczower and Ben-David1991).
The Double-edged Sword of Government Policies
The statement above indicates that the current arrangements call for European nations to safeguard fundamental academic values. In some cases, academic freedom is enshrined in legislation; both the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union 2000/C 364/01) and a significant number of (European) constitutions and basic laws contain specific provisions regarding academic freedom. Even more countries have also enacted specific laws relating to universities or higher-education institutions. However, as already observed, these formal protections depend on actors that are willing and capable of enforcing them or to mobilize effective resistance against violations. In a country such as Hungary, the only EU-member state where systematic and structural infringements of academic freedom occur, academic freedom enjoys constitutional protection (Academic Freedom Monitor 2024: 2). Given this, the Academic Freedom Monitor and the Academic Freedom Index focus on de facto rather than de jure protection.
The situation in Europe is characterized by ‘erosion’, where several factors are driving a development that is indicated by the Academic Monitor Index (2024) score of 27 EU countries: a majority (18 countries) obtained a lower score than in the 2023 index, six obtained the same score and just three countries improved their scores. This suggests that the combined weight of the pressures against European universities analysed in this article put a significant burden on academic freedom. This trend is also supported by data on longer-term developments. The Academic Freedom Index with its comprehensive global surveys indicates erosion and serious deterioration in the US and other countries, pointing at the vulnerability of fundamental academic values and the activities they are supposed to protect. Among the pressures that are particularly important, we may point out the following, some of which have been discussed or illustrated above:
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(1) Direct political interference may stem from: (a) utilitarian-driven pressure to contribute to economic growth and development in terms of research and educational priorities mandated by the government; (b) security policies resulting in restrictions on international collaboration and exchange of students and faculty; (c) authoritarian political leaders demanding compliance with national political priorities by dropping certain academic topics or tailoring presentation of concepts and data so as to please the power in question.
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(2) Private actors, such as large external research funders, may want to shape the research agenda or educational programmes of a collaborating university. They may also want collaborating universities to contribute to their positive image in society.
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(3) Internal pressure may come from university leaders who want to persuade faculty to tailor their research or teaching in order to fulfil personal ambitions or to please stakeholders, whether it be students or outside actors such as private research funders, public authorities or the public at large. Alternatively, students or faculty groups may seek to limit the freedom of one another, by seeking to sanction specific colleagues or groups of colleagues.
Both utilitarian and ideological pressures may be detrimental to academic freedom and hinge on the extent to which pressure is exerted by obtrusive means. The erosion of and sometimes significant reduction of academic freedom in Europe and the US must be seen in the light of the complex forces driving them. The increased economic and social importance of research and higher education represent a long-term development and has come with increased political and media visibility. The increased pressure that follows should be expected but must be kept in check for two reasons. The first is that a university in a democratic society cannot be the instrument of one powerful actor. Second, especially large and complex universities with many and diverse stakeholders may easily become fragmented if internal academic groups develop stronger ties with external actors than with the university in which they work.
Conclusion
The conclusion of this article is prescriptive and based on a firm belief in the close relationship between academic institutions engaged in the quest for knowledge and democracy, with human rights and freedom of expression as fundamental values. From the above discussion about pressures against universities and academic freedom, two ways of working to uphold and defend these values may be suggested.
Democratic politics: the increased public focus on legislation to secure academic freedom in later years indicates a willingness by democratic governments to safeguard these core academic values. However important, legal protection is not sufficient, as demonstrated by recent developments. The next step, continuous monitoring of the actual state of affairs at the European and international level, is underway with the establishment of the Academic Freedom Index and the Academic Freedom Monitor. A further step may be the establishment of sector-specific organizations that can handle reports or complaints against infringements or attacks against academic freedom and impose sanctions on the perpetrators. Within a utilitarian context, an open democratic debate about what protection is needed and possible can be part of a political and institutional effort to make sure that politicians, institutional leaders, individual academics and students will be willing and capable of defending academic freedom as part of the wider struggle to defend democratic institutions.
Defence against authoritarian politics: ideological pressures by actors who seek to achieve or demand compliance of academic institutions with a specific political agenda are different. The toughest current challenge to academic freedom comes from authoritarian leaders, foremost among whom is the current US administration. This challenge combines ideological pressure, use of obtrusive means and a nationalist orientation. The surprising ease with which the US administration has removed institutional autonomy and curtailed academic freedom, together with other pillars of democracy, demonstrates that the defence of democratic values and academic freedom is far from easy. It is often said that Trump is a transactional leader, one who as a political leader brings his experience from business life, where deals are made between self-interested actors, into politics. Business transactions typically end in a contract that the parties involved must honour. Although Trump’s rhetoric is transactional, his actions are not. A deal is honoured only to the extent that it serves his interests (Allengreen Reference Allengreen2025). If not, the contract is forgotten, and an offended party who objects, is met with any tool of power that is available to discourage further objections. The question is how academic freedom can be defended against attacks by authoritarian leaders who represent ideologically motivated, obtrusive and nationally oriented policies. To get an idea both of authoritarian leadership and the policy options available to those who oppose such policies, Aristotle may offer important insights. An extremely condensed version of Aristotle’s analysis of tyranny in politics goes like this: an authoritarian leader has one ambition, which is to amass power. To reach this goal there is one rule: unfettered action. Thus, any means that help the leader amass power may be used. An authoritarian leader, furthermore, faces two obstacles: people with integrity and trust among members of society. Thus, an authoritarian leader is constantly seeking to weed out people who speak their mind publicly and are willing to contradict the leader if need be. The authoritarian leader also works constantly to sow division and destroy trust among members of society (Aristotle 350). What this overly simplistic version of Aristotle may make clear is that defence against authoritarian leaders is like any political struggle that puts great demands both on personal integrity and organizational talent to foster solidarity. It is tempting to hope that although the individual and organizational costs might be enormous, universities and academics might have the resources that will be needed to defend academic freedom and democracy.
Competing interests
The author declares no competing interest.
Ivar Bleiklie is Professor Emeritus in Political Science at the University of Bergen, former Director of the Norwegian Research Center in Organization and Management, and Scientific Director of the Holberg International Memorial Prize. He has been a Visiting Scholar/Guest Professor at Stanford University, Harvard University, Boston College and Science Po. Ivar Bleiklie has participated in and led several comparative studies of welfare policies, biomedical policies, policy advice and, in particular, policies and organizational change in higher education and research in Western European countries funded by the research Council of Norway, the EU and the European Science Foundation. He has worked in advisory roles with the Council of Europe, UNESCO and the governments of Denmark and Norway. His research, published in numerous books, book chapters and articles, focuses on comparative studies of policymaking, governance and administration in the above-mentioned fields.
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