A Boycott of Academic Ranking Systems?

By
0
25 May 2013
university_68

Uni­ver­sit­ies and insti­tu­tions of higher edu­ca­tion across the globe are being impacted by struc­tural change, guided by prin­ciples of the entre­pren­eur­ial uni­ver­sity. The impos­i­tion of New Pub­lic Man­age­ment prin­ciples means that uni­ver­sit­ies are increas­ingly being man­aged like private enter­prises. Resources are being alloc­ated accord­ing to per­form­ance records and tar­get agree­ments. Aca­demic cap­it­al­ism has entered Ger­many, and its main instru­ments are uni­ver­sity depart­ment rank­ings and league tables. The down­side is an aca­demic routine biased towards quant­it­at­ive per­form­ance indic­at­ors (research fund­ing, num­ber of doc­tor­ates and gradu­ates) and a neg­lect of qual­it­at­ive cri­teria. Work in aca­demia has changed fun­da­ment­ally in both design and con­tent. Teach­ing and research are increas­ingly being obstruc­ted by the growth of admin­is­trat­ive respons­ib­il­it­ies. There is a logic of escal­a­tion inher­ent ...
Read More »

Seven Theses on Human Rights: (3) Neoliberal Capitalism & Voluntary Imperialism

By
1
23 May 2013
Barcode Prison

Thesis 3: The post-1989 order combines an economic system that generates huge structural inequalities and oppression with a juridico-political ideology promising dignity and equality. This major instability is contributing to its demise. Why and how did this combination of neoliberal capitalism and humanitarianism emerge? Capitalism has always moralized the economy and applied a gloss of righteousness to profit-making and unregulated competition precisely because it is so hard to believe. From Adam Smith’s ‘hidden hand’ to the assertion that unrestrained egotism promotes the common good or that beneficial effects ‘trickle down’ if the rich get even bigger tax breaks, capitalism has consistently tried to claim the moral high ground. Sim­il­arly, human rights and their dis­sem­in­a­tion are not simply the res­ult ...
Read More »

‘Adjunct’ Faculty in the Neoliberal University

By
2
22 May 2013
college-grad

Chris from Remak­ing the Uni­ver­sity writes to intro­duce a post by Ivan Evans, pro­fessor of soci­ology at UC San Diego. Tarak Barkawi’s opin­ion piece, “The Neo­lib­eral Assault on Aca­demia,” pro­duced a long dis­cus­sion on sev­eral lists because of its claim that fac­ulty have played a cent­ral role in shift­ing their uni­ver­sit­ies towards rev­enue met­rics and mana­gerial assess­ments of intel­lec­tual value. His example is the arrival of the Research Assess­ment Exer­cise (RAE) in the UK, which has mol­ted into the Research Excel­lence Frame­work (REF). Though pushed by the Thatcher gov­ern­ment, the RAE was accep­ted and applied by the UK pro­fess­oriat. Its suc­cessor, the five-​yearly REF, Prof. Barkawi writes, “com­pletely dom­in­ates UK aca­demic life. It determ­ines hir­ing pat­terns, career pro­gres­sion, and status and duties within depart­ments. ...
Read More »

Seven Theses on Human Rights: (2) Power, Morality & Structural Exclusion

By
2
21 May 2013
Guantanamo

Thesis 2: Power and morality, empire and cosmopolitanism, sovereignty and rights, law and desire are not fatal enemies. Instead, a historically specific amalgam of power and morality forms the structuring order of each epoch and society. We will explore the strong internal con­nec­tion between these super­fi­cially ant­ag­on­istic prin­ciples, at the point of their emer­gence in the late 18th cen­tury here and in the post-​1989 order in the next part. The reli­gious ground­ing of human­ity was under­mined by the lib­eral polit­ical philo­sophies of early mod­ern­ity. The found­a­tion of human­ity was trans­ferred from God to (human) nature. Human nature has been inter­preted as an empir­ical fact, a norm­at­ive value, or both. Sci­ence has driven the first approach. The mark of human­ity ...
Read More »

The Reactionary ‘Freeman-​on-​the-​land’ and a Political Fracture

By
4
20 May 2013
Sean Keating

The Irish Times reports over 100 ‘Freeman’-style argu­ments used in the Irish courts this year, cit­ing the Law Soci­ety Gaz­ette . Last Tues­day, Fran­cis Cul­len (36) was sen­tenced to another three months in Mount­joy Prison for refus­ing to recog­nise the court’s jur­is­dic­tion. He claimed, accord­ing to the Irish Times report, that he was ‘a private, sov­er­eign person’. The Law Soci­ety of Ire­land ‘advises any­one in fin­an­cial dif­fi­culty to get advice from someone who is trained in and know­ledge­able about the law as set down in the Con­sti­tu­tion and by the Oire­achtas and the courts’, accord­ing to the Irish Times, which also cites a bar­ris­ter point­ing out the harm­ful and abus­ive dimen­sion to ...
Read More »

