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The early twenty-first century has seen growing concern about risks to academic freedom in America and worldwide. To understand these issues, Part I of the paper distinguishes two threats to academic freedom. Restrictions on independent scholarship can arise from outside institutions of higher education, through state laws and external regulatory bodies. They can also be due to internal cultural processes within the academy which limit viewpoint diversity. What is the relationship between these embedded dimensions? The study theorizes that legal regulations can exert a direct effect on academic freedom and also have an indirect chilling effect, through encouraging practices of self-censorship. To address these issues, Part II draws upon the Varieties of Democracy Institute (V-Dem) Academic Freedom Index (AFI) in 179 nations worldwide. Net change in the Index is estimated since 2000 and it is illustrated by selected cases, including the United States. Part III builds upon this foundation to understand subjective perceptions of self-censorship within academia. Cross-national survey data from over 100 countries is used to examine the attitudes and behavior of scholars within the discipline of political science, a field dealing with issues at the forefront of culture wars in higher education. The conclusion in Part IV summarizes the core findings and considers their broader implications. The evidence suggests that 1) growing limits on academic freedom are associated with broader processes of backsliding in liberal democracy, evident in many parts of the globe. Equally importantly, legal constraints on academic freedom encourage processes of self-censorship, thereby silencing unorthodox voices, suppressing debate, and weakening viewpoint diversity in higher education. Institutions of higher education need to resist pressures on academic freedom to fulfil their classic mission of advancing human knowledge.