Uploaded May 2025 | Updated September 2026, 1 day ago
Eve Darian-Smith, Distinguished Professor & Chair, Department of Global and International Studies | UC Irvine, School of Social Sciences
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.
Censorship and surveillance over what people think takes various forms. It can happen directly through monitoring what is taught in the classroom and removing or firing those who don’t comply. Especially vulnerable are adjunct lecturers who make up about 70% of all faculty instructors. Riot police on campus grounds can help enforce these directives. But surveillance can also take insidious forms that we often don’t think about, creating a sense of perceived threats that can have emotional and psychological impacts, similar to what is happening in Republican-led states such as Texas, Florida and North Carolina. As a department chair, I am receiving many emails from scholars seeking to move from red states to blue states and work in a less repressive university system. How long California’s higher education sector will be able to hold off the interference of a second Trump administration is not clear, but I am very worried.
I also examine a relatively new phenomenon of scholars and students being policed by cameras and surveillance equipment that includes monitoring people’s social media profiles. Adding to the problem is the far-right encouraging students to record classroom discussions on their phones which can lead to cyberbullying, harassment and doxing.
All these efforts have a chilling effect on research and learning. In a very material sense, people are being disciplined to self-censor and not speak up, afraid of real and imminent threats. This is what the far-right wants - to create an environment of fear where no one will challenge their antidemocratic authority to govern.
And this isn’t just a U.S. problem. Many countries around the world are also experiencing a lean toward authoritarianism. And what is emerging is a global cadre of extremist political figures who share strategies and advice on how to build their antidemocratic regimes. A clear example is the dictator Victor Orbán, president of Hungary, who gutted the country’s higher education sector, stacked it with his own loyalist appointees, and brought universities under his direct control. Trump greatly admires Orbán, and we must brace ourselves for similar legislative assaults on public education at all levels in the coming years.
Many scholars from places such as Turkey, Egypt, Syria, Cameroon, Afghanistan and now Ukraine and Gaza have been arrested, imprisoned, and sometimes tortured. Their extraordinarily brave tales are incredibly moving as they come to terms with leaving their community and living in exile, and my book works to humanize and share their experiences.
With this book, I hope to open conversations about the value of academic freedom and higher education in general. Despite being very expensive and historically exclusive, going to university is vital for training people to question their assumptions and think critically about the world. And importantly, academic freedom is central to revisioning more inclusive democratic societies that respect diverse worldviews and encourage innovative ideas that drive new jobs and solutions.
Being able to think, study, discuss and share knowledge without fear of censorship is essential for everyone, irrespective of age, gender, sex, religion, class, race or ethnicity. This is an urgent and timely message as we face a new era of unprecedented political repression.
Eve Darian-Smith, Distinguished Professor & Chair, Department of Global and International Studies | UC Irvine, School of Social Sciences
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.
Censorship and surveillance over what people think takes various forms. It can happen directly through monitoring what is taught in the classroom and removing or firing those who don’t comply. Especially vulnerable are adjunct lecturers who make up about 70% of all faculty instructors. Riot police on campus grounds can help enforce these directives. But surveillance can also take insidious forms that we often don’t think about, creating a sense of perceived threats that can have emotional and psychological impacts, similar to what is happening in Republican-led states such as Texas, Florida and North Carolina. As a department chair, I am receiving many emails from scholars seeking to move from red states to blue states and work in a less repressive university system. How long California’s higher education sector will be able to hold off the interference of a second Trump administration is not clear, but I am very worried.
I also examine a relatively new phenomenon of scholars and students being policed by cameras and surveillance equipment that includes monitoring people’s social media profiles. Adding to the problem is the far-right encouraging students to record classroom discussions on their phones which can lead to cyberbullying, harassment and doxing.
All these efforts have a chilling effect on research and learning. In a very material sense, people are being disciplined to self-censor and not speak up, afraid of real and imminent threats. This is what the far-right wants - to create an environment of fear where no one will challenge their antidemocratic authority to govern.
And this isn’t just a U.S. problem. Many countries around the world are also experiencing a lean toward authoritarianism. And what is emerging is a global cadre of extremist political figures who share strategies and advice on how to build their antidemocratic regimes. A clear example is the dictator Victor Orbán, president of Hungary, who gutted the country’s higher education sector, stacked it with his own loyalist appointees, and brought universities under his direct control. Trump greatly admires Orbán, and we must brace ourselves for similar legislative assaults on public education at all levels in the coming years.
Many scholars from places such as Turkey, Egypt, Syria, Cameroon, Afghanistan and now Ukraine and Gaza have been arrested, imprisoned, and sometimes tortured. Their extraordinarily brave tales are incredibly moving as they come to terms with leaving their community and living in exile, and my book works to humanize and share their experiences.
With this book, I hope to open conversations about the value of academic freedom and higher education in general. Despite being very expensive and historically exclusive, going to university is vital for training people to question their assumptions and think critically about the world. And importantly, academic freedom is central to revisioning more inclusive democratic societies that respect diverse worldviews and encourage innovative ideas that drive new jobs and solutions.
Being able to think, study, discuss and share knowledge without fear of censorship is essential for everyone, irrespective of age, gender, sex, religion, class, race or ethnicity. This is an urgent and timely message as we face a new era of unprecedented political repression.
