Resources

Tables/data sets/scholarly articles/reports that document threats to Academic Freedom

New Report Published

– Academic Freedom Index 2025 |

New Report Published – Academic Freedom Index 2025 |

TABLES

Six tables that tell the story of academic unfreedom in India. Maintained by Team IAFN

The Indian Academic Freedom Network presents the following tables to help readers get a quick overview of the decline in academic freedom in India. We have tried to record all incidents that we could find in national English newspapers or news portals, irrespective of the political affiliation of the groups infringing academic freedom.

These tables are an updated, expanded version of the annexures first prepared in June 2020 by Nandini Sundar and Gowhar Fazili as part of a status report in response to a call for submissions on academic freedom by the UN Special Rapporteur on the protection and promotion of the right to freedom of opinion and expression.

The contents of these tables are based on research and inputs by Sumit Kumar and Rajat Sonkar (2020); Ananya Redkar (2021); Mohona Chaudhuri, Madiha Iqbal, and Uttam Kumar (2022); Ateen Das, Saniya Rizwan, and Arul Singh (2023); and Ashwin Thomas, Tulip Bannerjee, Samra Iqbal, and Vedant Nagrani (2024).

Please note that the entries are not exhaustive but merely illustrative. Readers are encouraged to fill any gaps that they notice by emailing indiaacademicfreedom@gmail.com.

These tables were first published on The Wire

ACADEMIC FREEDOM

IN INDIA

SCHOLARLY ARTICLES ON

ACADEMIC

FREEDOM

PRINCIPLES OF

AAUP Statement on Institutional Neutrality, February 2025.

Academic Freedom as a Fundamental Right, LERU, December 2010.

International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

Inter-American Principles on Academic Freedom and University Autonomy

Further Resources

Principles for Implementing Academic Freedom 2024 (Human Rights Council) Click here

AAUP Statement on Academic Boycotts (August 2024): Click here

Joint Declaration on Academic Freedom, Intervention de la France Genève, 29 March 2023: Click here

REPORTS ON

ACADEMIC FREEDOM

Free to Think (Scholars at Risk’s Academic Freedom Monitoring Project)

Click here to view all reports

Academic Freedom Index: V-Dem Project

Click here to view all reports

SAIH, Activism Under Attack Report 2024. Click here to view earlier reports

Education Under Attack 2024, Report by Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack.

Kirsten Roberts Lyer and Aron Suba, Closing Academic Space, International Center for Not-for-Profit Law, March 2019. Click here

Dheepa Sundaram, ‘An Academic Conference, A Bomb Threat, and A Title VI Complaint: U.S. Hindu Nationalist Groups' Litigious Assault on Academic Freedom’ Drexel Law Review 16, no. 4 (2024). Click here to access

miscellaneous

ARTICLES