Excessive managerialism, neoliberalisation and casualisation are some of the main challenges that are threatening the viability and the values of the university today. Sara Ahmed argues in her book On Being Included: On Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life (2012) that “we need to work on the university when we work at the university.” In this spirit, we called for an honest assessment of the effects of privatisation, the limitations it has imposed on important scholarship, and, the possibilities it forecloses. Our contributors sifted through the wreckage of the truly public university, wondering what went wrong and why. They breathed the dust of the university’s backrooms, where hostility and attrition wear down the most dedicated scholars and students. The contributors to this issue shared their experiences of solidarity amidst exploitation.
‘The University’ issue brings together the voices of academic and professional staff, postgraduate and undergraduate students, both domestic and international, to explore some of the challenges facing the university as a community of scholars and learners. We are very grateful to Emerita Professor Margaret Thornton (ANU) and Professor Emerita Raewyn Connell (University of Sydney), whose contributions bookend this issue. Both are recognised leaders in their field, and have spent years researching and analysing the problems universities are facing today.
A main theme of this issue is casualisation. More than 40% of all staff hired at Australian universities today – both academic and professional staff – are currently employed casually. The first part of this issue provides both big picture and individual accounts of the detrimental effects of casualisation on the sector, on the university staff themselves, and consequently on students as well. Heterodox Academy, and decolonisation are topics discussed by Bianca Hennessy and Caitlin Setnicar. The poets in this edition give a many-plateaued image of modern higher education. Among their lines you will find knights, plosives, leaves, anime, and at least one footnote. In the context of the funding attack on Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences two pieces by Rosalind Moran and Professor Peter Tregear describe the damage done by these cuts, specifically on the arts and on the ANU School of Music. Tim Hollo and a collective of concerned academics and students (the Matters of Concern Collective) conclude the issue by putting forward suggestions about how to end the neoliberalisation of our universities, and suggest some ideas for fighting for a public university of the commons.
The kernel and impetus for this issue is a dossier on the review of the School of Culture, History and Language (CHL), at the College of Asia and the Pacific at ANU. CHL went through a violently prolonged managerial review between 2013 and 2017, where staff redundancies and disregard for students resulted in the loss of a school ‘community’. CHL’s review came after the infamous review of the School of Music, and was followed by a demoralising review of the Center on China in the World, among others. These reviews are a common process for university management to bypass permanent employment contracts for (tenured) academics and fire staff, restructure departments and cut funding. These review processes irreparably damage the scholarly communities affected by them.
The posters and photos across the dossier, designed by Annie McCarthy, were used in the protests by staff and students to save CHL from the cuts. Real and fictionalised diverse accounts of what happened are shared by Professor Emerita Tessa Morris-Suzuki and two anonymous contributors. Two CHL international PhD students at the time Evi Eliyanah and Dr. Dario Di Rosa along with local undergraduate student Erin Mccullagh from Language Diversity — who was part of organising an inspiring student movement to save language teaching at CHL — all provide a rich account of student experiences during university reviews.
The CHL dossier ends with two sets of documents; first are the documents provided through the Freedom of Information request placed by the Collective of Concerned CHL HDR Students with the aim to understand how the university have planned for the review (or didn’t) and how much the review financially cost management. Second, are the letters of support from professional academic institutions providing a glimpse of the devastation and the worldwide concern about saving the school. The aim of this dossier, as with the issue more broadly, is to document and archive some of the stories that the university management would rather silence.
These accounts provided in this issue provide an array of complex issues, often constituting unwanted voices that the university management does not publicise in its glossy brochures that constantly solicit new students to the courses whose teaching staff it has atrophied. We wish that by documenting some of these voices, that Demos Journal have provided a space to center silenced and marginalised discussions on university campuses, providing an insiders glimpse at what is happening not only at ANU but at most Australian university campuses today.
A huge thank you to all our valued contributors and to our team of dedicated sub-editors: Dee Perez-McVie, Emma Hartley and Samantha Hartley. Thanks must also go to Woroni, for providing the funds for printing this issue. We are very grateful for all those who have put thoughts, research and efforts to thinking about the university, an institution essential to our societies and communities, one that we truly believe should be run by the public and for the public good.
