Freedom House is a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C. It is best known for political advocacy surrounding issues of democracy, political freedom, and human rights. Freedom House was founded in October 1941, with Wendell Willkie and Eleanor Roosevelt serving as its first honorary chairpersons. Most of the organization's funding comes from the U.S. State Department and other government grants. It also receives funds from various semi-public and private foundations, as well as individual contributions.
The organization's annual Freedom in the World report assesses each country's degree of political freedoms and civil liberties. Another key annual report, Freedom on the Net, is Freedom House's annual survey and analysis of internet freedom around the world. While often cited by political scientists, journalists, and policymakers, the organization's democracy indices have received criticism.
Between the 1970s and 2000s, critics predominately alleged that the organization was biased towards American interests due to government funding; others criticized the organization's reliance on democratic indices created near-exclusively by Raymond Gastil. In 2018, the rankings were criticized by National Review, a conservative magazine, for its perceptions of the NGO being "anti-conservative".
History Freedom House was incorporated October 31, 1941. Among its founders were Eleanor Roosevelt, Wendell Willkie, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, Elizabeth Cutter Morrow, Dorothy Thompson, George Field, Herbert Agar, Herbert Bayard Swope, Ralph Bunche, Father George B. Ford, Roscoe Drummond and Rex Stout. Thompson and Dr. Frank Kingdon were co-chairs."Freedom's Advocate" Aaron Levinson in collaboration with William Agar. Viking Press (1965)p.27 George Field (1904–2006) was executive director of the organization until his retirement in 1967.History of the Freedom House , George Field Collection of Freedom House Files, 1933–1990 (Bulk 1941–1969): Finding Aid, Princeton University Library; Freedom House Statement on the Passing of George Field (June 1, 2006). Retrieved January 15, 2011
According to its website, Freedom House was founded in 1941. Several groups were aggressively supporting U.S. entry into World War II and in early autumn 1941, when various group activities began to overlap, the Fight for Freedom Committee began exploring a mass merger. George Field then conceived the idea of all of the groups maintaining their separate identities under one roof—Freedom House—to promote the concrete application of the principles of freedom.
Freedom House had physical form in a New York City building that represented the organization's goals. A converted residence at 32 East 51st Street opened January 22, 1942, as a centre "where all who love liberty may meet, plan their programs and encourage one another". Furnished as a gift of the Allies, the 19-room building included a broadcasting facility. In January 1944, Freedom House moved to 5 West 54th Street, a former residence that Robert Lehman lent to the organization.
Freedom House sponsored influential radio programs including 'The Voice of Freedom''' (1942–43) and Our Secret Weapon (1942–43), a CBS radio series created to counter Axis shortwave radio propaganda broadcasts. Rex Stout, chairman of the Writers' War Board and representative of Freedom House, would rebut the most entertaining lies of the week. The series was produced by Paul White, founder of CBS News.
By November 1944, Freedom House was planning to raise money to acquire a building to be named after the recently deceased Wendell L. Willkie. In 1945 an elegant building at 20 West 40th Street was purchased to house the organization. It was named the Willkie Memorial Building.
After the war, as its website states, "Freedom House took up the struggle against the other twentieth century totalitarian threat, Communism ... The organization's leadership was convinced that the spread of democracy would be the best weapon against totalitarian ideologies." Freedom House supported the Marshall Plan and the establishment of NATO. Freedom House also supported the Johnson Administration's Vietnam War policies.
Freedom House was highly critical of McCarthyism. During the 1950s and 1960s, it supported the Civil Rights Movement in the United States and its Leadership included several prominent civil rights activiststhough it was sometimes critical of civil rights leaders for their anti-war activism, Freedom House awarded Martin Luther King Jr. and Medgar Evers its annual Freedom Award in 1963. It supported Andrei Sakharov, other Soviet dissidents, and the Solidarity movement in Poland. Freedom House assisted the post-Communist societies in the establishment of independent media, non-governmental think tanks, and the core institutions of electoral politics.
The organization describes itself currently as a clear voice for democracy and freedom around the world. Freedom House states that it:
In 1967, Freedom House absorbed Books USA, which had been created several years earlier by Edward R. Murrow, as a joint venture between the Peace Corps and the United States Information Service.Kent, Allen (1985). "International Book Donation Programs". Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science: Volume 38. p. 239.
Since 2001, Freedom House has supported citizens involved in challenges to the existing regimes in Serbia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere. The organization states, "From South Africa to Jordan, Kyrgyzstan to Indonesia, Freedom House has partnered with regional activists in bolstering civil society; worked to support women's rights; sought justice for victims of torture; defended journalists and free expression advocates; and assisted those struggling to promote human rights in challenging political environments." However, alternative classifications have produced significantly different results from those of the FH for Latin American countries.
