This episode of our special series in partnership with the Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom  zooms out from the “Trump versus Harvard” headlines to situate attacks on US higher education institutions in a transnational context. We ask an interdisciplinary panel of scholars studying different parts of the world to help us set aside American exceptionalist frameworks and understand what is happening in the US in broader geographical, historical, and political contexts. 

Our guests:
Audrey Truschke is Professor of South Asian History at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey. For the last three years, she served as chair of the Rutgers Faculty and Graduate Student Union Academic Freedom Committee. Her latest book, India: 5,000 Years of History on the Subcontinent was published earlier this month (June 2025).
Fatima El-Tayeb is Professor of Ethnicity, Race & Migration and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Yale University. Her research interests include Black Europe, comparative diaspora studies, queer of color critique, critical Muslim studies, decolonial theory, transnational feminisms, visual culture studies, race and technology, and critical European studies. The English translation of her book Un-German: Racialized Otherness in Post Cold-War Europe comes out this month (June 2025).
Eve Darian-Smith is a Distinguished Professor and chair of the Department of Global and International Studies at the University of California, Irvine as well as a fellow at the Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom. She is an interdisciplinary scholar trained in law, history, and anthropology. Her book Policing the Mind: The Antidemocratic Attack on Scholars and Why It Matters has just been published by Johns Hopkins University Press in May, 2025. 

Links to sources mentioned in the conversation: 

• “Fighting on Three Fronts” by Hank Reichmann
• Legal and Academic Resources for Academic Freedom and On-Campus Protests - Rutgers AAUP-AFT
• Policing Higher Education by Eve Darian-Smith 
• Un/German by Fatima El-Tayeb Translated by Elisabeth Lauffer
• India: 5,000 Years of History on the Subcontinent by Audrey Truschke 

Further reading: 

• Academic Freedom in India in 6 tables— IAFN 
• Punched, choked, kicked: German police crack down on student protests | Israel-Palestine conflict News | Al Jazeera
• Peace Petition Scholars, Turkey –Scholars at Risk   
• Hungary broke EU law by forcing out university, says European Court
• Discourse on Colonialism by Aime Cesaire