Governing Academic Life

Teaching Marx

GOVERNING ACADEMIC LIFE

Conference at the London School of Economics and Political Science

June 25-26, 2014

June 25, 2014 is the thirtieth anniversary of the death of Michel Foucault. Governing Academic Life marks this anniversary by providing an occasion for academics to reflect on our present situation through our reflections on Foucault’s legacy. The focus of the conference, therefore, will be on the form of governmentality that now constitutes our identities and regulates our practices as researchers and teachers. However the event will also create a space for encounters between governmentality scholars and critics of the neoliberal academy whose critiques have different intellectual roots – especially Frankfurt school critical theory, critical political economy, feminism, Bourdieuian analyses of habitus, capital and field, and autonomist Marxism.

Proposals for papers and panels are welcome until March 15, 2014. Please refer to the guidelines below.

Background and Context:

The impetus for this event is the set of changes currently sweeping across UK higher education, which include cuts in direct public funding, new financing arrangements that are calculated to bring private equity into the sector and foster competition between providers, the likely emergence of new corporate structures for HEI’s which will open the sector to commercial providers, the separation of elite from mass higher education and the globalization of ‘trade’ in HE services; but also (and relatedly) the continuing development of instruments for rendering student-teacher interactions visible and comparable, and for calculating and governing the impact, influence and value of academic research.

Governmentality research is featuring strongly in the debates around some of this. Yet though largely ‘diagnostic’ in nature, it is increasingly being enlisted as groundwork for the radical critiques and alternatives offered by autonomist Marxist theorists of cognitive capitalism and immaterial labour. Meanwhile, critical theorists who idealise a public sphere of rational-critical debate (with ‘the idea of the university’ at its heart) are struggling to re-define what makes the university (a) public and to re-think the terms of its engagement with the wider economy and society in less radical ways – often without problematising the forms of (Foucaultian) government, or of complicity with capitalism’s logic of accumulation, that are necessarily involved with these reconstructions.  This conference aims to bring together leading contemporary scholars and activists who draw on one or more of these traditions for a series of mutually challenging discussions.

In general, the conference will be oriented by the concern to think critically about the conditions of possibility of the academy today – where ‘conditions of possibility’ could mean governmental assemblages of one kind or another, capitalist production relations, the forces defining how different capitals (economic, social, cultural, symbolic) register within the academic field, or quasi-transcendental presuppositions of rational communication. Participants will ideally aim to explore how we might think across these usually distinct ways of both conceiving what the university is and contesting what it has become.

Specific foci of debate may include:

* The idea of the university: ruined or redeemable? Social criticism in the age of the normalized academic

* Beyond public v. private? Dimensions of corporatisation

* The role(s) of (contract, competition, corporate, intellectual property) law in constructing the market university

* The government of academic freedom: constituting competition as a way of life

* Markets, measurement and managerialism: rankings and ratings, rights and royalties, accounting and audit, metrics … and alternative metrics?

* Academic career-ism and casualization; discipline and de-professionalisation

* The conditions for the persistence in the university sector of relations of domination organised in particular around gender and ethnicity

* Critical political economy and varieties of communicative capitalism

* Entrepreneurial universities and enterprising academic subjects: personal branding as ‘technology of the self’?

* What is an author, now? The future of academic authorship and the academic book

* The potentials and pitfalls of ‘openness’ and ‘commons-ism’ in scholarly communication

* The ‘technicity’ of academic forms of life: the potentials and pathologies of living with/in digitised work environments

* The student as consumer – or as producer?

* The rise of para-academic ‘outstitutions’ beyond the university’s (pay)walls

* Other strategies for resisting the neoliberal academy

* Envisioning and enacting alternative futures for the university 

Additional ideas for panels and themes are welcome.

Proposal submission procedure:

Proposals should be submitted as e-mail attachments to A.Barron@lse.ac.uk or M.S.Evans@lse.ac.uk, or in hard copy form by mail to one of the conference coordinators (addresses below). The deadline for receipt of proposals is March 15, 2014.

 Proposals for papers must include the working title of the proposed paper (which should be suitable for presentation in 20 minutes) together with the author’s name, affiliation, full contact information (including address, phone, fax and email), and a brief (500 words maximum) abstract or outline. Submissions are welcome from graduate students as well as from more established scholars.

Proposals for panels (of up to 4 speakers) must include the information indicated above for all papers that are expected to be part of the panel, together with an overview of the panel theme (max 300 words) and an indication of each proposed panellist’s willingness to participate.

Timetable:  Proposals will be reviewed by the conference co-ordinators, and notice of acceptance will be given by April 15 2014.

Registration: A registration fee of £100 will be payable to cover costs. A limited number of places will be available at a concessionary rate for graduate students, adjuncts and scholars without an institutional affiliation. Please indicate if you wish to be considered for one of these places when sending your proposal.

**END**

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

The New Left Book Club: https://rikowski.wordpress.com/2014/01/05/the-new-left-book-club-call-for-papers/

Glenn Rikowski at Academia: https://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski   

Education Crisis

Policy Futures in Education: Volume 11 Number 6 (2013)

Education Crisis

POLICY FUTURES IN EDUCATION: VOLUME 11 NUMBER 6 (2013)

The Future of Higher Education and Academic Freedom

Now available at: www.wwwords.co.uk/pfie/content/pdfs/11/issue11_6.asp

POLICY FUTURES IN EDUCATION
Volume 11 Number 6, 2013, ISSN 1478-2103

CONTENTS:

SPECIAL ISSUE The Future of Higher Education
Guest Editors: PHILIP WOODS & EDDIE BLASS

Philip Woods & Eddie Blass. Editorial. Higher Education Futures OPEN ACCESS

Anne Jasman, Eddie Blass & Steve Shelley. Becoming an Academic for the Twenty-first Century: what will count as teaching quality in higher education

Alan Montague. Review of Australian Higher Education: an Australian policy perspective

Steven Selden. Sponsored Neo-conservative Challenges to Diversity and Intercultural Competence in the US Undergraduate Curriculum

 

SYMPOSIUM  Academic Freedom

Sandra J. Grey. Activist Academics: what future?

John O’Neill. Creative Research Ethics in the EnterpriseUniversity: what price academic freedom?

Martin Thrupp. Researching amid the Heat and Noise of Political Debate

 

GENERAL ARTICLES

Gert Biesta. Responsive or Responsible? Democratic Education for the Global Networked Society

Jamie Magnusson. Biosurveillance as a Terrain of Innovation in an Era of Monopoly Finance Capital

R. Adam Manley. The Policy Delphi: a method for identifying intended and unintended consequences of educational policy

Trish McMenamin. Justice for All? Special Education 2000 and the Politics of Difference

Michael A. Peters & Tina Besley. Marx and Foucault: subjectivity, employability and the crisis of youth unemployment in the great global recession

 

THE INTERNATIONALIST

Samuel Day Fassbinder. Interview with Peter McLaren, on his Work, on his Visit to Turkey and on Ongoing Popular Struggles

Access to the full texts of current articles is restricted to those who have a Personal subscription, or those whose institution has a Library subscription. There is open access for articles over 3 years old.

