The Free to Think 2026 report published by Scholars at Risk on September 15, 2026, documents 382 attacks on higher education communities across 59 countries and territories between July 1, 2025, and June 30, 2026. The report discusses escalating pressures on higher education in the United States. From the report’s section on the United States:

The reporting period saw escalating pressures on higher education in the United States. The federal government and state authorities used executive and legislative actions that undermined university autonomy, including restrictions on academic content and expression. These actions created an enabling environment for monitoring, covert recording, and scrutiny of classroom expression that triggered widespread faculty self-censorship and contributed to several dozen cases in which faculty members and staff were disciplined for statements or publications made inside or outside of the classroom.

According to the Academic Freedom Index (AFI), since 2020, academic freedom has declined dramatically in the US. In 2019, the AFI rated the US as “fully free” with respect to academic freedom. By 2025, it was rated “moderately restricted” (its precise AFI score of 0.4 meant that the country was on the verge of being rated “severely restricted”). The US’s decline in university autonomy was particularly rapid, deteriorating by 50 percent over a 10-year period from 2015 to 2025.

The report notes that in the U.S. there has been curricular censorship, ideological funding pressures, politicized governance, cross-border restrictions and attacks on international students, and stifled campus discourse. For general coverage, see George Luckhurst, ‘Direct Repression’ of Academics on the Rise, Report Finds, Times Higher Education, September 15, 2026.