In 2025, the incoming Trump administration's foreign aid freeze under executive Order 14169 resulted in Freedom House terminating over 80% of its global programs. The organization was also forced "to lay off a large portion of its staff", and divert funds away from projects such as Freedom in the World to cover other expenses. Freedom House continues to operate, with a greater reliance on private donations.
Organization Freedom House is a nonprofit organization with approximately 300 staff members worldwide. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., it has field offices in about a dozen countries, including Ukraine, Hungary, Serbia, Jordan, Mexico, and also countries in Central Asia.
Freedom House states that its board of trustees is composed of "business and labor leaders, former senior government officials, scholars, writers, and journalists". All board members are current residents of the United States. Past members of the organization's board of directors include Kenneth Adelman, Farooq Kathwari, Azar Nafisi, Mark Palmer, P. J. O'Rourke and Lawrence Lessig, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Samuel Huntington, Mara Liasson, Otto Reich, Donald Rumsfeld, Whitney North Seymour, Paul Wolfowitz, Steve Forbes and Bayard Rustin.
Funding According to their 2022 financial statement and independent auditors' report, Freedom House reported $93,705,255 of total revenue:
Federal grants – $79,606,961 International public agencies – $1,055,339 ($3,826,812 with donor restrictions) Corporations and foundations – $1,873,651 ($5,849,073 with donor restrictions) Individual contributions – $1,487,190 Net assets released from restrictions – $2,901,964
Freedom House's total expenses in 2022 were $85,530,680.
Reports Freedom in the World
Since 1973, Freedom House publishes an annual report, Freedom in the World, which it seeks to assess the current state of civil liberties and political rights in 195 countries and 15 territories.
Freedom House's methods (around 1990) and other democracy-researchers were mentioned as examples of an expert-based evaluation by sociologist Kenneth A. Bollen, who is also an applied statistician. Bollen writes that expert-based evaluations are prone to statistical bias of an unknown direction, that is, not known either to agree with U.S. policy or to disagree with U.S. policy: "Regardless of the direction of distortions, it is highly likely that every set of indicators formed by a single author or organization contains systematic measurement error. The origin of this measure lies in the common methodology of forming measures. Selectivity of information and various traits of the judges fuse into a distinct form of bias that is likely to characterize all indicators from a common publication."Bollen, K.A. (1992) Political Rights and Political Liberties in Nations: An Evaluation of Human Rights Measures, 1950 to 1984. In: Jabine, T.B. and Pierre Claude, R. "Human Rights and Statistics". University of Pennsylvania Press.
Freedom of the Press
The Freedom of the Press index was an annual survey of media independence, published between 1980 and 2017. It assessed the degree of print, broadcast, and internet freedom throughout the world,"Freedom of the Press", web page, Freedom House. Retrieved May 29, 2011 classifying nation-states as "free", "partly-free", and "not-free" as a result.
An independent review of press freedom studies, commissioned by the Knight Foundation in 2006, found that FOP was the best in its class of Press Freedom Indicators."An Evaluation of Press Freedom Indicators", Lee B. Becker, Tudor Vlad and, Nancy Nusser, International Communication Gazette, vol.69, no.1 (February 2007), pp. 5–28
Freedom on the Net The Freedom on the Net reports provide analytical reports and numerical ratings regarding the state of Internet freedom for countries worldwide.On The Net_Full Report.pdf Freedom on the Net 2009, Freedom House, accessed 16 April 2012
Freedom on the Net's report covers a range of concepts that the other datasets do not, such as new legislation passed, but lacks the country coverage of other datasets.
Expert surveys on the internet by the likes of Freedom House and V-Dem have been found to be more prone to false positives, while the remote sensing research by Access Now and the OpenNet Initiative are more likely to be prone to false negatives.
The Millennium Challenge Corporation used the Key Internet Controls portion of the Freedom on the Net report to inform its country selection process until 2020 when this report was replaced with data on internet shutdowns from Access Now.
Reception
Academic commentary
From the 1970s until 1990, Raymond Gastil practically produced the reports on his own, though sometimes with help from his wife. Gastil himself described it in 1990 as "a loose, intuitive rating system for levels of freedom or democracy, as defined by the traditional political rights and civil liberties of the Western democracies." Regarding criticisms of his reports, he said: "generally such criticism is based on opinions about Freedom House rather than detailed examination of survey ratings".