PLEASE NOTE: to accommodate the increasing flow of quality papers this journal expanded to 8 numbers per volume/year as from Volume 12, 2014.

PERSONAL SUBSCRIPTION (single user access) Subscription to the January-December 2014 issues (including full access to ALL back numbers, including those of 2013), is available to individuals at a cost of US$60.00. If you wish to subscribe you may do so immediately at www.wwwords.co.uk/subscribePFIE.asp

LIBRARY SUBSCRIPTION (institution-wide access) If you are working within an institution that maintains a Library, please urge them to purchase a Library subscription so access is provided throughout your institution.

For all editorial matters, including articles offered for publication, please contact the Editor, Professor Michael A. Peters: mpeters@waikato.ac.nz

In the event of problems concerning a subscription, or difficulty in gaining access to the articles, please contact the publishers: support@symposium-journals.co.uk

 

Glenn Rikowski and Ruth Rikowski have a number of articles in Policy Futures in Education. These include (and these are open access):

Rikowski, Ruth (2003) Value – the Life Blood of Capitalism: knowledge is the current key, Policy Futures in Education, Vol.1 No.1, pp.160-178: http://www.wwwords.co.uk/pdf/viewpdf.asp?j=pfie&vol=1&issue=1&year=2003&article=9_Rikowski_PFIE_1_1&id=195.93.21.68

Rikowski, Glenn (2004) Marx and the Education of the Future, Policy Futures in Education, Vol.2 Nos. 3 & 4, pp.565-577, online at: http://www.wwwords.co.uk/pdf/viewpdf.asp?j=pfie&vol=2&issue=3&year=2004&article=10_Rikowski_PFEO_2_3-4_web&id=195.93.21.71

Rikowski, Ruth (2006) A Marxist Analysis of the World Trade Organisation’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, Policy Futures in Education, Vol.4 No.4: http://www.wwwords.co.uk/pdf/viewpdf.asp?j=pfie&vol=4&issue=4&year=2006&article=7_Rikowski_PFIE_4_4_web&id=205.188.117.66

Rikowski, Ruth (2008) Review Essay: ‘On Marx: An introduction to the revolutionary intellect of Karl Marx’, by Paula Allman, Policy Futures in Education, Vol.6 No.5, pp.653-661:  http://www.wwwords.co.uk/pdf/validate.asp?j=pfie&vol=6&issue=5&year=2008&article=11_Rikowski_PFIE_6_5_web

 

**END**

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

The New Left Book Club: https://rikowski.wordpress.com/2014/01/05/the-new-left-book-club-call-for-papers/ 

Education Is Not For Sale

Fourth International Cultural Difference and Social Solidarity Network Conference

Christmas Time

FOURTH INTERNATIONAL CULTURAL DIFFERENCE AND SOCIAL SOLIDARITY NETWORK CONFERENCE

4th International Conference

Cultural Difference and Social Solidarity Network

Differences, Solidarities and Digital Technologies

Hosted by

Middle East Technical University

Northern Cyprus Campus

Tuesday, 1 July through Friday, 4 July, 2014

The 4th International Conference of the Cultural Difference and Social Solidarity Network aims to examine the influence of the spread and growth of digital technology on constructions, concepts, and perceptions of difference and solidarity. By “digital technology” we mean any combination of electronic devices and digital communication including the devices themselves (from smart phones to servers), software and applications, and communication networks. Approximately two thirds of the world’s population (according to the World Bank) has limited access to digital technologies, yet the remaining one third of the population who use these technologies are arguably reshaping concepts of difference and solidarity that have broad implications for all people, their social and cultural institutions, the environment, economic systems, etc. As an example of an area of contested solidarity and difference within that one third of global users, are the broad claims from academia, the market, and digital technology proponents regarding the use of digital technology and devices to promote solidarities, virtual and real, and create an easing of difference through democratizing constructs such as increased access to the internet and communication devices. Contrary arguments assert that solidarities in a virtual world are not possible; that the democratizing effect of the internet, or even wireless service, is an illusion constructed by large corporations that control many of the on-ramps and consumer interfaces of the web in neoliberal societies; and that the growth of use of digital technologies creates new differences and increasingly solidifies existing ones.

This conference seeks to provide a space for scholars to take stock of the present global context and share knowledge – specific or general, empirical or theoretical, with a view to develop and explore the possible ways of understanding the impact of digital technologies on differences and solidarities. The conference is intended to be interdisciplinary and welcomes papers from scholars whose research crosses traditional disciplinary boundaries. Papers and panels are sought for presentation at parallel sessions where each paper will have a strict maximum of 20 minutes presentation time on panels of 2 papers with 25 minutes per paper discussion time.

Initial starting points for paper topics on the 2014 conference theme are listed below. We will also consider papers on themes from previous conferences and/or previous participants who have on-going research on broader areas of difference and solidarity. All papers/presentations should in some way connect to, or address, Cultural Difference and Social Solidarity:

Social media:

Identity

Economy

Politics

Law

War

Governments

Revolutions

Displacement

Sex

Bullying

Religion

Technology and hegemonies

 

Academia and technology:

New disciplines e.g. Digital humanities

Academic freedom

Discrimination

Discourse

Exploitation

Inclusive/exclusive methodologies

 

Electronic production:

Mining, manufacture, distribution, retail

E-waste

Passive and active digital media

Ethics and digital technology

Art and Culture

Digital geography

Digital nativism

New media subjectivity

Gaming

Digital literacy

Epistemology

Experience

 

These themes are not exhaustive and the organizers will consider other papers relevant to the conference subject of Digital Technologies and Cultural Difference and Social Solidarity. We expect to publish a post-conference edited book, derived from the papers presented and organized around themes that reveal themselves during the conference.

There will be two keynote plenary sessions with speakers to be announced. Reflecting the conference theme in the context of the conference venue, one of these sessions will focus on aspects of these themes in Cyprus.

Abstracts may be submitted anytime until March 31, 2014

Notification of abstract acceptances and rejections is on a rolling basis (within 3 weeks of submission)

Online conference registration open from March 17, 2014 to May 30, 2014

Conference Fees to be paid by May 30, 2014

The conference language is English and all papers and presentations should be in English.

The conference fee is 395 Euros (295 Euros for post-grad students and non-participants).