Seven Theses on Human Rights: (1) The Idea of Humanity

By
14
16 May 2013
Jheronimus_Bosch

Thesis 1: The idea of ‘humanity’ has no fixed meaning and cannot act as the source of moral or legal rules. Historically, the idea has been used to classify people into the fully human, the lesser human, and the inhuman. Let me have a brief look at its history. Pre-modern societies did not develop a comprehensive idea of the human species. Free men were Athenians or Spartans, Romans or Carthaginians, but not members of humanity; they were Greeks or barbarians, but not humans. According to classical philosophy, a teleologically determined human nature distributes people across social hierarchies and roles and endows them with differentiated characteristics. The word humanitas appeared for the first time in the Roman Republic as a ...
Read More »

#ACCELERATE MANIFESTO for an Accelerationist Politics

By
3
14 May 2013
Indian-call-centers

At the begin­ning of the second dec­ade of the Twenty-​First Cen­tury, global civil­iz­a­tion faces a new breed of cata­clysm. These com­ing apo­ca­lypses ridicule the norms and organ­isa­tional struc­tures of the polit­ics which were forged in the birth of the nation-​state, the rise of cap­it­al­ism, and a Twen­ti­eth Cen­tury of unpre­ced­en­ted wars. Most sig­ni­fic­ant is the break­down of the plan­et­ary cli­matic sys­tem. In time, this threatens the con­tin­ued exist­ence of the present global human pop­u­la­tion. Though this is the most crit­ical of the threats which face human­ity, a series of lesser but poten­tially equally destabil­ising prob­lems exist along­side and inter­sect with it. Ter­minal resource deple­tion, espe­cially in water and energy reserves, offers the pro­spect of mass star­va­tion, col­lapsing eco­nomic paradigms, and ...
Read More »

Homegrown Terror: The Boston Marathon’s Media Coverage

By
1
8 May 2013
The moment of the Boston Marathon explosion

In the wake of the Boston Mara­thon explo­sions (15 April 2013), the Obama Depart­ment of Justice’s treat­ment of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev — Amer­ican cit­izen and primary ter­ror sus­pect — gained sig­ni­fic­ant atten­tion from lib­eral media. Dzhokhar will be charged as a civil­ian for using weapons of mass destruc­tion; he was provided legal rep­res­ent­a­tion and Mirand­ized at Boston’s Beth Israel Dea­con­ess Hos­pital. Reportedly, he refuses to cooper­ate with ques­tion­ing. He has been moved from Beth Israel in Boston to Devens Fed­eral Med­ical Cen­ter (oper­ated by the DOJ’s Fed­eral Bur­eau of Pris­ons), which spe­cial­izes in treat­ing inmates who require long-​term med­ical and/​or psy­chi­at­ric care. Since his move to Devens, there have been sug­ges­tions that nego­ti­ations are cur­rently tak­ing place, poten­tially elim­in­at­ing the death pen­alty as one of ...
Read More »

The Lacanian Trials

By
1
6 May 2013
Jacques Lacan

The 30th anniversary of Lacan’s death in September 2011 was marked by an “intellectual dispute,” one which was not settled in the sphere of ideas or public academic debate, but in a defamation trial in the French criminal courts. While a still on-going war of petitions and lawsuits is partly informed by individual rivalries, the juridical scope of the Lacanians’ feuds provides interesting reading with Lacan’s life, his teaching and his thought. In the initial trial of January 11th 2012, the “plaintiffs” were Judith Miller, Lacan’s daughter from his second marriage with Sylvia Bataille, and Jacques-Alain Miller, also known as JAM, Lacan’s son-in-law and legal “executor” of his (intellectual) property. The defendants: Elisabeth Roudinesco, also known as Lacan’s biographer, ...
Read More »

Suárez and Rouse: Masculinity, Sport and Rape Apologies

By
2
25 April 2013
Nancy Fouts

As Luis Suárez joined Johan le Roux and Mike Tyson in the annals of sports-​biting his­tory this week, across the water in North­ern Ire­land Alvin Rouse con­tin­ues to play in goal for Bal­li­n­amal­lard United Foot­ball Club, des­pite facing three counts of rape, two of sexual assault, one of caus­ing a per­son to engage in a sexual act and one of false imprisonment. The dif­fer­ence in the nar­rat­ives of the two cases is strik­ing, as is the insti­tu­tional response. Suárez was imme­di­ately fined by Liv­er­pool for bit­ing Ivan­ovic and yes­ter­day received a 10-​match ban from the FA for ‘viol­ent con­duct’. For sim­ilar offences Le Roux was banned for 19-​months, and Tyson for one year with a $3 mil­lion fine. In the media Suárez was ...
Read More »

