Bolt-holes and breathing spaces in the system: On forms of academic resistance (or, can the university be a site of utopian possibility?)

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Notes

The characterization of the corporate university outlined here is drawn from, inter alia, Barcan (2013); Bousquet (2008); Brown (2011); Brown and Carasso (2013); Busch (2017); Collini (2012; 2017); Couldry (2011); Di Leo (2013); Donoghue (2008); Dyer-Witherford (2007); Edu-Factory (2009); Giroux (2011, 2014a); Goodman (2015); Halffman and Radder (2015); Jovanovic (2017); Lustig (2005); Nussbaum (2010); Rustin (2016); Sauntson and Morrish (2011); Seybold (2008); Slaughter and Rhoades (2010), Tuchman (2009); Washburn (2005); Williams (2011).

The characterization of the imperial university outlined here is drawn from, inter alia, Carey (2016); Chatterjee and Sunaina (2014); Docherty (2015); Falcon et al. (2014); Giroux (2007); Hamer and Lang (2015); Harney and Moten (2013); Melamed (2016); Meyerhoff and Noterman (2017); Morrison (2016); Mullen (2014); Oparah (2014); Prashad (2014); Reay (2011); Schwarz-WeinStein (2015); Smeltzer and Hearn (2015); Smith, Dyke and Hermes (2013); Undercommoning Collective (2016); Williams (2016); Young (2016).

Examples of the militarization of the academy are generally drawn from the United States (e.g., Giroux 2007; Chatterjee and Sunaina 2014). To provide a U.K. example, between 2010–2015 the University of Sheffield received nearly £30 million from companies involved in the arms trade—including Boeing and BAE systems, the world’s second and third largest arms manufacturers (Forge Press 2015). In a real signal of the convergence between academic, industrial and military strategic priorities, recent press releases celebrate how the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre—the University’s flagship development—won an award for a robotics innovation that will save BAE Systems millions of pounds over coming years in the costs of producing its military aircraft (AMRC 2017; Machinery Market 2017). Official publicity for The Advanced Manufacturing Park, within which the AMRC is located, proudly declares that “technology developed at the AMP is already being used within … the next generation of military … aircraft” (Creative Sheffield 2016). There is nothing extraordinary about this. As Lubin notes, the withdrawal of state funding means that universities “seek out military relationships in order to substitute for declining public investment” (Lubin 2015, 122). What is more interesting is the University of Sheffield’s unabashed response when faced with student protest against “arms manufacturers bankrolling universities” (Forge Press 2015). The response reads, “We will continue to develop our partnership with these companies in order to position the University of Sheffield as a research-led university in the global environment” (Forge Press 2015). The university will continue to develop lucrative and mutually beneficial research partnerships with the world’s largest arms manufacturers to enhance its global corporate branding. Surely a statement that epitomizes the brave new world of the academic-military-industrial complex.

The example of Steven Salaita is a clear case in point. When, in August 2014, the faculty decision to hire Salaita at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign was overturned by Chancellor Phyllis Wise and the board of trustees, this highlighted the insidious process of silencing and repression inscribed within the corporate university. Wise and the trustees were responding to pressure from private funders who took issue with Salaita’s critique of an Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip (Goodman 2015, Hamer and Lang 2015). As Goodman notes, “The need to compete for private funding allows corporations to influence academic agendas and hiring, where keeping rich donors content takes precedence over issues like racial justice, free deliberation, and the right to opinion” (Goodman 2015, 339).