This fee includes:

Registration:

Transfers to and from ErcanAirport in the TurkishRepublic of Northern Cyprus to METU-NCC Campus

4 nights at Campus Guest House with breakfast

4 lunches

2 Sunset Dinners (all drinks included)

1 Dinner Banquet (non-alcoholic drinks included)

Guided Historic/Cultural Excursion

Abstracts of no more than 350 words may be submitted online only, to: http://www.differenceandsolidarity.org/

For any questions or concerns please see our website, including the FAQ page, or contact the conference organizers at the email address below.

Conference Organisers:

Scott H. Boyd

Middle EastTechnicalUniversity – Northern Cyprus Campus

Paul Reynolds

EdgeHillUniversity

info@differenceandsolidarity.org

Digitisation Perspectives

**END**

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo  

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Convention for Higher Education

Education Crisis

CONVENTION FOR HIGHER EDUCATION

University of Brighton, Friday 24 & Saturday 25 May 2013

Organised by the Centre for Applied Philosophy, Politics and Ethics (CAPPE), University of Brighton, and co-sponsored by the Campaign for the Public University, the Council for the Defence of British Universities, and UCU at the University of Brighton, this two-day conference on Higher Education – What it is for, and how to defend it: towards a Charter for Higher Education in the UK investigates the current changes that British Higher Education (in England and Wales) is undergoing.

The Convention is designed to enable colleagues from the full range of university disciplines to address how to preserve a properly described ‘higher education’ from the effects of current proposals, and from the redefinition of universities and of higher learning. As a complement to the Council for the Defence of British Universities and the Campaign for the Public University, it will consider, and adopt a draft of, a Charter for Higher Education that the organisers hope will be debated and refined in most or all institutions of higher learning throughout the UK, and which could then form the core of values around which colleagues could cohere, whether as members of Councils and Academic Boards, Faculty or School Boards, as members of their Course Committees, or as union members.

The Convention has been occasioned by the 25th anniversary of the Humanities Programme at the University of Brighton. Born in adversity in 1988 – in the midst of an earlier assault on the Humanities – it has survived and thrived by resisting both governmental pressure and temporary fashions in education and pedagogy. It is an interdisciplinary, non-modular range of degree courses based on small-group teaching, and research-focused student development.

Keynote speakers: Priya Gopal, Colin Blakemore, John Holmwood, Martin McQuillan, Gill Scott, Will Hutton, Martin Hall, Luke Martell, Bob Brecher, Peter Scott, Tom Hickey, Colin Green, Caroline Lucas (MP), Thomas Docherty, Michael Rosen

 

Discussion:

A draft Charter for Higher Education

And sessions on:

• The Ambit and Character of a University for the 21st Century

• What is Special about a Public University System

• Knowledge and Dissemination: the Commercialisation of Learning & Research

• Constraints and Conformities: Defining Economic and Social 
Engagement

• Academic Freedom: its Meaning in the New Century

• Work and Contracts in a Corporate University

• The Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences in Adversity: Governmental Myopia

• How Mass Higher Education Does Not Entail Lower Standards (Humanities at Brighton)

• Research Supervision: Craft or Mass Process?

• Of Education, Entertainment and Satisfaction: Student Evaluation vs the NSS

• Students, Staff and Democracy in the Academy

• The Bureaucratisation of Learning: aims, objectives, methods, 
outcomes

• Of Careers and Careerism – Who Benefits: the Equality Agenda

• Global HE as International Trade: Commerce and Contradiction

• Quantum of Recognition: Vacuities of Research Measurement

 

Registration:

The registration fee for this event is £40 for employed delegates and £10 for students/retired/unemployed delegates. This includes lunch and refreshments on both days.

Online registration is available via the following link

For further information e-mail Bob Brecher at r.brecher@brighton.ac.uk

The Convention: http://publicuniversity.org.uk/2013/03/14/convention-for-higher-education/

Campaign for the Public University: http://publicuniversity.org.uk/

 

**END**

 

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLjxeHvvhJQ (live, at the Belle View pub, Bangor, north Wales); and at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo (new remix, and new video, 2012)  

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

 

Council for the Defence of British Universities

Crisis in Education

COUNCIL FOR THE DEFENCE OF BRITISH UNIVERSITIES

The formation of the Council for the Defence of British Universities (CDBU) was announced in The Guardian on Thursday 8^th November. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/nov/08/coalition-thinkers-fight-marketisation-universities

From the CDBU website:

Defending A World-Class System

Universities are amongst Britain’s most successful institutions. They currently occupy four of the top six places in the QS/USNWR World University Rankings, three of the top ten of the Times Higher World University Rankings, and two of the top ten in the Academic Ranking of World Universities, with all the others going to US institutions.

They mark the ‘frontier of possibility’, according to a recent EC-sponsored study, for the efficient production of both high quality research and highly sought-after graduates:

* They produce more academic papers, citations, and highly cited papers per unit of research expenditure than any other country in the G8;

* They also rank amongst the best systems globally in performing all the other functions expected of a great university system aside from research

* They attract more international students than any university system but the US, and a higher proportion of international students than any other system but Australia

Yet the character of Britain’s universities is being radically altered.

For decades, UK universities have been bound by increasingly restrictive management practices, loaded with endlessly augmented administrative burdens, and stretched virtually to breaking point. Now, in the two years since the publication of the Browne Review, ‘a radical reform of the higher education system’has begun, designed to change its character fundamentally, permanently, and virtually overnight.

Although these radical changes were planned in detail before the last election, no democratic mandate for them was ever sought. Although opposed by student protests, devastated by scholarly criticism, and unsupported by even the most elementary analysis of the empirical evidence, these changes are being driven forward relentlessly without benefit of Parliamentary debate or public scrutiny.

Why has opposition to these changes proved so ineffective?

The basic answer is surprisingly simple. In the protracted recession of a knowledge economy, where knowledge is money and growth is elusive, powerful forces are bending the university to serve short-term, primarily pragmatic, and narrowly commercial ends. And no equal and opposite forces are organised to resist them.

The UK higher education sector is crowded with bodies representing the interests of one academic group or another: The Russell Group, Universities UK, Million+, The 1994 Group, University Alliance, the UCU, and the NUS, to name a few.

But no organisation exists to defend academic values and the institutional arrangements best suited to fostering them.

The problem is not that academic values are obsolete: in an increasingly complex world, they are as valid and important as ever. But after decades of subordinating them to other priorities, it can no longer be taken for granted that every educated person understands the enormous value to society as a whole of maintaining places devoted primarily to the pursuit of understanding and to the transmission of that pursuit to the next generation.

The CDBU has been established to fill this void.

Academic values need fresh reformulation and skilful advocacy by influential figures both in and outside the academic world. Scores of these figures have now come together to form the nucleus of the Council for the Defence of British Universities.

Find out who we are. Discover what we stand for. Join us.

