The Idea of the University

Stephen Turner and I wrote this piece for Arena in Australia that takes the current drama at the University of Auckland (see the union site) as its starting-point. You can read it here: “The Idea of the University.”

What isn’t captured by academic econometrics, and the managerial culture that administers them, is the simple idea that community is a non-countable good. This is the value, we think, of talking face-to-face — the supreme value in a Maori place of kōrero kanohi ki te kanohi. A contemporary Muldoon or VC might well ask that this good be counted like any other, but the real problem we confront is the machinic nature of neoliberal capitalism, and no particular person. VCs, after all, can be perfectly nice — and well-meaning — people.

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