This feature in today's The Observer newspaper on Britain's relationship to 'public intellectualism' is at times illuminating, and at times frustrating in the most productive of ways. Indeed, some of my frustration with it connects directly to a theme that ST has explored on this website recently: 'impact'. In short, it is notable just how much the notion of 'impact' has come to frame a certain understanding of public intellectualism in this country, ie. the UK.As the author, Professor John Naughton from The Open University (UK), stresses upon reflecting on the problems encountered in his own attempt to draw a list of '300 public intellectuals': "Compiling it [the list] makes one realise how difficult it is to make an... >>

Something violent and unfortunate has happened here.  And yet it is hard to wrap one's thoughts around it, to make contact with 'cause' and 'effect' in any meaningful, productive and instructive way.  This place is uninhabitable but inescapable.  This place inspires imaginings and thoughts of some other, maybe better way; leaves us yearning for clues as to an outside of this circle-declared-horizon.• • • • •There is something beautiful in Pierre Bourdieu's richly-descriptive portray of the Kabyle way of life that serves as the opening frame for the final chapter of his Outline of a Theory of Practice. It strikes me as an attractive and important textual event, not because I wish to be part of tribal Algerian culture, but... >>

Nonstop Reading Group's recent opportunity to engage with Sheila Slaughter via video dialogue, concurrent with our engagement of her and Gary Rhoades' published work, brings their key observations about an ascendant capitalist learning regime both into clear relief and close to home.  In Academic Capitalism and the New Economy, Slaughter and Rhoades analyze the various ways in which the existing institutions of higher education increasingly intersect with the "new economy."  They argue convincingly that rather than universities being corporatized by external forces, various groups and individuals working within universities (administrators, academic professionals, but also faculty and students) are all involved, wittingly or not, in advancing the academic capitalist knowledge regime over the public good knowledge regime.  In order to resist... >>

As Michael Cohen's recent posting on the neoliberal crisis and the Open University makes clear, education as a human right is under assault around the world. Cohen's discussion of the context in Britain paints a particularly dire picture, but universities throughout the European Union face similar circumstances, as my recent experience in Italy demonstrated. Of course, both public and private institutions of higher education in the United States face significant challenges, both economic and ideological, in the current context of austerity. In these days of often desperate defensive struggles, one seldom comes across the kind of idealistic, let alone utopian, experiments in education that might offer some pole star to guide us out of the present morass.  This makes the... >>

Who is counting on tenure? We are all counting on tenure, it seems, as the professional horizon of intellectual work, as the foundation of security upon which any edifice of independent thought might withstand the forces of erosion in our time. However, as far as the New York Times can tell, tenure primarily counts as a politically neutral reward for professionalism and an accommodation to a hierarchical ideal of expertise. Missing from this is any body count of those intellectuals whose activity inside and out of the academia, while crucial to its functioning, are not tracked for tenure. >>