After a small period of improvement between 2011 and mid-2013, academic freedom in Egypt has deteriorated since the military coup in June 2013. Most of the gravest violations of academic freedom – such as violent crackdowns on students protesting against the coup and arrests of scholars critical of the military regime – occurred between mid-2013 and mid-2014. These events are also reflected in Egypt’s Academic Freedom Index (AFi) scores, as compiled by the V-Dem Institute.1
After rising from 0.26 in 2011 to 0.31 in 20122 (indicating an improvement in academic freedom due to tendencies toward liberalization after President Mubarak was ousted), Egypt’s AFi score fell dramatically – from 0.31 in 2012 to 0.09 in 2013 – due to the violent crackdowns on student protests as well as to increasing political control of the academic sector. Although student protests have died down and the scale of violent repression has consequently also abated since 2014, the situation in recent years has not improved with regard to any other facet of academic freedom. The martial law in place since 2017 has entailed the expansion of military jurisdiction to events on and around campuses. Furthermore, reinstated presidential prerogatives and regular intrusions into universities by the security services have crippled the freedom to research and teach, institutional autonomy, campus integrity, and the opportunity for international academic exchange. In line with this situation, Egypt’s 2016 AFi score reached its lowest point since World War II: 0.05. It has remained at a similarly low level since then. For comparison, the global average AFi score for the same period is between 0.62 and 0.63. As the following case study shows, the AFi rightly categorizes Egypt as one of the world’s lowest-scoring countries with respect to academic freedom.
After the initial, overtly repressive response to student mobilization and political activity on campus – especially in Cairo – in the first two years after the 2013 military coup, the Al-
Sisi regime has adopted a subtler way of setting the boundaries of academic freedom in Egypt since 2015, relying mostly on legal and bureaucratic measures as means of control.