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PALGRAVE CRITICAL UNIVERSITY STUDIES
THE TOXIC UNIVERSITY

ZOMBIE LEADERSHIP, ACADEMIC ROCK
STARS, AND NEOLIBERAL IDEOLOGY
John Smyth
Palgrave Critical University Studies
Series editor
John Smyth
University of Huddersfield
Huddersfield, UK
Aims of the Palgrave Critical University Studies Series
Universities everywhere are experiencing unprecedented changes and
most of the changes being inflicted upon universities are being imposed
by political and policy elites without any debate or discussion, and little
understanding of what is being lost, jettisoned, damaged or destroyed.
The over-arching intent of this series is to foster, encourage, and publish
scholarship relating to academia that is troubled by the direction of these
reforms occurring around the world. The series provides a much-needed
forum for the intensive and extensive discussion of the consequences of
ill-conceived and inappropriate university reforms and will do this with
particular emphasis on those perspectives and groups whose views have
hitherto been ignored, disparaged or silenced. The series explores these
changes across a number of domains including: the deleterious effects
on academic work, the impact on student learning, the distortion of aca-
demic leadership and institutional politics, and the perversion of institu-
tional politics. Above all, the series encourages critically informed debate,
where this is being expunged or closed down in universities.
More information about this series at

http://www.springer.com/series/14707
John Smyth
The Toxic University

Zombie Leadership, Academic Rock Stars
and Neoliberal Ideology
John Smyth
School of Education and Professional
Development
University of Huddersfield
Huddersfield, UK
Palgrave Critical University Studies

ISBN 978-1-137-54976-1 ISBN 978-1-137-54968-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-54968-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017938297
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017

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in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction
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now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
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The registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd.
The registered company address is: The Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW,
United Kingdom
Series Editor’s Preface
Naming this as a Critical University Studies Series gives it a very distinct

and clear agenda. The over-arching intent is to foster, encourage, and
publish scholarship relating to universities that is troubled by the direc-
tion of reforms occurring around the world.
It is a no-brainer, that universities everywhere are experiencing
unprecedented changes. What is much less clear, and there are reasons
for the lack of transparency, are the effects of these changes within and
across a number of domains, including:
• the nature of academic work

• students’ experiences of learning
• leadership and institutional politics
• research and the process of knowledge production, and the
• social and public good
Most of the changes being inflicted upon universities globally are being
imposed by political and policy elites without any debate or discussion,
and little understanding of what is being lost, jettisoned, damaged or
destroyed. Benefits, where they are articulated at all, are framed exclu-
sively in terms of short-term political gains. This is not a recipe for a
robust and vibrant university system.
What this series seeks to do is provide a much-needed forum for the
intensive and extensive discussion of the consequences of ill-conceived
and inappropriate university reforms. It does this with particular
v
vi SERIES EDITOR’S PREFACE
emphasis on those perspectives and groups whose views have hitherto

been ignored, disparaged or silenced.
The defining hallmark of the series, and what makes it markedly dif-
ferent from any other series with a focus on universities and higher
education, is its ‘criticalist agenda’. By that we mean, the books raise
questions like:
• Whose interests are being served?

• How is power being exercised and upon whom?
• What means are being promulgated to ensure subjugation?
• What might a more transformational approach look like?
• What are the impediments to this happening?
• What then, needs be done about it?
The series intends to foster the following kind of contributions:
• Critical studies of university contexts, that while they might be local

in nature, are shown to be global in their reach;
• Insightful and authoritative accounts that are courageous and that
‘speak back’ to dominant reforms being inflicted on universities;
• Critical accounts of research relating to universities that use innova-
tive methodologies;
• Looking at what is happening to universities across disciplinary
fields, and internationally;
• Examining trends, patterns and themes, and presenting them in a
way that re-theorizes and re-invigorates knowledge around the sta-
tus and purposes of universities; and
• Above all, advancing the publication of accounts that re-position
the study of universities in a way that makes clear what alternative
robust policy directions for universities might look like.
The series aims to encourage discussion of issues like academic work,

academic freedom, and marketization in universities. One of the short-
comings of many extant texts in the field of university studies is that they
attempt too much, and as a consequence their focus becomes diluted.
There is an urgent need for studies in a number of aspects with quite a
sharp focus, for example:
SERIES EDITOR’S PREFACE vii
1. There is a conspicuous absence of studies that give existential

