It’s not hard to become disillusioned with academia in the age of late neoliberalism — especially if you are, like myself, an “early career” academic hopping from one temporary contract to another. The rat race of job and grant applications is exhausting and often demoralizing. Pressure builds to write as many papers as possible — only to give them away for free for the benefit of publishers’ obscene profits.
The underwhelming efforts to challenge that — even by established academics who would be in a better position to do so — is nearly as disheartening as the exploitation itself. So is the alienation from fellow “early career” academics who compete over the same jobs, grants, publications, and recognition.
It all speaks of the market logic that has come to define and confine contemporary academia. The community of peers engaged in the enlightened pursuit of knowledge has given way to an industry like any other under neoliberal capitalism — primarily driven by profit maximization and increasingly reliant on a precarious, atomized workforce.
This is the context in which we need to understand the stark institutional failure to take a principled stand against the monumental tragedy unfolding in Gaza. The overwhelming majority of universities and other academic institutions (from research institutes to specialist associations to journals) have met what the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled could amount to genocide with cowardly silence, if not outright repression against whoever is brave enough to speak out. Not that most professions have fared much better (mainstream media comes to mind). But most professions do not make strong normative claims about their mission. Most professions do not have elaborate documents and training courses emphasizing their commitment to every ethical value under the sun, from democracy and freedom to equality and inclusion.
Take the head of my own institution. At her investiture as…
La suite est à lire sur: jacobin.com
Auteur: Vladimir Bortun
