The Road to Censorship: Socialism's Chilling Effect on Academic Freedom

By Gabriel Benzecry, Nicholas Reinarts & Daniel J. Smith.

"Abstract

Does state ownership and control of the economy affect academic freedom? Capitalism may directly, through the adoption of capitalist accounting or performance metrics, or indirectly, through external funding and labor markets, undermine academic freedom. Socialism, however, by restricting the establishment of private universities and think tanks, the ability of scholars to procure external funding, and avenues for public intellectualism could lead to the suppression of academic freedom due to the increasing reliance of institutions and scholars on the state. We examine the relationship between academic freedom and state ownership of the economy using the Academic Freedom Index, as well as its five individual measures, plus four additional measures of the academic environment of a country and state ownership of the economy from the Varieties of Democracy Project. We use annualized data going back, in some cases, to 1900 for 169 to 183 countries, depending on the measure of academic freedom. We find that socialism, defined as state ownership of the economy, is historically associated with the suppression of academic freedom."