Talkin’ ’bout a revolution? From quiescence to resistance in the contemporary university

Abstract

In discussing the events leading up to the resignation of the former Open University Vice Chancellor in April 2018, we focus on the enactment of a form of resistance against proposals for the university through a WhatsApp group, enabling rapid information exchange, discussion of tactics and concrete planning for action. We suggest our group – ‘the Hive’ – was unusual because, first, it countered the politically quiescent trend in academia to comply (at least outwardly) with neoliberalisation, and/or only to write about it, as opposed to mounting challenges. Second, the Hive was virtual, comprising various staff categories, including people based off-campus; it operated almost entirely online and many members had never met face-to-face. This for us evokes notions of the multitude. Third, the group exemplifies alternative forms of solidarity and resistance in other ways, being non-hierarchical, highly pluralist and non-exclusionary. Finally, our Hive provided a supportive, caring space for resisters, which we suggest emerged partly through members’ love for the distinctive social mission of The Open University – although our story also provides hope for harnessing similar emotions within other academic institutions.

From democracy to managerialism: foundation universities as the embodiment of Finnish university policies

“…Mergers, however, break traditional institutions. As institutional resistance seems difficult, even risky (Bowes-Catton et al 2020), academics have to develop their own coping strategies (Archer 2008). Knights and Clarke (2014, 350) discuss the lack of manifest resistance among academics against managerial encroachment and the limits of solidarity in the struggles against technocratic authority and managerialism.…”

The Performative University: ‘Targets’, ‘Terror’ and ‘Taking Back Freedom’ in Academia

“…In comparable terms, but here based on Bourdieu, 1 the paper by Ratle et al describes how early career critical management studies (CMS) scholars, from multiple countries, are all but overwhelmed by the ‘looming immensity’ of their university environment, with a ‘coterie of Vice-Chancellors’ exerting a comprehensive and exacting top-down control. Similarly, the paper by Bowes-Catton et al (2020) focuses on the United Kingdom as an extreme national case of the enactment of such central and privileged control, operating from the level of the vice-chancellor downwards.…”

“…The authors indicate that methodologies such as autoethnography can provide some illumination and potential catharsis. The paper by Bowes-Catton et al (2020) which uses a collective autoethnography, highlights the terror for academics not only at early career stage, but also at all levels around the intense fear of paying the price for activism at this micro-level and their unsurprising quiescent complicity. Furthermore, such academic terror surfaces not only at the faculty level, but at the institutional level and among students as well.…”

“…Finally, in a further collective autoethnography, Bowes-Catton et al (2020) describe how they organised a virtual space to resist a comprehensive downsizing and restructuring programme of their entire university. They draw on Hardt and Negri’s idea of ‘multitude’, a disparate group communicating and cooperating through a lack of co-presence, to theorise about not only escaping the terror of such totalising control, but also being able to explore how such an escape could impact back into the university.…”

The autoimmunity of the modern university: How its managerialism is self-harming what it claims to protect

“…While recognizing the damaging influence of the financial pressure a modern university is facing, various critical scholars have added however, that also the organizational make-up and co-constituent practices of the modern university itself that have been developed to deal with these pressures-and especially the shift towards neoliberal corporatization, including the rise of managerialism, commodification, and marketization-is having a counterproductive effect on the high quality and autonomy in research and education that it is missioned to protect (see e.g. Berg and Seeber, 2016;Bod et al, 2020;Boomkens, 2008;Bowes-Catton et al, 2020;Brown, 2015;Butler and Spoelstra, 2012;Castree and Sparke, 2000;Collini, 2012;de Haan and Robeyns, 2018;Erickson et al, 2020;Ginsberg, 2013;Radder, 2015, 2017;Jones et al, 2020;Lorenz, 2012Lorenz, , 2014Lynch and Ivancheva, 2015;Mingers and Willmott, 2012;Readings, 1996;Runia, 2019;Schinkel, 2018;Smith, 2000;Verbrugge and Baardewijk, 2014;Willmott, 2011). In this speaking out essay, elaborating on these key insights in the debate, we will zoom in on especially these selfharming tendencies, and speak out against what we see as the key counterproductive organizational practices of the typical modern university.…”