See the CDBU website at: http://www.cdbu.org.uk

 

Update: 15th November 2012

Academics have started to argue back on higher education reforms, by Peter Scott, in ‘The Guardian’, 12th November (online):  http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/nov/12/council-for-defence-of-british-universities?INTCMP=SRCH  and 13th November (hard copy), p.39.

 

**END**

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski’s paper on higher education, Life in the Higher Sausage Factory:

Rikowski, G. (2012) Life in the Higher Sausage Factory, Guest Lecture to the Teacher Education Research Group, The Cass School of Education and Communities, University of East London, 22nd March, online at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Life%20in%20the%20Higher%20Sausage%20Factory.

Institue for Critical Education Studies

Education Crisis

INSTITUTE FOR CRITICAL EDUCATION STUDIES

About ICES

As Paul Simon sings “that’s astute…why don’t we get together and call ourselves an institute.” So that’s what we’ve done.  ICES supports studies within a critical education or critical pedagogy tradition, and maintains a network that conducts and circulates cultural, educational, or social research and discourse that are critical in method, scope, tone, and content.

ICES, Critical Education and Workplace defend the freedom, without restriction or censorship, to disseminate and publish reports of research, teaching, and service, and to express critical opinions about institutions or systems and their management.  Co-Directors of ICES, co-Hosts of ICES and Workplace blogs, and co-Editors of these journals resist all efforts to limit the exercise of academic freedom and intellectual freedom, recognizing the right of criticism by authors or contributors.

ICES: http://blogs.ubc.ca/ices/

Some Recent Articles:

School improvement in USA and Canada requires an ‘attitude adjustment’

Weaker teacher unions won’t improve schools

Anarchist scholar to speak at RF@AERA denied entry to Canada

*****END*****

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

The University is Ours!

Our Universities

THE UNIVERSITY IS OURS!

Edufactory

The University is Ours!

Friday, December 2, 2011  

A Conference on Struggles Within and Beyond the Neoliberal University
April 27-29, 2012
Toronto, Ontario

The university belongs to us, those who teach, learn, research, council, clean, and create community. Together we can and do make the university work.

But today this university is in crisis. The neoliberal restructuring of post-secondary education seeks to further embed market logic and corporate-style management into the academy, killing consultation, autonomy and collective decision-making. The salaries of university presidents and the ranks of administrators swell, but the people the university is supposed to serve — students — are offered assembly-line education as class sizes grow, faculty is over-worked, and teaching positions become increasingly precarious. International students and scholars seeking post-secondary or graduate education are treated as cash cows rather than as people who might contribute to both research and society. Debt-burdened students are seen as captive markets by administrators, while faculty is encouraged to leverage public funds for private research on behalf of corporate sponsors.

The attack on what remains of public education has been total. Over the last year we have witnessed the closure of humanities programmes, further tuition hikes, the replacement of financial support with loans, union lockouts, and the accelerated development of private, for-profit universities. Yet at the same time we have seen growing waves of struggle against these incursions, as students, staff and faculty in Europe, Latin America, and across the Middle East organize, occupy and resist the transformation.

Our struggles are not limited to the university, but are a part the widespread resistance against the neoliberal market logic subsuming all sectors of our society. The university is a key battleground in this struggle, and a point of conjuncture for the various labour, economic and social justice struggles that face all of us – workers and students alike. Crucially, these struggles occur on stolen indigenous lands and manifest through colonialism, racism, sexism, homophobia, ablism and other forms of oppression that hurt and divide us and that shape what sorts of knowledge are considered valuable.

We cannot cede the ideal of the university as a site for struggle and debate. We cannot permit the dissolution of proliferating research, ideas and innovations free from the demands and control of the market. We cannot watch as universities are degraded into a mere site for corporate or state-sponsored research and marketing. The time to mobilize is now!

This conference will connect and chart the varied struggles against neoliberal restructuring of the university inNorth Americaand beyond. We envision a series of debriefings on experiences of resistance, the creation of a cartography of local and global struggles, and a strategizing session for students, teachers, workers and activists. We aim to develop a North American network of struggles.

We encourage presentations that raise questions and generate dialogue among the rest of the participants. Ideally, submissions will indicate the specific outcomes they hope will emerge from the discussion. We encourage participation from those with first-hand experience of these crises, and those engaged in the fight for free and public post-secondary education, especially student groups and trade unions.

For a better future for all – join us!

POSSIBLE THEMES:

ü        Mapping the terrain of campus struggle inCanadaandNorth America

ü        Connecting with and learning from global struggles

ü        Waged and unwaged labour in the university

ü        Abolition of student debt

ü        The university and the occupy movement

ü        The cultural politics of the neoliberal university

ü        The death of the humanities

ü        Militarization of the university

ü        Intersections of university struggles other fights against oppression

ü        Environmental justice

ü        Beyond public education

ü        Radical pedagogy

ü        Academic freedom

ü        The politics of research funding

ü        The economics of the neoliberal university

ü        University and student governance

ü        The undergraduate experience of neoliberalism

ü        Alternative/free/autonomous universities

ü        Organizing the education factory

ü        The suppression of on-campus dissent and organization

Please email submissions to universityisours@gmail.com by January 16th.

Also,if you would like to attend the conference, please RSVP to the same address so organizers can plan for numbers.

This conference is organized by the Edu-factory Collective in collaboration with theUniversityofToronto General Assembly.

Edufactory: http://www.edu-factory.org/wp/

**END**

‘I believe in the afterlife.

It starts tomorrow,

When I go to work’

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Human Herbs’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h7tUq0HjIk (live)

‘Maximum levels of boredom

Disguised as maximum fun’

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLjxeHvvhJQ (live, at the Belle View pub, Bangor, north Wales)  

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a new song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

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Teach-In on the Economic Crisis, the Universities and Academic Freedom

Education Crisis

TEACH-IN ON THE ECONOMIC CRISIS, THE UNIVERSITIES AND ACADEMIC FREEDOM

Organised by the Centre for the Study of Socialist Theory and Movements, University of Glasgow

Email: gziinfo@udcf.gla.ac.uk

Saturday 15th October 2011 10am–4.00pm

10-12.30

Professor Christine Cooper : ‘Banks, Debts and fictitious capital ‘

Professor Willy Maley : ‘Balancing the Books Behind Closed Doors: The New Managerialism’

Professor Hillel Ticktin : ‘Capitalism in crisis’

14.00-16.00

Professor Greg Philo: ‘Privatise the national debt’

Dr Des Freedman: ‘Assault on  Universities? Government plans for 21st C. higher education’

Dr Terry Brotherstone: Title t.b.a.

