LAUSR

For three months in the early part of this year, many British universities were in turmoil. Not the turmoil we now treat as normal—the ‘restructurings’ so often the first resort of institutional leaders. Or rather, not that only. In fact, it has been uproar rather than mere turmoil. For decades, university teachers have responded to successive assaults in cowed silence. Politicians and the press have preached the gospel of globalisation: markets as inevitable, technological advance as inexorable, flexibility as panacea. In the process, academic staff—teachers and researchers—have been dismissed by the thousand to cover costs; subjects have been reinvented as budgetary units, to be realigned, grown or downsized at whim; intellectual integrity, disciplinary knowledge, professional relationships, personal careers and lives have come a very distant second to the transient needs of financial viability and reputation. Academics have whinged and whimpered, but on the whole gallows humour, rather than active resistance, has been the genre of choice.