Policing Higher Education : The Antidemocratic Attack on Scholars and Why It Matters

Name: Policing Higher Education
Brand: Johns Hopkins University Press
SKU: 9781421451312
Price: 5000 KES
Availability: OutOfStock
ISBN: 9781421451312

by Eve Darian-Smith

Book Details

Format Hardback

Book Series Critical University Studies

ISBN-10 142145131X

ISBN-13 9781421451312

Publisher Johns Hopkins University Press

Imprint Johns Hopkins University Press

Country of Manufacture US

Country of Publication GB

Publication Date Jul 1st, 2025

Print length 336 Pages

Weight 474 grams

Dimensions 13.70 x 21.30 x 2.90 cms

Product Classification: Philosophy & theory of education Philosophy and theory of education Higher & further education, tertiary education Higher education, tertiary education Political structures / systems: democracy Political structures: democracy

KSh 5,000.00

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On the essential role of higher education and academic freedom in thriving democracies.

Silver Finalist of the 2025 Foreword INDIES Award, Education Category, by the FOREWORD Reviews, Winner of the 2026 Society of Professors of Education Outstanding Book Award

Higher education is facing an existential crisis. Students and staff are surveilled with cameras and facial recognition software. Police zip-tie and arrest students during protests. As universities across the United States become epicenters of ideological warfare, Policing Higher Education contextualizes these skirmishes within a broader global framework. From the contentious debates surrounding free speech and curriculum control to the denial of tenure for outspoken faculty, Eve Darian-Smith examines the myriad ways higher education has become a battleground.

Darian-Smith highlights the intersecting global trends of rising authoritarianism and declining academic freedom, revealing how the United States is part of a larger pattern seen in democracies worldwide, including in Brazil, Hungary, Germany, India, and the Philippines. This book challenges readers to view educational conflicts not merely as culture wars but as intense and connected struggles over economic, political, and social power. Drawing from extensive scholarship, Darian-Smith humanizes the impacts of these attacks on scholars and students, offering poignant stories of persecution and resilience.

With a critical eye on the historical and structural drivers of antidemocracy, this book pushes for new, meaningful conversations about academic freedom that transcend national borders. It emphasizes the vital role of universities in fostering social responsibility and combating the global drift toward authoritarianism.

Policing Higher Education brings an international perspective to contemporary debates about academic freedom. In response to attacks on both scholarship and constitutional democracy, Darian-Smith urges us to define and defend academic freedom as an ethical practice founded on social responsibility. This ambitious work will be essential reading for anyone concerned about the future of higher education in the US and around the world.
—Henry "Hank" Reichman, author of Understanding Academic Freedom

Scholars deeply desire the freedoms to learn, teach, investigate, and publish and to cooperate with each other in doing so. Unless they can practice truth and the common good in the public sphere, and unless governments everywhere respect their rights and listen to what they say, we cannot meet the climate-nature emergency and the other great challenges we face.
—Simon Marginson, University of Oxford; editor, Higher Education

Policing Higher Education gives us hope for why we should care about what is happening in our universities and for how we can build resilience and momentum for justice through difficult conversations and coalitions. A must-read for all those engaged with higher education and for those who care about the state of the world.
—Swati Parashar, University of Gothenburg

It is tempting to see Ron DeSantis''s ransacking of New College, Christopher Rufo''s attack on critical race theory, and Texas''s defunding of offices for diversity, equity, and inclusion as exceptional acts of right-wing overreach. Darian-Smith, however, provides the much-needed tools to situate these attacks as local iterations of the creeping authoritarianism and societal fascisms spreading around the world. Defenders of democracy and academic freedom must enter the existential fight ahead with the clear analysis that Darian-Smith provides.
—Isaac Kamola, Trinity College; director, Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom, American Association of University Professors

Both a passionate manifesto and fact-based academic account, Policing Higher Education places the attacks on academic freedom and autonomy in the US in a global perspective and relates them to the importance of social responsibility for higher education.
—Hans de Wit, Center for International Higher Education, Boston College

In a time of severe ideological attacks on academic freedom and on higher education in general, books such as Policing Higher Education are even more necessary. Eve Darian-Smith''s volume needs to be widely read and discussed by anyone who cares about what is happening to higher education today.
—Michael W. Apple, author of Can Education Change Society?

Policing Higher Education moves beyond the limitations of domestically focused analyses to place academic freedom in a global context. Connecting the dots between pressures on academic freedom, antidemocracy movements, and global economic powers, it gives readers indispensable tools for expanded understanding and action across disciplinary borders, institutions, and nation-states.
—Anne McCall, The College of Wooster; Scholars at Risk, United States Section

Eve Darian-Smith has produced a book of seminal importance. She offers a brilliant defense of the humanities, academic freedom, and scholars as critically engaged intellectuals. In addition, she integrates history, criticism, and a discourse of resistance and hope into essential reading for anyone concerned about the relationship between education and democracy. This book could not have appeared at a more crucial time.
—Henry Giroux, author of Race, Politics, and Pandemic Pedagogy: Education in a Time of Crisis

Surveying the growing challenges in the US, including the corporate capture of universities, increased policing activities on university grounds, and the banning of so-called controversial topics, Darian-Smith makes a compelling case for society to defend the public mission of universities. This book shows a way forward.
—Salvador Herencia-Carrasco, University of Ottawa; Coalition for Academic Freedom in the Americas

Eve Darian-Smith has produced a fresh work of vital importance for those who care about American and global democracy. This is a must-read book not only for new and seasoned scholars alike but for anyone concerned about backsliding democracies. What''s especially original is the manner in which Darian-Smith foregrounds the link between rising antidemocracy and recent declines in academic freedom. The best part is that she provides a road map for fighting back!
—Marc Spooner, coeditor of the forthcoming What Are Universities For? Challenges and Re-imaginings

Eve Darian-Smith has written a book for our times. Policing Higher Education provides a primer on our driving issues today: free expression and academic freedom, the grounds of knowledge making, and the demands of critical social engagement in a world of interactively spiraling authoritarianism and repression. A probing analysis to think with.
—David Theo Goldberg, University of California Irvine, author of The War on Critical Race Theory: Or, the Remaking of Racism

Get Policing Higher Education by Eve Darian-Smith at the best price and quality guaranteed only at Werezi Africa's largest book ecommerce store. The book was published by Johns Hopkins University Press and it has 336 pages.