Policing Higher Education: The Antidemocratic Attack on Scholars and Why It Matters (Johns Hopkins University Press) by Eve Darian-Smith, UC Irvine global and international studies and law Distinguished Professor, has been named by Forbes as one of the ten best higher education books of 2025. The title by Darian-Smith, who also chairs the global and international studies department, explores on-going and increasing threats to academic freedom at home and abroad. Using a global framework to examine instances of arrests, surveillance, curriculum control, denial of tenure, and more, she exposes intense and connected struggles over economic, political, and social power at the core of this international crisis.

The book, notes Forbes, "is a timely volume that discusses the antidemocratic forces increasingly threatening higher education on a global scale.

“While the author…focuses on how these influences are playing out in the United States, she extends her analysis to the extremist politics threatening academic freedom in other democracies, an outcome she claims is ‘emblematic of a destabilized world order.’ Whether it’s the persecution of individual scholars or attacks on university independence, Darian-Smith sees the antidemocratic drift against higher education as part of a larger strategy by political leaders to ‘maintain their economic, political and social dominance.’ And she believes it’s the responsibility of higher education to push back and re-establish ‘a social appreciation for professional scholarship and scientific expertise.’ This is a passionately written book, recommended highly for individuals who care about the future of the academy.”

Hear more from Darian-Smith in our Experts On series, and check out her author Q&A where she contextualizes these challenges alongside a global trend toward authoritarianism, urging a reexamination of the critical role universities play in safeguarding democracy.