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Online Thumbnail Credits: National Gallery of Art, Open Access Collection

— Written by The Tatler and The Critic

Throughout the period in which science has been a state-sponsored activity conducted in the public interest, scientists have, at times, clashed with the administrators responsible for governing their work. Readers will remember The March for Science in 2017 – organized in response to policies implemented during Donald Trump’s first presidency. It was attended by more than 1 million people globally, comfortably making it the largest in a decades long history of scientific protest. 

Such disagreements are, at their core, concerned with academic freedom; in today’s climate, such debates are inevitably deeply politicized. During the Trump Era particularly, academic freedom has become an ideological battleground, with both sides accusing the other of restricting academic freedom. In April 2025, the US government accused medical journals of political bias and of impeding free speech through the suppression of alternative viewpoints. At the same time, in a document titled “Cuts to Woke Programs," the Trump administration announced funding cuts to the National Science Foundation, citing the agency’s support for DEI initiatives and climate change research. In response, the scientific community has declared the government's attempts to influence what can be studied and published an unprecedented attack on academic freedom. 

Against this backdrop, academic freedom has come to be discussed primarily in a politicised context. Such politicisation of discussions on academic freedom, however, is unproductive for two reasons.  

First, it concerns the way in which academic freedom functions within political discourse itself. In an era characterised by intense public polarisation, academic freedom is often instrumentalised for political purposes. It is used as a symbolic tool to mobilise public opinion or rally particular constituencies. In this context, rather than enabling any sustained reflection about the conditions of scholarly inquiry, the issue is absorbed into the dynamics of political mobilisation. 

Second, and relatedly, approaching academic freedom only through a political lens places the discussion within the short time horizons of electoral politics. Governments change, political priorities and narratives shift, and with them issues that dominate public attention. Matters of academic freedom, however, concern something a lot more enduring. How academic work is governed, organised, and pursued is not an issue that emerges and disappears with the lifespan of a single administration. 

For these reasons, if we are to have meaningful discussions about academic freedom, it may actually be useful to step outside the immediate political debates in which it is so often embroiled. In this essay, we therefore want to engage with academic freedom by moving beyond the immediate politicised framing, examining it instead in relation to the organisation of academic work and the governance of scholarly communities.