Call for Papers

CALL FOR PAPERS

Politically-motivated assaults on institutions of higher education are nothing new. In the mid-1980s, the university emerged as a focal point in the culture wars. The cultural right railed against disciplines in the social sciences and humanities that research social marginalization and structural inequalities, particularly in relation to race and gender. Launched under the guise of returning the academy to its supposed glory days of objectivity and intellectual disinterestedness, conservative academics, politicians and activists generated images of the university as averse to ideological diversity, dedicated to the advancement of left-wing political agendas, hostile to ‘Western civilization’, productive of biased research, and supportive of censorship.^[1] These accusations gripped public debate throughout the 1990s before gradually quieting in the early 21^st century.

However, these attacks have not only returned with a vengeance; they are reoccurring at a moment where the corporatization of the university and the commodification of knowledge are far more advanced, and the neoliberal denigration of the expert is enjoying far greater purchase. In the contemporary neoliberal context, these old critiques emerge with new depictions of the university as an inefficient bureaucracy inadequately training students for the ‘real world’ and the ‘new global economy’, and of faculty research as holding less and less value unless it is directly useful for industry. The image of the university as a crucible of democratic debate and accountability in the public interest is giving way to an image of the university as a means for students to improve their human capital so they can sell themselves for a higher price on the labour market and as a means for corporations to outsource their research and development to the public purse.

These accusations and images of the academy now proliferate with much greater ease and speed through social media, rendering their effects far more damaging and far reaching than in culture wars of the past. Along with generating hostility, suspicion, and abuse toward scholars whose work examines structural oppressions, these claims are being deployed by neoliberal administrators and politicians to rationalize funding cutbacks, further promote ‘activity-based’ budgeting, undermine collegial governance, and mandate that universities adopt ‘free speech’ policies. The culture war now also harbours a much broader base than it did 25 years ago, drawing from an alliance of social conservatives, far-right populists, so-called ‘moderates’, neoliberal innovators, and even academics of multiple political stripes.

This contemporary climate raises questions about whether academics invested in

contesting these attacks are both able and prepared to respond. Safety concerns in the face of online abuse and hostility in the classroom, as well as potential lawsuits from right-wing pundits, have rendered many reluctant to engage with and dispute these claims publicly. Motivation to defend the university may also be lacking, given the impacts of corporatization, the ongoing role and complicity of the university in reproducing structural inequalities (both within and outside of the institution), and a sheer lack of time and energy in the wake of increased administrative workloads, which leave little time for research and teaching, let alone advocacy and public engagement.

With this workshop, we hope to convene scholars interested in examining the causes, consequences, and manifestations of this reinvigoration of the culture wars in the context of the advanced neoliberalization of the university in which they now take place. We additionally aim to develop strategies for responding to these attacks on the university, with a broader objective of developing a new politics of engagement. In doing so, we consider the following questions: what events, controversies, and conditions have instigated contemporary attacks on higher education? How is the current assault on academia both similar to and different from previous ones? What can we do as scholars to counter these claims and effectively engage with the public to generate trust and dispel myths about the academy? How can we do so in a way that ensures our safety and mental health? What about the university is worth fighting for, and what might that struggle look like?

Prospective participants can propose individual papers, panels, roundtable discussions, storytelling and oral histories, or creative and art-based works. Contributions can centre traditional research, lived experience, and/or potential strategic interventions. Topics and themes that presenters may wish to explore in their papers include, but are not limited to, the following:

• The culture wars and the academy
• Corporatization of university funding, collegial governance, and mission
• Academic freedom and the precarization of the academy
• Misrepresentation and discrediting of research and teaching on Intersectionality and theoretical frameworks examining structural inequalities (gender, race,
  disability, class and 2SLGBTQIA+ studies)
• Myths about the academy
• Failings of university EDI, Indigenization, and internationalization initiatives
• Neoliberal, colonial, capitalist logics and subjectivities in the university
• Anti-intellectualism and the denigration of expertise
• Performance metrics, managerialism, and make-work
• The role of the academy in civil society and new strategies for public engagement
• The targeting and harassing of academics
• Examples of resistance (past, present, and future)

Please submit a document containing your abstract (200–250 words only), name, and institutional affiliation to withertheuniversity@uwaterloo.ca by Friday, December 8, 2023 << EXTENDED to December 22nd! >>. Abstracts of the same length for panels or roundtables should be submitted in the same document as the abstracts, author names, e-mail addresses, and affiliations for their component papers.

The conference will be held online on Friday, March 1, 2024. The organizers hope to publish selected papers from the conference as a special issue or edited volume.

Please check withertheuniversity.ca for updates.

Endorsements

Coming soon!