Venue: The Cinema

School of Culture & Creative Arts

Glasgow University

9 University Avenue

Glasgow G12 8QQ

All welcome. Registration Free

Please note: if you are interested in supporting The Campaign for a Public University, you should send your details to altwhitepaper@live.co.uk.

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

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MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

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Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

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Variant – Issue 41

 

John Holloway

VARIANT – ISSUE 41

Variant, Issue 41, Spring 2011

… the free, independent, arts magazine. Variant provides in-depth coverage in the context of broader social, political & cultural issues.

Variant: http://www.variant.org.uk

Complete issue:
Text: http://www.variant.org.uk/41texts/variant41.html
PDF: http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue41/Varint41.pdf

Front Cover :
PDF: http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue41/cover41.pdf

Letters :
Text: http://www.variant.org.uk/41texts/letters41.html
PDF: http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue41/letters41.pdf

Investing, Advocating, Promoting… strategically
Daniel Jewesbury interviews Andrew Dixon, Chief Executive of Creative Scotland
A revealing exchange outlining proposals in Creative Scotland’s Corporate Plan:
“We are getting rid of all the art form silos… There will be no art form budgets…we will have generic budgets that are more strategic, much more planned and on a larger scale”.
Text: http://www.variant.org.uk/41texts/adixon41.html
PDF: http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue41/adixon.pdf

Marching for Whose Alternative?
Escalate
“We are not storming heaven, but being marched precariously close to the precipice. The Trade Union Congress is not our tool for emancipation – and neither can it be. Why are we being so skilfully pacified by ‘our’ institutions?” Escalate is a collective of writers and activists from around the University of London, brought together through protest… http://escalatecollective.net
Text: http://www.variant.org.uk/41texts/escalate41.html
PDF: http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue41/escalate41.pdf

…The Hindrance of Assembly: Notes for a Tralfamadorian ‘book’
Robert (Bobby) Doohihan
“Ian Brotherhood is a cantankerous middle-aged unemployed father of two with no respect for pedants, sophists, and language-mangling panhandlers. Bobby (Robert) Doohihan is/was, a fairer, saner, more humane and optimistic incarnation of the same man. So Ian asked Bobby to write this, and supervised him throughout…”
Text: http://www.variant.org.uk/41texts/ibrotherhood41.html, PDF: http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue41/ibrotherhood41.pdf

Glasgow Life or Death
Rebecca Gordon Nesbitt
“In summer 2008, Variant published an analysis of Culture and Sport Glasgow (CSG), based on an examination of its key personnel and the consequences for the city’s culture their ethos implies. This research pointed to the subordination of Glasgow’s culture and leisure services to business interests, particularly tourism and regeneration, which was perceived to have a detrimental impact on those working in the arts and on the long-term welfare of the city’s culture and leisure facilities. It built on concerns, already expressed in Variant, that having a private company running the city’s culture and leisure services may prove disastrous as democratic accountability was lost and speculative funding sources failed to materialise. Against a backdrop of public sector cuts and deep-seated discontent among CSG’s workforce, it seems appropriate to assess whether this has proven to be the case….”
Text: http://www.variant.org.uk/41texts/rgn41.html
PDF: http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue41/rgn41.pdf

Academic Capture
Kasim Agpak
Affirming that the continuing attack on academic freedom in the UK, at several levels, has not yet brought about an adequate defence of the public interest in the autonomy of university research, Kasim Agpak elucidates Desmond Fernandes’ study which brings together numerous accounts of the unfolding battles which are taking place, providing a powerful account of the way the commercialisation, militarisation and securitisation of the UK academy has developed into a state discourse, not only in the UK but also internationally.
Text: http://www.variant.org.uk/41texts/kagpak41.html
PDF: http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue41/kagpak41.pdf

Comic & Zine reviews
Mark Pawson
This Comix Reader goes from Signs of Change to self-censorship having always been an issue in autobiographical comics, to The Summer of Boundless Optimism and Car Boot Sale that May Fade in Direct Sunlight… but It All Makes Sense.
Text: http://www.variant.org.uk/41texts/mpawson41.html
PDF: http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue41/mpawson41.pdf

In, Against and Beyond Labour
Gordon Asher, Leigh French, Neil Gray in exchange with John Holloway “This exchange with John Holloway follows on from our engagement with his most recent work, Crack Capitalism (2010). Holloway’s work has become well known in and beyond activist circles since Change the World Without Taking Power (2002) was published and widely read. This intentional popularisation has, arguably, tended to obscure Holloway’s previous work while drawing strength from it. … While Holloway’s recent work draws strongly on his interests in the Zapitistas and other movements and struggles in the Global South, where he is presently based, it should also be noted that he was, for some time, based in Edinburgh and wrote regularly for Common Sense: Journal of the Edinburgh Conference of Socialist Economists… The ideas presented in Common Sense deserve a wide readership, particularly at a time when left liberalism in the UK, as Holloway challenges below, seems determined to ‘lock us firmly into capital and close down all alternatives’ through regressive campaigns such as ‘Right to Work’ or the recent ‘March for the Alternative’.”
Text: http://www.variant.org.uk/41texts/jholloway41.html
PDF: http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue41/jholloway41.pdf

 

Re-Thinking Creative Economy as Radical Social Enterprise
Angela McRobbie
“We will soon begin to see the ‘creative industry’ phenomenon as something specifically linked with the Blair and post-Blair years, starting 1997 and in effect lasting for just more than a decade. Such a positioning allows us both to focus on its character and function and to acknowledge that the politics of arts and culture for the present government will be something very different. … It is also likely that a new discussion will arise about how to theorise the position of the universities struggling to survive by themselves entrepreneurialising. … Neither defeatism nor old fashioned militancy will suffice in circumstances such as these. I would like to propose a renewal of radical social enterprise and co-operatives.”
Text: http://www.variant.org.uk/41texts/amcrobbie41.html
PDF: http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue41/amcrobbie41.pdf

‘A very complicated version of freedom’: Conditions and experiences of creative labour in three cultural industries
David Hesmondhalgh, Sarah Baker
“This article investigates the experiences and emotional responses of interviewees to their working conditions in three cultural industries (the television industry, the recording industry and the magazine industry). Via semi-structured interviews with a range of workers, it explores working conditions and experiences in the following areas: pay, working hours and unions; insecurity and uncertainty; socialising, networking and isolation. Our research suggests that experiences are at best highly ambivalent, across all three of the industries we studied. We found evidence of feelings of victimisation and anxiety. Building on previous research, especially that carried out on IT workers, we also discerned complicated responses on the part of workers to the freedom and autonomy characteristic of much cultural work. Pleasure and obligation become blurred in a challenging way. Expectations of sociability and networking in these industries were also the object of some ambivalence, and some workers reported feelings of isolation. These findings suggest that creative industries policy has paid insufficient attention to the experiences of creative workers.”
Text: http://www.variant.org.uk/41texts/complicated41.html
PDF: http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue41/complicated41.pdf

