The University in Crisis: Defending Academic Freedom under Authoritarianism

Gather your allies. “Pull together families, employers, unions, companies, the whole network of people and institutions beyond your campus who understand that the universities of America are critical to everything that is good about the country: its commitment to freedom, its devotion to excellence, its leadership in science and medicine.” – wrote Michael Ignatieff, former Canadian politician and rector of the Central European University (CEU) in his article How a University Fights an Authoritarian Regime. However, even he understands that when universities are faced with political purges, threatened with exile and on the lifeline, those that survive may be weakened, “frightened shadows of their former selves.” 

Academic freedom worldwide is on the margins. In 2019, the so-called Lex CEU law expelled the Central European University from Budapest to Vienna. The law required the US-accredited institution to operate a campus in its ‘home’ country, an impossible mission for CEU, and it also required that all international institutions be subject to an intergovernmental agreement where both governments would need to give their consent to things such as the curriculum the university teaches or admission policies. Under this mounting pressure, CEU packed up and moved to Vienna. Yet, in Vienna CEU became more elite, less accessible to local students, and geographically cut off from the very region it once served. In other words, the institution was saved, but at the cost of its mission being fractured. 

My research on four universities operating under or adjacent to illiberal regimes—CEU, the European University at St. Petersburg (Russia), the Higher School of Economics (Russia), and Nazarbayev University (Kazakhstan), —reveals a troubling pattern. When academic freedom is under siege, relocation, Western partnerships, or legal battles may help a university stay alive. But these solutions often leave academic communities scattered, faculty demoralized, and access inequitable. They may win the battle for survival but lose sight of the university’s broader purpose. This raises an uncomfortable question: what if the way we currently defend academic freedom is part of the problem?

Ignatieff in his article How a University Fights an Authoritarian Regime presents the case for CEU as many populist leaders in the U.S. are becoming inspired by Victor Orban’s tactics against higher education. He laments that for 25 years, CEU cherished the concept of the “ivory tower” earning its reputation as a global institution. He also underscores that when Lex CEU was introduced, 80,000 Budapest citizens took up to protest, holding signs that said “I Stand with CEU”  and chanting “Free Universities in a Free Society.” Moreover, CEU secured a legal victory from the European Court of Justice which ruled that Orban’s amendment to the higher education law is is contrary to the GATS (General Agreement on Trade in Services of the WTO), the Lisbon Treaty, the Services Directive 2006/123, and the Charter of Fundamental Rights. However, even with these victories, CEU inevitably was forced to relocate and become a university in exile. Hence, outside lifelines such as legal aid, international funding and emergency relocation do not restore institutional roots and cannot solve the crisis of academic freedom.

In Russia, Dubrovsky and Kaczmarska, through four case studies trace how successful the so-called “pockets of effectiveness” – institutions within authoritarian rule and a generally poorly performing public sector that deliver public goods effectively, have been, however warn that in a country that has long regarded higher education as a modernisation project, neither internalization nor modernisation can guarantee a long term, comprehensive protection of academic freedom. They particularly take HSE and EUSP as case studies and tell us their stories respectively. HSE, created in the 1990s by a group of progressive scholars at Moscow State University to respond to the serious underdevelopment of the social sciences, particularly economics, has for a long time secured its autonomy, particularly because of its collaboration with the Russian authorities. This collaboration between the state and the university started shrinking in 2014 when conflicts started to erupt.

Specifically, the case of Professor Gasan Guseinov who was accused of being a Russophobe for posting a post on Facebook criticizing the Russian language later led to a de facto ban for students and academic staff mentioning their affiliation with HSE when discussing controversial, political issues. In 2020, dozens of faculty were expelled with many seeing this as a politically motivated action. These faculty then created the Free University, an online platform offering more than seventy courses for students hungry to learn without censorship. Even this was short lived, as the university was then declared an “undesired” organization by the Russian government, meaning that any affiliation with it could lead to persecution. In 2021, Yaroslav Kuzminov, the then rector of HSE resigned and this sparked a wave of speculation for his motives, with many labeling his resignation as a sign that HSE cannot fight the authorities any longer.

The European University in Saint Petersburg, on the other side created in 1994, first was closed in 2007 allegedly due to fire regulations and inspections; however many have linked this to a 700,000 euros grant the university received from the European Commission to conduct an election monitoring research project. In 2016, EUSP had its license revoked and was forced to shut down, leaving many students stranded mid-degree. While the official reasons were vague, widespread speculation linked the closure to the university’s gender studies program. After a two-year suspension, EUSP regained its license in 2018 and its accreditation in 2019. Within this context, it is safe to say that a generation of scholars was effectively erased from public life as some were jailed, detained, exiled and started to seek positions abroad.

