Since President Donald Trump took office for the second time, many researchers across academic disciplines have had their funding cut because of their purported ideological bias. These funding cuts were further exacerbated by the extensive 2025 government shutdown.
As a team of sociologists studying universities, higher education policy and administration, academic freedom and science production, we recognized these cuts as part of a recent global trend of weakened academic freedom. Since the mid-2000s, political attacks on higher education have increased in many countries. Consequently, acad