The Presence of Precarity: Self-employment as Contemporary Form
Gesa Helms
Aligning artistic and academic labour in their shared belief in creative and autonomous practices and work identity formation – the valorisation of one’s self in such relational labour practices – this study, drawing on Maurizio Lazaratto and Sergio Bologna, takes us some way towards unravelling some of the myths around creativity and autonomy in immaterial labour (be it as artists or academics). In doing so it calls into question assumed understandings of class divisions between a culture of (UK) middle classes and working classes: “These, unfortunately, too often remain anything but new in the studies of working class lives and firmly rely on the examination of cultural preference if not socio-economic class indices. Instead, going back to a Marxist understanding of class in relation to the means of production and ownership of these allows us to consider that drinking latte, flat whites, or similar, may not determine one’s class belonging. Consequently, a dismissal of self-employment, or rather freelancing, as the territories of the middle-classes (i.e. not working classes) does not take us very far if we fail to consider how such ‘autonomy’ of self-employment is indeed firmly woven into a  process of subsumed labour.”
Text: http://www.variant.org.uk/41texts/ghelms41.html
PDF: http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue41/ghelms41.pdf

The Intangibilities of Form
John Roberts
“In The Intangibilities of Form. Skill and Deskilling in Art After the Readymade, John Roberts proposes a challenging model for everyone dealing with contemporary art, both theoreticians and artists. In his rereading of twentieth century art and avant-garde art more in particular, he takes an overtly left-wing, not to say Marxist stand, contributing in a spectacular way to what, he says, is needed in scholarship today: a labour theory of culture. As the title of the book suggests, Roberts finds this model in Marcel Duchamp’s readymade, not so much in its form – which has become commonplace in the art world from the early ’70s on, as in its function as a site of reflection and conflict. Hence the first part of The Intangibilities of Form [the Preface and Introduction is reproduced here] is devoted to the readymade and provides the reader an insight into the key principles of the book.”
Text: http://www.variant.org.uk/41texts/jroberts41.html
PDF: http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue41/jroberts41.pdf

‘Through A Glass Darkly’: Performative Practice… Without Border, Without Name
Katarzyna Kosmala
A reflection on Central and Eastern European, diaspora-infused art practice, one which coalesces around a feminist critique of dominant neo-liberal globalisation; a politically charged network-based movement raising social justice issues; a “feminism without borders”. Revealing a cultural tactics that points to alternative modes of instituting and relating to society, individuals and institutions: “These practices appear to afford illusionary hopes to those areas that are disempowered locally by the inertia effects of global capitalism, and yet also allow for distance to be maintained from such ‘utopian’ pursuits. Accordingly, the questions emerge as to whether feminist-infused critiques can become part of broader histories and social and political struggles, and whether feminist histories transgress the market game concerns and celebrity art-lite of international biennials?”
Text: http://www.variant.org.uk/41texts/kkosmala41.html
pdf  http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue41/kkosmala41.pdf

Make Whichever You Find Work
Antony Iles & Marina Vishmidt
“The recent uptake of the post-autonomist immaterial labour thesis draws cultural practitioners closer to the critical self-recognition of their own labour (waged and otherwise) as alienated, as well its formal commonality with other kinds of affective labour at large. Art finds itself in a new relation with abstract value, whether it’s the typical forms of contemporary work or financial mechanisms. This applies both to the structural re-composition of work by ‘creative’ and self-propelled forms of exploitation as well as the inscription of art in social policy agendas tending to enhance market values. In an unprecedented way, art not only reflects but revises the productive forces, shading into forces of ‘non-production’ and devalorisation in an era of debt-financed austerity. However, as art expands to include more and more fields of social action within its imaginative and institutional remit (political activity, work, education), the paradox remains that the social effectiveness of art is guaranteed by its separation from capitalist work. Thus, art’s estrangement from labour continues apace, but, at this historical juncture, coincides with labour’s estrangement from labour: labouring subjects who do not identify with themselves as labour. …”
Text: http://www.variant.org.uk/41texts/ilesvishmidt41.html
PDF: http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue41/ilesvishmidt41.pdf

The State of Poetic License
Owen Logan
“What is striking about the books [The Social Impact of the Arts, An Intellectual History, by Eleonora Belfiore and Oliver Bennett; No Room to Move, Radical Art and the Regenerate City, by Josephine Berry Slater and Anthony Iles;Global Culture Industry: The Mediation of Things, by Scott Lash and Celia Lury] is how class has been abstracted by critical discussions of arts and culture, in much the same way Detroit’s car industry jobs are outsourced. A largely unexamined antagonism, class, now seems to exist as an old fashioned, and sometimes sentimental refrain in cultural theory. This attitude might change as ‘economics’ and academia meet on increasingly unfriendly terms. Nevertheless, the difference in attitude between books written in the past twenty-five years, compared to the outlook of writers before the era of ‘globalisation’ will be obvious in this article. What this difference means is less obvious, and is the subject of what follows.”
Text: http://www.variant.org.uk/41texts/ologan41.html
PDF: http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue41/ologan41.pdf

—————————–

* VARIANT NEEDS YOUR SUPPORT!

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– Advertise in Variant, issue 41, Autumn / Winter 2011: 10,000 free copies per issue distributed throughout the UK & Ireland at over 400 locations
To advertise contact Owen Logan
Advertising & Marketing on: +44 (0)141 333 9522
or email: variantads@btinternet.com
For full details of advertising in the magazine please see: http://www.variant.org.uk/ads.html

—————————–
* A fully accessible archive of back issues is freely available at the Variant web site: http://www.variant.org.uk

* Please contact us if you wish to distribute newspaper copies of Variant magazine.

Variant
1/2, 189b Maryhill Road
Glasgow, G20 7XJ
Scotland, UK
t/f: +44(0)141 3339522
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http://www.variant.org.uk

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

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Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Academic Repression

Peter McLaren

ACADEMIC REPRESSION

http://www.akpress.org/2010/items/academicrepression

Academic Repression: Reflections from the Academic Industrial Complex

Peter McLaren (Editor), Steven Best (Editor), and Anthony J. Nocella II (Editor)

The extreme repressive attacks on Churchill, Finklstein, Fontan, Best, Massad, the “Dirty Thirty,” and many others represented in this book demonstrate the repressive logic of “US democracy,” whereby political elites, the mass media, and the education system establish and police the parameters of acceptable discourse. Churchill became America’s own Salman Rushdie terrorized by the fatwa of the right. Unprecedented for the media coverage given to a professor (in a mass media culture that virtually ignores substantive ideas in favor of spectacle and sensationalism) the Churchill affair was, however, just one of many cases of attacks on academic freedom that eerily evoke the tyranny of the McCarthy era where actors were blacklisted and professors were fired for having even liberal views or showing dissent against state repression. While there has been much research on political repression carried out by the Bush administration, FBI, and various law enforcement agencies, there has been little discussion on political 
repression in academia and how the shockwaves of 9/11 have reverberated throughout academia. This anthology brings together prominent academics who contribute original essays commissioned for this volume. The writers are known and respected figures in their respective fields, and many have experienced academic repression first-hand.