accounts of what life is like for students in the contemporary uni-
versity. We need to know more about the nature of the stresses and
strains, and the consequences these market-driven distortions have
for the learning experiences of students, their lives and futures.
2. We know very little about the nature and form of how institutional
politics are engineered and played out, by whom, in what ways,
and with what consequences in the neoliberal university. We need
‘insider’ studies that unmask the forces that sustain and maintain
and enable current reform trajectories in universities.
3. The actions of policy elites transnationally are crucial to what is hap-
pening in universities worldwide. But we have yet to become privy
to the thinking that is going on, and how it is legitimated and
transmitted, and the means by which it is made opaque. We need
studies that puncture this veil of silence.
4. None of what is happening that is converting universities into
annexes of the economy would be possible without a particular
version of leadership having been allowed to become dominant. We
need to know how this is occurring, what forms of resistance there
have been to it, how it has been suppressed, and the forms of soli-
darity necessary to unsettle and supplant this dominant paradigm.
5. Finally, and taking the lead from critical geographers, there is
a pressing need for studies with a focus on universities as unique
spaces and places—possibly in concert with sociologists and
anthropologists.
We look forward to this series advancing these important agenda and to

the reclamation and restitution of universities as crucial intellectual dem-
ocratic institutions.
John Smyth, Series Editor
Professor of Education and Social Justice
University of Huddersfield and
Emeritus Professor, Federation University Australia
Acknowledgements
Works like this do not come about easily because they are not atomistic
individual constructions. They are works that owe a huge debt of grati-
tude to a lifetime of colleagues who have helped me in various ways and
at different times, to think through the changing kaleidoscope of ideas
that constitute the modern university. In the most recent part of this
near half-century tortuous journey, I would like to sincerely thank Barry
Down, Robin Simmons, Michael Corbett, and Helen Gunter—all of
whom sustained me in conversation as I engaged in the lonely process of
the long-distance writer. I am grateful as well, to Andrew James, Eleanor
Christie, and Laura Aldridge at Palgrave for their support and encour-
agement throughout. Finally, I continue to remain indebted to my life-
time partner Solveiga, for her patience, forbearance, good humour, and
for just being there! This book received no institutional funding. Names,
institutions, places, and incidents referred to in this book, unless explic-
itly named, are fictional. Any resemblance to actual events, institutions,
or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
ix
Contents
1 Introduction: ‘Getting an Academic Life’ 1
2 Neoliberalism: An Alien Interloper in Higher Education 27
3 Why the ‘Toxic’ University? A Case of Two Very

Different Academics 55
4 Why Zvombie Leadership? 75
5 Cultivation of the ‘Rock Star’ Academic Researcher? 99
6 The University as an Instrument of ‘Class’ 125
7 The ‘Cancer Stage of Capitalism’ in Universities 149
8 Enough Is Enough…of This Failed Experiment

of ‘Killing the Host’ 179
9 Gevt off My Bus! The Reversal of What We Have

Been Doing in Universities 209
Author Index 221
Subject Index 227
xi
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: ‘Getting an Academic Life’
What Is This Book About?

I can cut to the essence of what this book is about through retell-
ing an anecdote. In the opening pages of his book Surviving identity,
McLaughlin (2012) talks about growing up in Scotland in the 1970s
and of it not being uncommon in the streets of cities and towns to see
‘eccentric looking men wearing sandwich-boards proclaiming that “the
end is nigh”’ (p. 1). We have all seen them, and they are usually railing
against all manner of sinful practices and urging us to ‘buy’ into their
particular religious views in order to be ‘saved’. As McLauglin says, we
generally ignore these people, treat them as being harmless, regard them
as having some sort of mental problem, and go on with our business.
McLaughlin’s point is that while we have no difficulty in dismiss-
ing the sandwich-board proclaimers as being somewhat deranged and
alarmist, we are much more reticent to dismiss a whole range of not
dissimilar contemporary practices that are underpinned by fear and the
same ‘survivalist’ mentality. McLaughlin’s claim is that these days we
are continually assailed by political claims that unless we follow certain
policy trajectories and ideologies presented to us, and construct our lives
accordingly in particular ways, we will be doomed! In other words, if we
want to be ‘survivors’, to use McLaughlin’s terminology, then we will
have to construct ourselves along the lines of a certain kind of identity.
The fear-inducing industry is possibly the most powerful, potent, per-
vasive, and profound force shaping all aspects of our contemporary lives,
© The Author(s) 2017 1

