https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/03/200326124203.htm

'There is broad agreement on the importance of academic freedom, yet we have strikingly little knowledge about global or country-level trends,' says Prof. Kinzelbach, Professor for International Politics of Human Rights. 'This is why we decided to assess academic freedom worldwide and across time.'

The Academic Freedom Index (AFi) attempts to fill an important gap in knowledge and promote academic freedom as a fundamental principle of higher education and scientific research. Prof. Kinzelbach developed the project and a series of indicators in close coordination with the Global Public Policy Institute in Berlin and with the Scholars at Risk Network in New York. The V-Dem Institute in Gothenburg managed the data collection. '1810 scholars from around the globe contributed to the new index by answering an expert survey, spanning the years 1900-2019,' explains Prof. Dr. Anna Lührmann, who is deputy director of the V-Dem Institute. 'We vetted and aggregated this data using our tested and award-winning statistical model.'