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

[Cynthia Wright]

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 in North America and 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:

    - mapping the terrain of campus struggle in Canada and North America
    - connecting with and learning from global struggles
    - waged and unwaged labour in the university
    - abolition of student debt
    - the university and the occupy movement
    - the cultural politics of the neoliberal university
    - the death of the humanities
    - militarization of the university
    - intersections of university struggles other fights against oppression
    - environmental justice
    - beyond public education
    - radical pedagogy
    - academic freedom
    - the politics of research funding
    - the economics of the neoliberal university
    - university and student governance
    - the undergraduate experience of neoliberalism
    - alternative/free/autonomous universities
    - organizing the education factory
    - the suppression of on-campus dissent and organization

Please email submissions to universityisours at 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 the University of Toronto General Assembly. 

via Bob Hanke

Communication Studies and Humanities
Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies
*aka York University
Toronto, Ontario, Canada




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