Show Notes
This episode explores recent challenges to the ideal of the university as a space for open debate and the plurality of views. What is emerging in various national contexts of higher education across Europe and in the United States? And how is the ideal of the university currently being debated? Listen also to hear what the EU’s rearmament could mean for academic freedom across Europe.
More from Democracy in Question?
In this episode of *Democracy in Question*, Nobel Peace Prize-winning journalist Maria Ressa joins Shalini Randeria to examine how digital platforms have transformed journalism and accelerated democratic decline. Drawing on her experience confronting Rodrigo Duterte’s government in the Philippines, Ressa explains how disinformation erodes facts, trust and shared reality, allowing online attacks to become real-world repression. She discusses the dangers posed by profit-driven algorithms and rapidly expanding AI systems, as well as the concentration of technological power in a handful of companies and countries. Ressa concludes with a call for regulation, collective action and public-interest technology that supports democratic communities without manipulating them.
In the first episode of season 12, recorded at the Nobel Peace Centre in Oslo, Shalini Randeria speaks with Gina Romero, UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association. Romero examines how authoritarianism, surveillance, criminalisation and funding constraints are shrinking civic space and creating a climate of fear and apathy. The conversation addresses the repression of pro-Palestine activism on university campuses, the challenges facing UN Special Rapporteurs and the double-edged role of digital technology. Finally, Romero calls for young people to be included meaningfully in policymaking rather than reduced to token participation.
In this episode of Democracy in Question, Shalini Randeria speaks with Austrian-German activist and philanthropist Marlene Engelhorn about inherited wealth, democratic legitimacy, and the concentration of power in contemporary societies. Engelhorn explains why inheriting a vast fortune made her uncomfortable, arguing that wealth acquired by birth rather than merit represents a fundamental democratic injustice. She discusses her involvement in the Tax Me Now initiative, which calls for stronger taxation of large fortunes and inheritances, and reflects on how the super-rich are socialized to view their privilege as normal while often overlooking the societal structures that sustain their wealth.
In this episode, Shalini Randeria speaks with political theorist Pratap Bhanu Mehta about the global rise of civilizational narratives — from India and China to Russia, Turkey, and parts of the U.S. They explore why governments increasingly invoke ancient civilizational identities, how this shift fuels soft authoritarianism, and what it reveals about the deeper crisis of liberal democracy. They also discuss how civilizational thinking erodes the historicity of the modern nationstate, replaces democratic negotiation with pregiven identity, and licenses new forms of exclusion and political violence. Mehta contrasts today’s nostalgic, essentialist civilizational claims with earlier Indian thinkers like Gandhi and Tagore, whose visions were futureoriented and emancipatory. A wideranging conversation on democracy, identity, and the dangerous seductions of civilizational politics.
In this episode of Democracy in Question, host Shalini Randeria speaks with political scientist Zsolt Enyedi about the landmark 2026 Hungarian elections, which ended Viktor Orbán’s 16-year rule.