Thatcher: The Wound Festers

By
1
24 April 2013
Thatcher – no alternative

The passing of Mar­garet Thatcher was announced to this author via a simple text mes­sage, it con­tained only two words, ‘rejoice rejoice’. Its tone appeared to encap­su­late one side of a debate which has exer­cised Brit­ish polit­ical life for over three dec­ades, the per­son and policies of Mar­garet Thatcher. The jubil­ant crowds who con­greg­ated in numer­ous towns and cit­ies on hear­ing of Thatcher’s death bears wit­ness to the con­tin­ued anim­os­ity dir­ec­ted towards her by those on the polit­ical left. Whilst the hagi­o­graphy of the ‘Iron Lady’ by her sup­port­ers on the right exem­pli­fies an almost North Korean level of enforced con­form­ity in mourn­ing the passing of their own ‘Great Leader’. In seek­ing to exam­ine fur­ther the leg­acy of Thatcher, bey­ond the ...
Read More »

All Rise: What Does Justice Sound Like?

By
4
23 April 2013
Court Document Deep Water Horizon

Three years ago last Sat­urday, an oil rig around 50 kilo­metres off the coast of Louisi­ana exploded. The explo­sion killed eleven work­ers instant­an­eously, and marked the begin­ning of an 87-​day period of uncon­trol­lable crude oil spillage into the Gulf of Mex­ico, the sea-​floor well spew­ing out around 4.9 mil­lion bar­rels of oil before it was finally capped on 15 July 2010. The spill blackened over 1000 miles of shoreline in Louisi­ana and neigh­bour­ing states, put hun­dreds of mar­ine spe­cies and eight national parks at risk, threatened the live­li­hoods of local fish­ing and tour­ist indus­tries, and had other envir­on­mental con­sequences that are ongo­ing and argu­ably immeas­ur­able. A study last year sug­ges­ted, for example, that the ‘dis­pers­ant’ used to make the oil sink faster as part of ...
Read More »

Anti-​fetishism: Notes on the Thought of Walter Benjamin

By
2
22 April 2013
Walter Benjamin

Although Wal­ter Ben­jamin doesn’t always dir­ectly ref­er­ence the notion of polit­ical fet­ish­ism, it can be argued that this concept under­lies everything that he writes. Benjamin’s concept of the “phant­asmagoria,” that miasma of mis­rep­res­ent­a­tion that stands for real­ity in our time, is basic­ally a state­ment about polit­ical — among other forms — of fet­ish­ism. For Ben­jamin, this mass prac­tice of fet­ish­ism has both polit­ical eco­nomic and theo­lo­gical ori­gins. In the short run the phant­asmagoria is the off­shoot of com­mod­ity fet­ish­ism and the rise of cap­it­al­ism. More pro­foundly, fet­ish­ism is, for Ben­jamin an off­shoot of the fall of Adam, as well as the less often men­tioned Eve. Ben­jamin tells us that whereas in para­dise, Adam had a dir­ect and unme­di­ated rela­tion­ship to the objects he found there ...
Read More »

The Philpott Trial, Welfare Reform and the Facialisation of Poverty

By
1
19 April 2013
Daily Mail 4 April 2013

The Brit­ish Right cel­eb­rates the per­son­al­ity cult of its heroine Mar­garet Thatcher this week, at a time when an obsess­ively indi­vidu­al­ised personality-​politics dom­in­ates the press and is increas­ingly rede­fin­ing the terms of polit­ical debate and prof­fer­ing man­dates for legal change. The creep of the per­sonal ‘face’ (altern­ately vile, heroic or inno­cent, but almost always sig­ni­fy­ing some unbear­able shock or out­rage) imposed on a pub­lic debate or per­ceived social prob­lem has been insi­di­ous and con­stant since Thatcher­ism sup­posedly redefined Bri­tain as a nation of indi­vidu­als. This month, in an imme­di­ately notori­ous front-​page splash, a right-​wing Brit­ish tabloid, the Daily Mail, showed Mick Phil­pott sit­ting sur­roun­ded by his six chil­dren (Duwayne, Jade, Jay­den, John and Jessie Phil­pott, aged from 13 to 5) as he was ...
Read More »

Mao Tse-​Tung in Bogota: The Pragmatism of FARC and its Parallel in China

By
1
18 April 2013
Photography by Abad Colorado

Sev­eral ana­lysts of the peace pro­cess cur­rently under way in Colom­bia have over­looked the curi­ous par­al­lel between the guer­rilla insur­gents’ pro­posal to estab­lish some 50 Peas­ant Reserve Zones (ZRCs in their Span­ish ini­tials) in the national ter­rit­ory and the policy of ‘one coun­try, two sys­tems’ imple­men­ted by the Chinese lead­er­ship fol­low­ing the death of Mao. It seems that in Colom­bia too: ‘It doesn’t mat­ter whether a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice’ (Deng Xiaop­ing). The path to recon­cili­ation and polit­ical open­ness between China and its great ideo­lo­gical enemy of that time, the United States, had a novel aspect little stud­ied by West­ern polit­ical philo­soph­ers: the link between Marx­ism and prag­mat­ism rather than the tra­di­tional con­flict between Marx­ism ...
Read More »