Populist Attacks on Academic Freedom: How Populist Leadership Erodes Academic Freedom in Liberal and Electoral Democracies

Abstract Governments are increasingly targeting academic institutions such as the Central European University in Hungary, Boğaziçi University in Turkey, or CIDE in Mexico. These attacks represent the most visible symptoms of the deterioration of academic freedom. What is the cause of this trend? We argue that populism, being a thin ideology that polarizes the public sphere into virtuous citizens and a corrupt elite while emphasizing the will of the people, has made universities and academics natural targets for leaders who seek to impose a narrative in which only they possess the truth and represent the will of the people. Universities are characterized not only by a pluralism of ideas but also possess an elitist character: these attributes are in direct conflict with the values and vision of populist leaders. To support this argument, we present a global statistical analysis correlating the degree of populism exhibited by executive leaders with the extent of academic freedoms between 2000 and 2021, based on data from the Global Populism Database and V-Dem, and we illustrate our arguments with an in-depth analysis of the case of CIDE in Mexico.