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Podcast: New Books in American Politics
Episode: Sarah McLaughlin, "Authoritarians in the Academy: How the Internationalization of Higher Education and Borderless Censorship Threaten Free Speech" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2025)
Description: In an era of globalized education, where ideals of freedom and inquiry should thrive, an alarming trend has emerged: foreign authoritarian regimes infiltrating American academia. In Authoritarians in the Academy, Sarah McLaughlin exposes how higher education institutions, long considered bastions of free thought, are compromising their values for financial gain and global partnerships.
This groundbreaking investigation reveals the subtle yet sweeping influence of authoritarian governments. University leaders are allowing censorship to flourish on campus, putting pressure on faculty, and silencing international student voices, all in the name of appeasing foreign powers. McLaughlin exposes the troubling reality where...