The landmark case of “Gideon v. Wainwright” (1963) ensured the right of criminal defendants across the country to the effective assistance of counsel, but the overwhelming consensus is that the promise of “Gideon” has not been kept. Although there are significant differences in the delivery of indigent defense services across the country, there are four general reasons for the failure of “Gideon” that obtain across every jurisdiction and collectively cover much of the explanatory terrain.

This essay examines why academic freedom has become a defining issue in the geostrategic competition between liberal democracies and their authoritarian challengers. The growing strategic rivalry between the United States and China is threatening to disrupt, even destroy, academic interchange between liberal and authoritarian societies. At the same time, populist right-wing leaders in Western democracies are attacking university autonomy, as part of a strategy of authoritarian consolidation. Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orbán has pursued an authoritarian takeover of his country’s higher-education system while seeking new partnerships with Chinese institutions. Through this essay, I seek to explain why academic freedom faces unprecedented challenges, both within liberal democracies and from authoritarian competitors.

This report addresses two issues central to the vitality of America's research enterprise: 1) the support of early-career investigators; and 2) the encouragement of high-risk, high-reward research.