TALK | Eve Darian-Smith, UC Irvine

Intersecting Global Trends: Anti-Democracy and Anti-Environmentalism

Public Lecture with Eve Darian-Smith, Professor and Chair of Global Studies & International Studies at the University of California, Irvine

  • Friday, May 5th, 2023 | 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm
  • Allen Auditorium, Allen Library

  • Free and open to the public

The talk explores the connections between a global rise of antidemocratic politics and the escalation of climate change, manifested through catastrophic wildfires. As political leaders and big business work together in the pursuit of profits and power, anti-environmental policies have become essential political tools enabling the rise of extreme right governments. Exploring this process through fires in Australia, Brazil and California in recent years, she argues that wildfires facilitated by far-right leaders connect the political erosion of liberal democracy with the corrosion of the environment, in turn threatening the collective future of humanity.

Portrait of Professor and Chair of Global Studies & International Studies at the University of California, Irvine. Book Cover: Orange Text over black and white image of barren landscape. Title reads "Global Burning: Rising Antidemocracy and the Climate Crisis" by Eve Darian-Smith

Eve Darian-Smith is a Professor and Chair of Global Studies & International Studies at the University of California, Irvine. She is an interdisciplinary scholar interested in issues of postcolonialism, human rights, legal pluralism and democracy. She is an award-winning author and teacher and has published widely including 13 books and edited volumes: Laws and Societies in Global Contexts (2013), Routledge Handbook of Law and Society (2021), and most recently Global Burning: Rising Antidemocracy and the Climate Crisis (2022) which won the Betty and Alfred McClung Lee Book Award from the Association of Humanist Sociology.

This event is presented by the UW Center for Global Studies, Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, and the UW Latin American and Caribbean Studies program.

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To request disability accommodation contact the Disability Services Office at least ten days in advance at: (206) 543-6450/V, (206) 543-6452/TTY, (206) 685-7264 (FAX), or dso@u.washington.edu.