Universities at War

There is a war on for the future of the university worldwide. The stakes are high, and they reach deep into our social condition. This book analyses the position, and argues for the necessity of taking sides with the latter. It does so with a sense of urgency, because the market fundamentalists are on the march.

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"Docherty is not only is a brilliant critic of those forces that would like to transform higher education into an extension of the market-place... he is also a man of great moral and civic courage, who under intense pressure from the punishing neoliberal state has risked a great deal to remind us that higher education is a civic institution crucial to creating the formative cultures necessary for a democracy to survive, if not flourish."

- Henry Giroux, McMasters University



"Docherty engages with the secular university in its present crisis, reflecting on its origins and on its role in the future of democracy. He tackles the urgent issue of inequality with a compelling denunciation of the ways of entrenched privilege; he offers a view of governance and representation from the perspective of those who are silenced; and exposes the fundamental damage done to thought by management-speak. Docherty is moral, passionate and committed and this is a fierce and important book."

- Mary Margaret McCabe, King′s College London



There is a war on for the future of the university worldwide. The stakes are high, and they reach deep into our social condition.



On one side are self-proclaimed modernisers who view the institution as vital to national economic success. Here the university is a servant of the national economy in the context of globalization, its driving principles of private and personal enrichment necessary conditions of ‘progress’ and modernity.



Others see this as a radical impoverishment of the university’s capacities to extend human possibilities and freedoms, to seek earnestly for social justice, and to participate in the endless need for the extension of democracy.




This book analyses the former position, and argues for the necessity of taking sides with the latter. It does so with a sense of urgency, because the market fundamentalists are on the march. The fundamental war that is being fought is not just for scholars, but for a better – more democratic, more just, more emancipatory – form of life.




Choose sides.