J. Smyth, The Toxic University, Palgrave Critical University Studies,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-54968-6_1
2 1 INTRODUCTION: ‘GETTING AN ACADEMIC LIFE’
as Furedi (1997, 2004, 2005) has shown—and this extends considerably

beyond the obvious threat of terrorism. What we are being told by our
political and policy elites is that we are under threat at a number of lev-
els—collectively as a society, there is the constant spectre of economic
oblivion by our smarter international economic competitors; at the level
of our social institutions, universities as a particular example, face cer-
tain obliteration unless we continually strive to be in the top echelons of
the ‘academic rankings of world universities’; and, individually, academ-
ics within universities will perish unless they operate and comport them-
selves according to a particular set of narrowly conceived rules, in order
to survive and insulate themselves from a precarious and fiercely com-
petitive academic world.
What this book is seeking to do is to puncture some of these deeply
entrenched and emotional myths as they pertain to the kind of academic
identity that is being constructed in/by the contemporary university, and
the way academic work is being shaped. It pursues two basic questions:
• Why have academics been so compliant in acquiescing to the con-

struction of universities as marketplaces?
• When universities are conceived in econometric terms, what is the
effect, and what kind of consequences flow?
The elephant in the room question, after we strip away all of the market-
ing hype universities construct around themselves is:
• Have universities become toxic places in which to work?
Why Am I Writing This Book, and in This Particular

Way?
It is not always the case that in academic writing we stop and ask our-
selves the question—why am I writing this, especially in the present
times when universities are continually reminding us to ‘publish or per-
ish’. It is almost a no-brainer! However, this is hardly a justification for
writing a book like this one, especially where there are already hundreds
of books that describe the carnage being done to universities around the
world. The fact that I am writing this at all is all the more remarkable,
given that I am no longer in a remunerated university position. I am
what is euphemistically called an ‘independent scholar’, made ‘surplus to
WHY AM I WRITING THIS BOOK, AND IN THIS PARTICULAR WAY? 3
requirements’, and who is not driven by the mantra of the performativity

agenda.
The explanation of why this book has come into existence at all
resides, in my case, in looking back over more than 40 years as a univer-
sity academic, in light of the most recent marketized turn (Rule 1998)
that has brought with it a particularly viscous and unsavoury ensemble of
unwarranted intrusions into universities that are having all kinds of path-
ological effects. So what, you may ask? That’s life, and life has changed in
all kinds of ways, so just move on! It is not so simple.
If I can put a more precise finger on my animating motive, and there
has to be one in taking on such a mammoth task in ‘retirement’, then
it has to be to try and cast some light on what I am calling ‘getting an
academic life’, and the obstacles and impediments. As a number of schol-
ars have indicated before me, there is something mystical, even magical,
about how one gets an academic life—most of it occurring out of sight,
invisible to the eye, and at best what we get to see, are the products at
the end, and only passing glimpses of the process. I will not be venturing
into that space, because it has already been done—for a superb collection
of examples on the ‘hidden’ from view nature of academic work, see the
edited collection Academic working lives by Gornall et al. (2015).
When massive and possibly irreversible damage is inflicted upon a
social institution with little or no opposition, then this ought to be a
cause for alarm. When the work of that institution is poorly understood,
or mischievously misrepresented in the wider public imagination, then
this ought to add urgency to the angst. When that institution happens
to be the last remaining place in which social critique and criticism is
incubated, nurtured, fostered, encouraged, and supported, then our
indignation ought to be almost in hyper-drive. Well, that is the situa-
tion in contemporary universities today, and most of what is occurring
is largely invisible, and is being covered up or shrouded with a logic that
is simply laughable. Put as directly as I can state it, what is happening
to universities is placing our societies in a parlous and possibly terminal
state.
If we are to unmask what is going on within and to universities, then
we need to look forensically at the forces at work and the pathological and
dysfunctional effects that are placing academic lives in such jeopardy—
hence my somewhat provocative-sounding title ‘the toxic university’.
One of the most succinct explanations of what is animating me in
writing this book was put by Lucal (2015)—echoing arguably the most
significant sociologist ever, Charles Wright Mills (1971 [1959]) in his

