Crisis of Academic Labor Seminar Position Paper – Dimitrios Latsis (original) (raw)

The crisis (<[Greek] κρίνω: to judge, to define>) that many academic disciplines are undergoing in terms of professional prospects and funding levels required to support a robust, inclusive and well-trained professoriate is part of the larger neoliberalization of the university and the increasing espousal of a 'market' logic in education. As such it cannot and should not be treated separately from related issues like the arms race in non-instruction related student amenities, administrative bloat, college athletics etc. It is also clear that the humanities have been impacted as a whole to a disproportionate extent and the very concept of a liberal arts education has been under active attack for some time now in North America, with the clear possibility of higher education becoming a glorified vocational finishing school for the STEM disciplines while still ostensibly marketing itself as a steward of knowledge and research for their own sakes. Despite the need to treat the subject more holistically and to construct coalitions across disciplinary boundaries, tenure and non-tenure track status, and seniority levels, the question still remains: what can we as cinema and media studies scholars and teachers concretely do at this moment in time and from the vantage point of our field to better understand, prepare for and mitigate this crisis without waiting for someone to come and save us and without leaving the space to market forces to preemptively determine our value and reason for being. To my

The Crisis in the Humanities and the Corporate Attack on the University

Top administrators in higher education are well aware that their success depends not upon the quality of education, or even less taking responsibility for the citizens of the next generation as they graduate, but on maintaining a massive profit. The decision-making process depends upon adopting a business model according to which financial criteria supersede any other criteria, including education, academic integrity, or citizenship. From the perspective of socioeconomic self-interest, which is indeed their governing or even sole perspective, these well-positioned decision-makers have absolutely no reason to concern themselves with the political effects of shutting down the humanities. For they are part of the oligarchic interest group, and are content to graduate students who know only how to make money for a corporation. The results within the academy are clear to view.

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The Task of the Liberal Arts in Troubled Times

Heterodox Academy Blog, 2020

As universities reconvene after a summer of protests around race and policing in America, many of us are questioning what our response in higher education should be. As citizens we contribute in many ways, but as scholars the most important contributions we can make to a nation in turmoil lie not in the actions or even the stands that we take but in slowing down and asking the right questions, often the questions that no one is asking, listening especially to the voices that the prevailing opinion within our own social bubble is inclined to scorn and to exclude, and creating constructive dialogue between diverse and even clashing perspectives. Our task is to be more helpfully relevant precisely by stepping back and being more deeply reflective.

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Crisis, Change, and the Humanities: Parameters of Discussion

Humanities

Dynamic metacritical, systemic, paradigmatic thinking about our times is a direct outcome of the work of the humanistic disciplines, for they provide us with the language to understand the operative and abusive functioning of power and inequality. The humanities also teach us that we internalize these systemic operations as new contradictory “locations”, as new experiences of space and identity, that destabilize and make more difficult our need to feel anchored in our social realities. This prefatory essay outlines a pertinent paradigmatic framing of our neoliberal context and reclaims higher education’s key role in the development of democratic traditions of civic engagement. It offers a hopeful regeneration of our times of crisis through the work of the humanities and highlights the long tradition of cultural critique already in place in gender-sensitive disciplines that opt for a reimagining of the future grounded on social change and justice.

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[ Still Clueless in Academe: Trying to Save the Humanities [Modern Language Association Session “Vulnerability and Survivalism of the Humanities in Corporatized Academia” (Chicago, January 2014) Cover Page](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/55722303/thumbnails/1.jpg)

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Crisis of Academic Labor Seminar Position Paper – Dimitrios Latsis (original) (raw)

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