THE ACADEMIC
MANIFESTO: FROM AN OCCUPIED TO A PUBLIC UNIVERSITY
Willem Halffman and
Hans Radder
First published in Krisis:
Journal of Contemporary Philosophy, 2013, Issue 3 (in Dutch)
Now available in English: translated by Jan Evertse
Willem Halffman and Hans Radder
The
academic manifesto: From an occupied to a public university
1 The occupied university
The university has been occupied
- not by students demanding a say (as in the 1960s), but this time by the
many-headed Wolf of management.1 The
Wolf has colonised academia with a mercenary army of professional
administrators, armed with spreadsheets, output indicators and audit
procedures, loudly accompanied by the Efficiency and Excellence March.
Management has proclaimed academics the enemy within: academics have to be
distrusted, tested and monitored, under the permanent threat of reorganisation,
discontinuance and dismissal. The academics allow themselves to be meekly
played off against one another, like frightened, obedient sheep, hoping to make
it by staying just ahead of their colleagues. The Wolf uses the most absurd
means to
remain in control, such as
money-squandering semi- and full mergers, increasingly detailed, and thus
costly, accountability systems and extremely expensive prestige projects.
This conquest seems to work and
the export of knowledge from the newly conquered colony can be ever increased,
but inland the troubles fester. Thus, while all the glossed-up indicators
constantly point to the stars, the mood on the academic shop floor steadily
drops. The Wolf pops champagne after each new score in the Shanghai
Competition, while the university sheep desperately work until they drop2 and the quality of the knowledge
plantations is starting to falter, as is demonstrated by a large number of
comprehensive and thorough analyses.3 Meanwhile, the sheep endeavour to bring the absurd anomalies
of the occupation to the Wolf’s attention by means of an endless stream of
opinion articles, lamentations, pressing letters and appeals. In turn, the Wolf
reduces these to mere incidents, brushes them aside as inevitable side effects
of progress, or simply ignores them.
Although our description and
evaluation were written from the perspective of Dutch universities, the gist of
our account (and quite a few details) applies to other countries as well,
especially in Europe.4 While
management’s occupation may not be as advanced in the Netherlands as it is in
England (Holmwood 2011), it has already established a powerful continental
bridgehead (De Boer, Enders and Schimank 2007). To show how these developments
are more than just incidents, we list six critical processes and their excesses
below. We will then proceed to analyse causes and suggest remedies.
Notes:
This article is a slightly
updated and edited translation of the Dutch original, which appeared in Krisis: Tijdschrift voor
actuele filosofie 2013
(3), pp. 2-18. We are grateful for helpful commentary on that version by the Krisis editorial team, in particular René Gabriëls. We would also like to thank Ilse
and Jan Evertse for translating the
Dutch text into English.
2 According to accepted clinical
norms, a quarter of Dutch professors of medical science (especially the younger
ones) suffer from burn-out (Tijdink, Vergouwen en Smulders 2012).
3 See, e.g., Ritzer (1998); Graham
(2002); Hayes and Wynyard (2002); Bok (2003); Washburn (2003); Evans (2005);
Shimank (2005); Boomkens (2008); Gill (2009); Tuchman (2009); Radder (2010);
Krijnen, Lorenz and Umlauf (2011); Collini (2012); Sanders and Van der Zweerde
(2012); Dijstelbloem et al. (2013); Verbrugge and Van Baardewijk (2014).
4
See Lorenz (2006
and 2012); Krücken (2014). In line with the situation in most European
**END**
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