In this talk, Bedirhanoglu focuses on distinguishing characteristics of rising authoritarianism in the Global South. As one of such features, anti-intellectualism underpins the systematic attack on higher education in its many forms. Universities once envisioned as the universal and cosmopolitan safe havens to guide political and societal change in the Global South are now reframed as “local” institutions to serve national interests. In particular, universities are under attack as the last bastion of democracy, since they manifest the shallowness of the localist discourses of strongmen and, thereby, stall their efforts to establish intellectual hegemony in a domestic context.

Nazan Bedirhanoglu is a Freedom Project Post-Doctoral fellow in the Political Science Department at Wellesley College.