The sociological imagination—when she said:
…neoliberalism is a critical public issue influencing apparently private trou-

bles of college [university] students and teachers. (p. 3)
I could not have put it any better myself. To briefly unpick the distinc-
tion Lucal is making, just so we do not miss its significance, Mills (1971
[1959]) argued that the purpose of sociology as a perspective, is to go
beyond what are presented as ‘personal troubles’ (p. 14)—which he
argued reside ‘inside’ individuals and their lives—to looking instead at
the ‘public issues’ (p. 15) that constitute the social, economic, and politi-
cal forces that are really responsible for, and that lie at the heart of these
‘troubles’.
As I have argued elsewhere (Smyth et al. 2014), Mills was scathing of
the academy—his peers—for the way in which they had retreated from
the real world into what he labelled ‘the lazy safety of specialization’
(p. 28) within the academy, often doing work that spoke to only a hand-
ful of people. What he was referring to, over half a century ago, was the
way universities were forcing scholars (and they were complicit in this),
into ‘keeping problems isolated within narrow disciplinary sites’ (Smyth
et al. 2014, p. 6), with the effect that their unwillingness to ‘take up the
challenge[s] that now confront them’, meant that academics were able
to ‘further abdicate the intellectual and political tasks of social analysis’
(Mills 1971, p. 29).
My title to this chapter of ‘getting an academic life’ could quite eas-
ily be misinterpreted. It could be seen as an opening for the provision of
a recipe into how to get a sinecure—a cushy, nice, clean, well-paid, and
not too demanding job, with lots of holidays—which is the way academic
work is constructed in the wider public imagination. Nothing could be
further from my intent. The ‘real’ academic is the complete reverse of its
public caricature!
What I am pitching towards in this book is the polar opposite of the
popular view. The line I take is that ‘getting an academic life’ means
being prepared to experience considerable discomfort, to focus on issues
that are not the subject of close critical scrutiny, and taking on power-
ful and entrenched views that have a lot to lose through being exposed,
even when doing so is likely to jeopardize one’s livelihood. Getting an
academic life means having the courage to take on and puncture elitist
PATHOLOGICAL ORGANIZATIONAL DYSFUNCTION 5
views that are hard to penetrate because they are made to appear differ-
ent from what they really are. This is how power works, and challenging
it is a very risky thing to do. Being a ‘true’ academic is lonely, hard, and
dangerous work!
Pathological Organizational Dysfunction

Just on 40 years ago, for all of my sins, I studied ‘organizational the-
ory and ‘management behaviour’ as part of my doctorate in educa-
tional administration. I cannot remember encountering the term, but in
light of my subsequent four decades of working in universities around
the world, I think I have encountered a good deal of what ‘pathologi-
cal organisational dysfunction’ (POD) means in practice. I regard it is
an ensemble term for a range of practices that fall well within the ambit
of the ‘toxic university’. The short explanation is that what I am call-
ing POD has become a syndrome within which the toxic university has
become enveloped in its unquestioning embrace of the tenets of neolib-
eralism—marketization, competition, audit culture, and metrification.
In other words, POD has become a major emblematic ingredient of the
toxic university, which as Ferrell (2011) points out looks fairly unprob-
lematic on the surface:
Higher education on the corporate model imagines students as consumers,

choosing between knowledge products and brands. It imagines itself lib-
erating the university from the dictates of the state/tradition/aristocratic
self-replication, and putting it in the hands of its democratic stakehold-
ers. It therefore naturally subscribes to the general management principles
and practices of global corporate culture. These principles—transparency,
accountability, efficiency—are hard to argue with in principle. (p. 166
emphasis in original)
What is not revealed in this glossy reading of neoliberalism is the way in

which it does its work, or its effects, as Ferrell (2011) puts it in relation
to universities, the way it has ‘wrecked something worthwhile’ (p. 181).
John Gatto, an award-winning teacher of the year in New York,
comes closest to what I mean by POD in his description of ‘psycho-
pathic’ organizations. Gatto (2001) says that the term psychopathic,
as applied to organizations, while it might conjure up lurid images of
deranged people running amuck, really means something quite different;
he invokes the term to refer to people ‘without consciences’ (p. 305).