To give an example from the United Kingdom, in January 2014 Professor Thomas Docherty was suspended from the University of Warwick for 9 months. Docherty has been an outspoken critic of the marketization of higher education and of the authoritarian management and exploitative employment practices adopted by his own university (Grogan 2015; Morgan 2015). Warwick denies, however, that his suspension was in any way connected to these criticisms. Rather, he was suspended for giving off “negative vibes” that undermined the authority of the former head of his department. The case against him included “inappropriate sighing,” “making ironic comments” and “projecting negative body language” (Gardner 2014). A blog post, written at the time (then hastily withdrawn) by a senior associate of the solicitors hired to prepare the case against Docherty, helps make (terrifying) sense of this. It stated that universities “may encounter high performing employees, who, although academically brilliant, have the potential to damage their employer’s brand. This could be through outspoken opinion or general insubordination. Irrespective of how potentially valuable these employees may be to their institutions, the reality is that, in consistently accepting unacceptable behavior, institutions may be setting dangerous precedents to other employees that such conduct will be accommodated. From a risk perspective, it is also much harder to justify a dismissal, or other sanction, if similar conduct has gone unpunished before” (cited in Inglis 2014, 34).

To be fair, Neary is acutely aware that Student-as-Producer was “recuperated … denying the subversive intent out of which it originated” (Neary 2016, 92). Feeling increasingly constrained by the “necro-neoliberalism of higher education,” he took the decision “to move outside the university” and help establish the Social Science Centre in Lincoln, a co-operative higher education project run by academics and students (Neary 2016, 90, 92). The recent growth in co-operative educational projects in the U.K. is a promising development.

See Note 5. Docherty himself talks of “the clandestine university” existing behind the curtains of the official university (2015, 120), and of “clandestine modes of underground co-operation” (2016, 71) characterized by “being together” and “commonly sharing,” taking time to think, listen, and talk to each other in the spirit of affinity and connectedness (2015, 66, 101). Unlike Harney and Moten, however, Docherty clings onto the conviction that the university can be saved. The university is a social good with a responsibility to help shape the world (2015, 44). Like other British scholars (Collini 2012, 2017; Barnett 2013), the university needs simply to rediscover and reclaim its social role (Docherty 2016, 109).

The occupation is a complex and contested space, and, of course, not all occupations or occupiers have communization as a goal. For many/most, the occupation has more modest demands (localized institutional concessions, for example; Kumar 2011). For an overview of the fractious debates in California, see Anon (2010a). For the United Kingdom, see the tense exchanges within the Leeds occupation (https://reallyopenuniversity.wordpress.com/). The letter from Venturini is especially interesting, explaining his leaving the occupation because it had lost its utopian spirit. For Venturini (2010): “An occupation is an experiment, an exploration of the social relations that should be in a future world.” This is the understanding of “occupation” discussed here—occupation as a potentially “utopian” practice, strategy, and experience.

This article was written long before the UCU (University and College Union) industrial action commenced in the U.K. The proofs were read (on a non-strike day) in the midst of the most prolonged period of strike action in UK higher education history. The extent to which this marks a decisive shift in the nature of, and scope for, resistance within, against and beyond the university is as yet unclear. On the one hand, the academic community, well noted for its general quiescence, has come together in a display of solidarity that has surprised even itself. As one academic notes: “We have found strength in each other. Whilst the neoliberal university seeks to individualise us, to cut us off from each other, to set us up in opposition to each other and to our students, in this strike—this collective action—we have found each other” (Punkacademic, 2018). Social media is alight with tales of study (as Moten and Harney understand it) taking place on the picket lines. There is “a new and jubilant tenor” and a “delight in camaraderie” as an “emboldened” workforce says Basta! (Morrish, 2018). On the other hand, however, this unprecedented show of solidarity has been sparked by proposed changes to the pension scheme into which academics in many universities pay. What we are fighting for is a less drastic cut to our future pensions than those proposed by our employers’ organization Universities UK. We are fighting for a loss of deferred earnings that is not quite as severe as our employers have proposed. While the dispute is threatening to spill over into wider issues related to the marketization of higher education, as yet the struggle is targeted at resisting change (to our pensions) rather than effecting change (to the edifice of the university).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Darren Webb

Darren Webb is Senior Lecturer in Education at the University of Sheffield. He has become increasingly interested in the pedagogical practices of the “utopian” educator. How does a committed utopist bring this commitment to bear on their role as an educator? Can there be such a thing as utopian pedagogy? Or a utopian pedagogue? Where and how can/should utopian pedagogy best operate?