This volume aims to be a cogent intervention in debates over free speech, culture wars, and academic freedom. Given that the importance of free speech to academic life, and the crucial role universities play in the intellectual life of cultures as a whole, a volume addressing the political environment of universities in the current period promises to make a significant contribution.

Academic Repression: Reflections from the Academic Industrial Complex (AK Press), is a much needed book on a topic that has seen little attention. Since 9/11 the Bush Administration has ventured to every campus influencing and forcing change by administration to handover faculty, staff, and student work to be flagged as possible signs of threatening behavior. While there have been numerous books on academic freedom, that topic is outdated and something that arguably does not exist on U.S. campus soil anymore. This volume addresses not only overt attacks on critical or radical thinking, it also – following socioeconomic trends unfolding for decades – engages the broad structural determinants of academic culture. Slowly but surely, the university is being transformed from a space for free thinking, experimentation, and philosophical education in the broadest sense into a narrow, restrictive, utilitarian institution that serves the technical needs of corporations, government, science and technology, and the military. Thus, as emphasized by numerous contributors, the ultimate cause of repression is not the academy itself, but contemporary capitalist society as a whole, which strongly shapes the structure, function, and priorities of higher education. This volume shows that while universities are crucial sites of socialization in capitalist ideologies and utilitarian performance, they are not monolithic citadels or homogeneous systems of thought that grind out in assembly-line fashion each and every student into the service of capitalism. For just as universities can train tomorrow’s FBI and CIA agents, so they can breed the next generation of radicals, resisters, saboteurs, and revolutionaries.

The university is a contested political space for three reasons. First, it is home to a diversity of viewpoints, ranging from far-right to far-left, from Christian to Muslim, from white to black, Indian, or Chicano/a, from speciesist to animal liberationist, and from heterosexual to gay/lesbian. Second, despite broad and growing trends of repression, there are varying degrees of tolerance for the discussion of non-mainstream or radical ideas in classrooms and campus life. Third, however uncritical, conditioned, and conformist some students might be, they have the potential (often actualized) to discuss, debate, and think critically about issues such as US colonialism, slavery, sexism, and speciesism, and professors, staff, and students – consciously or unconsciously – cannot socialize all of them into their own worldviews and politics.

— Nocella, Best, and McLaren

About the Editors:
Anthony J. Nocella, II is completing his doctoral work at Syracuse University. He is a Visiting Scholar of SUNY Cortland’s Center for Ethics, Peace and Social Justice (CEPS) and is teaching classes in Sociology and Criminology at Le Moyne College.

Steven Best is Associate Professor of Humanities and Philosophy at the University of Texas, El Paso.

Peter McLaren is Professor of Education, Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles.

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT THE BOOK:

This courageous and chilling book reminds us that the Academy is always a context for intellectual exchange and political struggle. Don’t miss it! — Cornel West, Princeton University

This book takes us into the Corporate University, and it’s not a pretty sight. From firing critical thinkers to putting students in debt, the system is failing America. Time to take it back by fighting for free higher education. — Jim Hightower, populist speaker and editor of the “Hightower Lowdown”

The university should be a place of freedom not a battlefield where the military industrial complex is launching its most violent attack yet on the future of education. Nocella, Best, and McLaren shows us that education must be protected if we want peace and social justice for the world. Read now! — Cindy Sheehan, Peace Activist and Founder of “Gold Star Families for Peace”

To the litany of claims by academics that the university is a safe haven for intellectual and political dissent, this book offers a convincing counter-argument. Academic Repression is a long overdue collective study of the long and sorry history of violations of academic freedom, iconoclastic thought and political dissent in US institutions of higher education. The editors have assembled an impressive group of scholars who, often through personal experience as much as analytic acuity, have supplied us with commentary as much as documentation of the central thesis of the book. This book should be required reading in all of the social sciences, humanities and education courses. —
Stanley Aronowitz, author of “The Knowledge Factory: Dismantling the Corporate University and Creating True Higher Learning”

Absolutely and utterly indispensible as we chart a way forward and attempt to finally turn the page on an era best left in the dustbin of history. It’s a first round knock out. — Dave Zirin, author APHOS

For over half a century, matters of knowledge and education have been central to the political struggles shaping our world, and the university has been a primary battleground. This collection is a chilling and powerful survey of contemporary battles, their stakes and possibilities. We should all be scared, and we should all concerned enough to take a stand. — Dr. Lawrence Grossberg, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Using the tired canards of anti-semitism, terrorism and radicalism, rightwing zealots are carrying out a merciless campaign of ideological cleansing on American campuses, often with the shameful complicity of university administrators. Academic Repression takes you to the frontlines of this fierce battle for the mind, telling stories of
purges, institutional cowardice and resistance. Here at last is a strategic plan for how to fight back against the New McCarthyites. Read it twice and then throw the book at them. — Jeffrey St. Clair, author Born Under a Bad Sky, co-editor of CounterPunch

Freedom of speech in the academy is a cornerstone of democracy — fascism always creeps closely behind intellectual repression, and we are not immune from the virus. If you want to understand how rocky our freedoms are today, pick up this book, read it, and join the fight to end censorship in all of its imperialist forms. — Joshua Frank, co-author with Jeffrey St. Clair of the forthcoming Green Scare: The Government’s New War on Environmentalism

The powers-that-be are uncomfortable with academic freedom because when one investigates any political, social, economic or even scientific issue thoroughly, a leftwing analysis will tend to emerge. Thinking is dangerous for them. This book is full of the stories and observations of some of the greatest thinkers alive today. — David Rovics, Singer-Songwriter

The editors have drawn together a diverse and competent group of scholars to assess critically the climate of academic repression. This is an essential book for anyone with a deep concern for the future of the academy. It will help raise awareness of crucial issues that face the universities. We ignore this challenge at our peril. — Dr. Andrew Fitz-Gibbon, Director, Center for Ethics, Peace and Social Justice, SUNY Cortland

As the editors and contributors of this valuable collection make clear, American academia has long been a combat zone, and never more than today. Eternal vigilance, and constant struggle, remain the watchwords if the free expression of thought upon which a good society depends is to be realized. — Joel Kovel, author of “Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine”

—————————————————

CONTRIBUTORS TO THE BOOK:

William Armaline

John Asimakopoulos

Bill Ayers

Liat Ben-Moshe

Michael Bérubé

Carl Boggs

Marc Bousquet

A. Peter Castro

Ward Churchill

Dana Cloud

Sumi E. Colligan

Maria E. Cotera

Christian Davenport

Victoria Fontan

Takis Fotopoulos

Henry Giroux

Adam Habib

Joy James

Robert Jensen

Richard Kahn

Caroline Kaltefleiter

Doug Kellner

Mark LeVine

Bill Martin

Peter McLaren

Micere M. Githae Mugo

Mechthild Nagel

Cary Nelson

Michael Parenti

Emma Perez

Mark Rupert

Rik Scarce

Deric Shannon

Stephen Sheehi

Amory Starr

Gregory Tropea

Ali Zaidi

Howard Zinn

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The Question of Subalternity

Spivak

THE QUESTION OF SUBALTERNITY

 

A two-day seminar with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak at CENDEAC (Murcia, South Eastern Spain)  

1st and 2nd December // 5 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: The Question of Subalternity

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak will lead an intensive seminar at CENDEAC on the 1st and 2nd December 2009. It will be a unique opportunity to engage with Spivak’s thought, through a detailed analysis of some of her most influential texts. 

The seminar will discuss the history and usefulness of the elusive concept of the subaltern based on questions emerging from three texts by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak available in Spanish translation: “Can the subaltern speak?”, “Subaltern Studies: deconstructing historiography” and “Displacement and the Discourse of Woman”. The two sessions will be entitled: “The Subaltern: Use and Abuse” and “Women, Subalternity, and Strategic Essentialism”.

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, is University Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University and holds honorary degrees from the Universities of Toronto and London and Oberlin College. She has published, Of Grammatology (translation with critical introduction of Jacques Derrida, De la grammatologie, 1976); Thinking Academic Freedom in Gendered Post-Coloniality (1993); In Other Worlds (1987); Outside in the Teaching Machine (1993); A Critique of Postcolonial Reason (1999); Death of a Discipline(2003), Other Asias (2007). And the forthcoming An Aesthetic Education in an Age of Globalization. She has also translated from Bengali, Mahasweta Devi: Imaginary Maps (1994); Breast Stories (1997), Old Women (1999); Chotti Munda and His Arrow (2002) and Ramproshad Sen’s (eighteenth century Bengali mystic): Song for Kali (2000). The texts “Translation As Culture” (2005), “Translating into English” (2005), and “Rethinking Comparativism” (2009) reflect her concern for the task of the translator.  “Righting Wrongs” (2001), and “Ethics and Politics in Tagore, Coetzee, and Certain Scenes of Teaching” (2004) give a sense of her dedication to supplementing vanguardism. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (1983) has become a controversial classic.

Information and enrolment:

Attendance is free unless a certificate is required, in which case fees will be 30€ standard, 15€ for the unemployed, full-time students and OAPs, and free to Friends of CENDEAC. 

Language of the Seminar: English with simultaneous translation into Spanish. 

CENDEAC is accessible for wheelchair users and people with diminished mobility. Whenever possible, we will strive to provide on request a transcript of papers for users with impaired hearing. Auditorium Capacity: 140 people

For more information, including assistance with travel and accommodation, please visit our website: http://www.cendeac.net or contact yhernandez[at]cendeac.net

CENDEAC
Pabellón 5
Antiguo Cuartel de Artillería
C/ Madre Elisea Oliver Molina, s/n
30002-Murcia (España)
Tel.: +34 868 914 769
Fax: +34 868 914 149

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Academic Labor and Law

Academic Labor and Law

Special Section of Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor

 

Guest Editor: Jennifer Wingard

University of Houston

 

The historical connections between legislation, the courts, and the academy have been complex and multi-layered. This has been evident from early federal economic policies, such as the Morell Act and the GI Bill, through national and state legislation that protected student and faculty rights, such as the First Amendment and affirmative action clauses. These connections continue into our current moment of state and national efforts to define the work of the university, such as The Academic Bill of Rights and court cases regarding distance learning. The question, then, becomes whether and to what extent the impact of legislation and litigation reveals or masks the shifting mission of the academy. Have these shifts been primarily economic, with scarcities of funding leading many to want to legislate what is considered a university education, how it should be financed, and who should benefit from it? Are the shifts primarily ideological, with political interests working to change access, funding, and the intellectual project of higher education? Or are the shifts a combination of both political and economic influences? One thing does become clear from these discussions: at their core, the legal battles surrounding higher education are about the changing nature of the university –the use of managerial/corporate language; the desire to professionalize students rather than liberally educate them; the need to create transparent structures of evaluation for both students and faculty; and the attempt to define the types of knowledge produced and disseminated in the classroom. These are changes for which faculty, students, administrators, as well as citizens who feel they have a stake in higher education, seek legal redress. This special section of Workplace aims to explore the ways in which legislation and court cases impact the work of students, professors, contingent faculty, and graduate students in the university. Potential topics include but are not limited to:

 

Academic Freedom for students and/or faculty

* Horowitz’s Academic Bill of Rights

* Missouri’s Emily Booker Intellectual Diversity Act

* First Amendment court cases concerning faculty and student’s rights to freely express themselves in the classroom and on campuses

* Facebook/Myspace/Blog court cases

* Current legislative and budgetary “attacks” on area studies (i.e. Queer Studies in Georgia, Women’s Studies in Florida)

Affirmative Action

* The implementation of state and university diversity initiatives in the 1970s

* The current repeal of affirmative action law across the country

* Benefits, including Health Benefits, Domestic Partner Benefits

* How universities in states with same-sex marriage bans deal with domestic partner benefits

Collective Bargaining

* The recent rulings at NYU and Brown about the status of graduate students as employees

* State anti-unionization measures and how they impact contingent faculty

Copyright/Intellectual Property

* In Distance Learning

* In corporate sponsored science research

* In government sponsored research

Disability Rights and Higher Education

* How the ADA impacts the university

* Sexual Harassment and Consensual Relationships

* How diversity laws and sexual harassment policies impact the university

Tenure

* The Bennington Case

* Post 9/11 court cases

 

Contributions for Workplace should be 4000-6000 words in length and should conform to MLA style. If interested, please send an abstract via word attachment to Jennifer Wingard (jwingard@central.uh.edu) by Friday, May 22, 2009. Completed essays will be due via email by Monday, August 24, 2009.

 

E. Wayne Ross

Professor

Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy

University of British Columbia

2125 Main Mall

Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4

Canada

604-822-2830

wayne.ross@ubc.ca

 

http://www.ewayneross.net

 

Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor: http://www.workplace-gsc.com

Cultural Logic: http://eserver.org/clogic

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski