“Higher education is under attack. Around the world, scholars, students, and universities are facing mounting threats to academic freedom via arrests, surveillance, curriculum control, denial of tenure, and more. I’m Eve Darian-Smith, professor of global and international studies and law at UC Irvine, and my new book, Policing Higher Education: The Antidemocratic Attack on Scholars and Why It Matters, unpacks this growing crisis and its deep connections to the rise of authoritarianism.

Specifically, I look at two interconnected global trends – rising antidemocracy and declining academic freedom. The effects here in the U.S. can already be seen in the Trump administration’s work to limit federal funding for research, denounce climate science and scholarly expertise, and aggressively police what can be researched and discussed in classrooms. And efforts are now underway to shut down the Department of Education. What is happening in the U.S. needs to be understood as part of a global assault on the censoring of knowledge production.”

 

 

• More from Darian-Smith in our Faculty Bookshelf Q&A series.
• Attend Darian-Smith’s book launch event hosted online by AAUP’s Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom on Tuesday, May 13, 3:00 p.m. PDT. Event will feature a live Q&A with the author. Learn more and register online.