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.

A converted residence at 32 East 51st Street opened January 22, 1942,[11]: 293  as a centre "where all who love liberty may meet, plan their programs and encourage one another".

Rex Stout, chairman of the Writers' War Board and representative of Freedom House, would rebut the most entertaining lies of the week.

[29] Freedom House assisted the post-Communist societies in the establishment of independent media, non-governmental think tanks, and the core institutions of electoral politics.

Freedom House states that it:[30] has vigorously opposed dictatorships in Central America and Chile, apartheid in South Africa, the suppression of the Prague Spring, the Soviet war in Afghanistan, genocide in Bosnia and Rwanda, and the brutal violation of human rights in Cuba, Burma, the People's Republic of China, and Iraq.

It has championed the rights of democratic activists, religious believers, trade unionists, journalists, and proponents of free markets.In 1967, Freedom House absorbed Books USA, which had been created several years earlier by Edward R. Murrow,[31] as a joint venture between the Peace Corps and the United States Information Service.

[32][33] 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.

Freedom House states that its board of trustees is composed of "business and labor leaders, former senior government officials, scholars, writers, and journalists".

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.

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.

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.

[45] In 2006, the Financial Times reported that Freedom House had received funding by the State Department for "clandestine activities" inside Iran.

According to the Financial Times, "Some academics, activists and those involved in the growing US business of spreading freedom and democracy are alarmed that such semi-covert activities risk damaging the public and transparent work of other organisations, and will backfire inside Iran.

Paul said "one part that we do know thus far is that the U.S. government, through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), granted millions of dollars to the Poland-America-Ukraine Cooperation Initiative (PAUCI), which is administered by the U.S.-based Freedom House.

Representatives of Cuba said that the organization is a U.S. foreign policy instrument linked to the CIA and "submitted proof of the politically motivated, interventionist activities the NGO (Freedom House) carried out against their Government".

The representative said his country had a law prohibiting the government from engaging in the activities of organizations seeking to change public policy, such as Freedom House.

[49] In August 2020, then Freedom House president Michael Abramowitz, together with the heads of four other U.S.-based democracy and human rights organizations and six U.S. Republican lawmakers, was sanctioned by the Chinese government.

Treisman cited that Freedom House ranks Russia's political rights on the same level as the United Arab Emirates, which is a federation of absolute monarchies with no element of democracy within the system.

Human rights abuses in Uzbekistan at the time included the killing of prisoners by "immersion in boiling liquid", and by strapping on a gas mask and blocking the filters, Murray reported.

[58][59] It has also been criticized for a perceived shift to an activist mindset; a 2018 article in the National Review described it as having "changed dramatically since its anti-Communist days during the Cold War" and having "become simply another progressive, anti-conservative (and overwhelmingly government-dependent) NGO".

[9] Another article criticized Freedom House for characterizing differences in policy as anti-democratic and for using what it regarded as partisan rather than objective measures of democracy.

[64] In a later report by Bollen and Pamela Paxton in 2000, they concluded that from 1972 to 1988 (a specific period they observed), there was "unambiguous evidence of judge-specific measurement errors, which are related to traits of the countries."

Mainwaring et al. wrote that Freedom House's index had "two systematic biases: scores for leftist were tainted by political considerations,[how?]

As for why the Freedom House index is most often quoted in the United States, she notes that its definition of democracy is closely aligned with US foreign policy.