Chankseliani and Belkina in their article Academic Exodus from Russia: Unraveling the Crisis posit that in 2022, 30% of ORCID registered scientists moved abroad from Russia. They warn that this exodus triggered by the Russian invasion in Ukraine has both immediate and far-reaching implications. The first being disruptions in ongoing research projects, severed international collaborations, and a climate of uncertainty with academic circles. Moreover, they warn that “the quality of higher education in Russia is likely to deteriorate…potentially setting back its academic endeavours for years, if not decades.” 

In Kazakhstan, Nazarbayev University (NU) offers a seemingly more stable model. Nurmanbetova highlights the limits of Kazakhstan’s autonomy reforms, showing how efforts to model university governance on Western frameworks such as the Bologna Process and EUA autonomy scorecards have produced only superficial gains in academic freedom. She argues that formal autonomy often masks continued state control, with university leadership lacking real decision-making power and faculty sidelined in governance processes. These externally driven reforms, while ensuring institutional survival and global legitimacy, have fragmented academic communities, demoralized educators, and reinforced inequalities in access particularly as elite institutions thrive while others are neglected.

So what is the alternative for these four institutions? And what can other universities learn from their mistakes? 

First, academic freedom is not just the absence of censorship. It is the presence of strong, accountable institutions, anchored in local communities, governed by faculty, and buffered against both political coercion and market logic. To safeguard that kind of freedom, we must look beyond crisis response. Three shifts in thinking are needed: 1) We must fund grassroot initiatives to strengthen institutional governance, creating support networks for local faculty, and developing regionally grounded curricula that speak to both local realities and global standards; 2) We must stay close to the communities universities are meant to serve, even if it makes them less “global” in appearance. A truly free university is not just a publishing house for Western journals—it is a forum where students can question power, wherever it lies. 3) We must redefine what “excellence” means. We need metrics that reflect universities’ social responsibilities such as equity, transparency, academic independence, not just their economic input. The more universities chase excellence defined by rankings, citations, or GDP impact, the more vulnerable they become to state and market capture.

Some might argue that in moments of acute political repression, survival must take precedence over ideal governance. From this view, relocation, international partnerships, and global rankings offer the best hope for maintaining a university’s operations, securing funding, and protecting individual scholars. After all, Western validation can create a protective spotlight and offer exiled academics a platform they otherwise wouldn’t have. Others may contend that emphasizing local embeddedness or grassroots governance risks compromising academic standards or insulating institutions from much-needed external accountability. But while these strategies may offer short-term protection, they can also entrench dependencies and strip universities of their public mission. A university that is only accountable to donors or distant international networks may survive in form, but not in spirit. Academic freedom is not just freedom from the state—it is also freedom to serve, to self-govern, and to remain rooted in the communities where knowledge is most needed. Without structural investment in that vision, even rescued institutions risk becoming hollow shells of academic excellence—prestigious, but politically and socially disconnected.

As John Aubrey Douglass argues in his book Neo‑nationalism and Universities: Populists, Autocrats, and the Future of Higher Education, neo-nationalist regimes have turned universities into political targets, but the real threat may lie in how universities respond. The cases of CEU, HSE, EUSP, and NU reveal that while legal victories and Western partnerships can preserve institutions, they often come at the cost of community, access, and mission. Survival alone is not enough. If academic freedom is to endure, universities must reinvest in local governance, community ties, and new definitions of excellence rooted in equity and independence. Otherwise, we risk saving the institution but losing its soul.

Works Cited:

Chankseliani, Maia, and Elizaveta Belkina. “Academic Exodus from Russia: Unraveling the Crisis.” Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education, vol. 16, no. 3, 2024, pp. 97–105. ERIC, https://doi.org/10.32674/jcihe.v16i3.6304. Accessed 5 Aug. 2025.

Douglass, John Aubrey. Neo‑Nationalism and Universities: Populists, Autocrats, and the Future of Higher Education. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021.

Ignatieff, Michael. “How a University Fights an Authoritarian Regime: Viktor Orban Came for Me. Donald Trump Is Coming for You. Here’s What to Do.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, 14 Mar. 2025, www.chronicle.com/article/how-a-university-fights-an-authoritarian-regime. Accessed 5 Aug. 2025.

Kaczmarska, Kasia, and Dmitry Dubrovsky. “Authoritarian Modernisation and Academic Freedom: The Contradictions of Internationalisation and ‘Pockets of Effectiveness’ in Russian Higher Education.” Research Explorer Edinburgh, University of Edinburgh, n.d., https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/en/publications/authoritarian-modernisation-and-academic-freedom-the-contradictio. Accessed 19 July 2025.

Nurmanbetov, D. N. “Autonomy of Universities in Kazakhstan and Academic Freedom: Implementation Problems and Ways of Development.” Bulletin of the L. N. Gumilyov Eurasian National University, Pedagogy Psychology Sociology Series, vol. 132, no. 3, 2020, pp. 105–111. ResearchGate, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/350046048_Autonomy_of_universities_in_Kazakhstan_and_academic_freedom_Implementation_problems_and_ways_of_development. Accessed 5 Aug. 2025.