INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
By Eli VieiraThe most recent edition of the Index of Academic Freedom (ILA), prepared by researchers from the University of
Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany and three other institutions, shows a stagnation of academic freedom in 152 of the 179 countries analyzed and
a decline in 22 of them, including Brazil.Only in five small countries was there an improvement.Released this month, the report compares the
document comments.On the global average, academic freedom has regressed to the levels of four decades ago, according to the study, and risks
reaching the average world level of 1960 if the decline is not halted.The analysis looks at indicators of freedom to research and teaches,
academic exchange and dissemination, educational and cultural expression, institutional autonomy, and campus integrity.The researchers
considered statistically significant changes to determine whether there was an increase or decrease.That is differences of a few percentage
most significant positive jump, rising to the top 20% academically free.In a decade, censorship at universities worldwide grew or remained
was high.Uzbekistan, for example, which is a dictatorship with 34 million inhabitants, is among the 30% least free.Besides Brazil, Uruguay,
the United Kingdom, the United States, Mexico, El Salvador, Ukraine, India, Hungary, Russia, Hong Kong, Nicaragua, and China are among those
with a significant drop.The worst scores in the Americas are Cuba and Nicaragua, countries that live under socialist dictatorships
Both are among the 10% most censorial and authoritarian, and Venezuela is among the 20% worst.The report, which detects a marked difference
tenure.All Chinese universities bow to the ideology of the Communist Party, which has representatives on every campus.The Communist
dictatorship has also pulled down Hong Kong, with unprecedented levels of interference since the return of the United Kingdom.In the United
Mexican academia is also affected by the drug cartel war.The index is calculated based on data from different sources, such as expert
surveys, reports, and UNESCO statistics.The data are aggregated into five indicators related to academic freedom: freedom to research and
teach, freedom of academic exchange and dissemination, institutional autonomy, campus integrity, and freedom of educational and cultural
expression.Each indicator is expressed in a score from 0 to 1 (which can be converted into a percentage), and the total index is the average
of the five.HOW DOES BRAZIL FAREBrazil is among the 40% most authoritarian in the latest ILA ranking.The report does not detail the country
32.4% in 2015, under the Dilma Rousseff government, to 56.2% in 2019 under Jair Bolsonaro.Since the data is not purely objective, the
is 200 years younger than the American one, implying this would be a virtue.Greenwald replied that this is not an American notion but an
Enlightenment one.HOW WAS IT DURING THE LAST 60 YEARSThe Academic Freedom Index also offers a long-term comparison from 1960
In that period, especially in the 1990s, the world has gone from an index of less than 50% freedom to a score above that.But when the
in 1960.Europe and North America enjoy high index levels, above 75%, for the entire historical period, and the Middle East and North Africa