Political acts bring changes to people’s lives. Oftentimes, these changes are accentuated by their temporal aspects: how unforeseen and surprising they were, the pace of change, and how long the altered reality lasts. In contrast, status quo, or no change, rarely makes headline news. Far fewer academic conferences and scholarly volumes are inspired by stagnation than those that chronicle transformation. This is true unless that stagnation is cast as a Golden Age, whether imagined in the past or the future.

Measuring democracy, free speech, or academic freedom requires established tools that can conceptualize and track changes in highly complex sociocultural processes. Implementing legitimate tools is no easy task. Consider the challenge of comparing academic freedom in two countries. In one country, the situation may involve a closed university, a dozen dismissed professors, and a slashed teacher training budget. In the other, it might be government harassment of a university president and a bill curbing university autonomy. Yet, academic and policy measures make it possible to understand and compare such divergent circumstances.

Annual reports on academic freedom, free speech, or democracy typically highlight the most dramatic developments of the year. Most often, these are worrying accounts of backsliding. Encouraging examples of progress toward more democratic governance, freer speech, or more independent academia are rarely highlighted. One pattern is clear: countries where “not much has changed in the past five years,” even if they rank poorly in freedom indices, rarely make it into the headlines of these annual reports.

For example, V-Dem’s 2025 Academic Freedom Index explores the link between academic freedom and the type of government in power—whether democratic or what they term “anti-pluralist” (authoritarian). Argentina and the US show significant declines, while Poland demonstrates a surprising improvement. The 2024 Reporters Without Borders report includes a ranking of “The Best and the Worst” performers on its press freedom scale while also spotlighting countries where lack of press freedom threatens fair elections.

Inattention to stagnation is a notable blind spot in freedom-measuring tools. This is perhaps most obvious in the 2025 Freedom House report, which includes a retrospective chart “19 Years of Decline in Global Freedom.” The graphic lists countries where freedom has declined or improved over the past two decades. However, there is a small note beneath the graph stating: “Countries whose scores were unchanged are not included in this comparison.” To be fair, one interactive section “The Worst of the Worst,” does allow readers to explore stagnation in some countries, though the reference is subtle.

In short, the creators of freedom indices seem not to heed musician Jah Wobble’s wry observation: “No change is sexy.” Apparently, it is change that sparks interest. Stagnation does not. However, the focus on change misses the nuances of stagnation, what it means in a particular context and, perhaps more important, the profound effects of sustained limits/attacks on academic freedom on those living and working in those conditions.

Stagnation as Survival

Imagine you are a journalist, activist, artist, or university educator working on sensitive issues—human rights, free press, nationalism, corruption, social inequality, racism, gender, the list goes on. One morning, you look in the mirror and reflect on the changes to your face over the last 10 years. At the same time, you realize that, in your work and professional field, nothing significant has changed. Only your thoughts, which have become increasingly pessimistic, have shifted.

In some countries, a state of stagnation in academic freedom is the best-case scenario for the existing circumstances. Working in countries where academic freedom is stagnating can indeed be more rewarding than in countries sliding quickly downward on the Academic Freedom Index list. What measures of academic freedom rarely consider is the time aspect of the human condition in stagnation.

As I noted in a recent lecture:

Reports on at-risk scholars frequently use terms such as silence, silencing, chilling effect, suffocation, estrangement, chokehold, intimidation, and asphyxiation—all indicators of the profound psychological toll faced by these scholars.

For many academics today, in many places, silence is not a choice—it is a necessity. But silence and voice are not necessarily binary. Sociologist Eviatar Zerubavel’s treatise on silence shows that in the “king is naked” folk tales, such as “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” both silence and voice are processes rather than discrete actions. There are covenants of silence—when not only silence dominates but also its very existence is ignored. There are also covenants of voice—when acknowledging each other’s silence is the first step toward change.

Contrary to economist Albert Hirschman’s classic triad—exit, voice, loyalty—there is a creative, disruptive space between voice and loyalty: the shared, silenced experience. When someone knows their silence is witnessed, and perhaps vice versa, that silence becomes something else. It is no longer dead but becomes a space of shared sounds of silence.

Why Is This Relevant in the US Today?

Observers agree that declining academic freedom in the US has brought surprisingly high levels of silence and a low level of resistance against government-driven changes. There is debate over whether this muted response stems from academia’s industrial structure—billion-dollar state and corporate entanglements—or from the sociopolitical embeddedness of university leadership. Or perhaps what we’ve seen since late 2024 is a tactical silence, a form of waiting.

So, the update to Hirschman’s model is that multiple forms of silence can coexist. Sometimes, voice is a disguised form of silence. And silence itself can be a form of protest.

The Moral of the Story

It’s surprisingly simple. If there is something worth speaking out about and you delay, be aware that it can become a habit. And if others witness your silence, it can become contagious. Rapid changes can settle into new norms. If you’re forced into silence, make sure someone witnesses it so that your silence becomes a part of history.

Ferenc Hammer is a university educator and researcher from Hungary. Much of his recent work is with MESH – Academia Without Borders, an initiative focused on academic freedom.

Resilience & Resistance is a Charles F. Kettering Foundation blog series that features the insights of thought leaders and practitioners who are working to expand and support inclusive democracies around the globe. Direct any queries to globalteam@kettering.org.