The university is under threat. For forty years this indispensable democratic institution has been systematically betrayed by governments and the political class, who have redirected it from its proper social and cultural functions through a relentless programme of financialisation. Taking his cue from Julien Benda’s classic polemical essay of 1927, Thomas Docherty exposes the forces behind modern university ‘reform’. He demonstrates that the sector has been politicised and now works explicitly to advance a market-fundamentalist ideology that drives an ever-widening wedge between ordinary citizens and the privileged and wealthy. Against this, the intellectual and the university have an urgent duty to extend democracy and social justice. Looking to the future, Docherty concludes the book with seven hypotheses towards a manifesto and calls on intellectuals everywhere to assist in the survival of the species.
Table of Content
Introduction
Part I: Betrayal
1 Private study
Part II: Crisis
2 Titles and entitlements: why ‘university’?
3 The exceptional and the ordinary
4 Another brick in the wall
5 Inflation, democracy, and populism
Part III: Survival
6 Origins, originality, and the privileges of nature
7 Preliminary hypotheses towards a manifesto
Index
About the author
Thomas Docherty is Professor of English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick. He is the author of fifteen books including Complicity: Criticism Between Collaboration and Commitment (2016), Universities at War (2015) and For the University (2011).
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