The way he put it is that:
Psychopaths and sociopaths are often our charming and intelligent room-
mates in corporations and institutions. They mimic perfectly the necessary
protective coloration of compassion and concern, they mimic human dis-
course. Yet underneath that disguise they are circuit boards of scientific
rationality, pure expressions of pragmatism. (p. 305 emphasis original)
As they say, the devil resides in the detail. How then does this work?
The essence, Gatto (2001) says, is that we have to start with the para-
dox: ‘All large bureaucracies, public or private, are psychopathic to the
degree that they are well managed’ (p. 305). What he is saying is that
when the profit motive, or its ideological proxy, is the animating force
(i.e. homo economicus), then the underlying logic is that ‘the pain of
the moment leads inevitably to a better tomorrow for those who survive’
(p. 305). Organizations that blindly follow this article of faith in the pur-
suit of profitability succeed, and they are acting rationally within their
own logic, but they do so at the cost of enormous suffering and degrada-
tion—because they have no conscience, and in this sense they are ‘evil’.
Here is the way Gatto (2001) puts it, and it is worth quoting at
length:
The sensationalistic charge that all large corporations, including [universi-

ties], are psychopathic becomes less inflammatory if you admit the obvi-
ous first, that all such entities are non-human. Forget the human beings
who populate corporate structures. Sure, some of them sabotage corpo-
rate integrity from time to time like human beings, but never consistently,
or ever for long, for if that were the story, corporate coherence would be
impossible, as often it is in Third World countries. Now at least you see
where I’m coming from in categorizing the institutional corporation of
[the university] as psychopathic. Moral codes don’t drive decision-making.
That means [decisions are made] in order to oil greater wheels… [They
have] no tear ducts with which to weep. (p. 305)
Where Gatto (2001) is pointing to is that ‘psychopathic programming is

incapable of change’ because pragmatic solutions inevitably trump ethical
considerations:
It lacks moral dimension or ethical mind beyond the pragmatic.

Institutional morality is always public relations; once institutional machin-
ery of sufficient size and complexity is built, a logical movement com-
mences that is internally aimed toward subordination and eventual
elimination of all ethical mandates. (p. 307)
The way I have discussed this phenomenon in my own work, is by invok-

ing the confession by Hamlet to his two courtiers in Shakespeare’s
Hamlet, that his ‘wit is diseased’ (Alexander 1971, p. 78) because he had
lost his capacity to reason because of the imposition of degraded stand-
ards of the court of Denmark. Claudius had ascended to the throne by
‘poisoning his brother and marrying his widow’ (Alexander 1971, p. 78).
I use this little example to coin the term ‘diseased reasoning’ (Smyth
and McInerney 2012, p. 188) to refer to organizational situations of an
‘incapacity’ and ‘inability to make judgements’ that reflect an ‘under-
standing of the wholesomeness of consequences’ by virtue of ‘conniving
acts [that] usurp power’ (p. 188).
Diseased reasoning is a good way of describing the inability to pro-
vide authentic explanations for complex issues, because the capacity of
organizations to make judgements have become infected with alien ideas
like those of neoliberalism. The way Apple (2016) puts it is that neolib-
eralism is able to operate because of the ‘epistemological veil’ (p. 880)—
or as Davis (2006) terms it, the ‘epistemological fog’ (p. 45)—that is
spun by those in dominant positions to conceal what is really going on.
This lack of knowledge is crucial to neoliberalism, because ‘what goes on
under the veil is secret and that must be kept from “public view”’ (Apple
2016, p. 880).
There can be little doubt that all of this is ‘dysfunctional’—in the sense
that what is being undermined and diverted here is the real purpose of
organizations like universities. We need look no further than the hyped up
banal utterances from university PR departments for evidence of that. If all
of this were merely the occasional aberrations of a few misguided individu-
als, that might be understandable, but my claim is that it is much worse. It
is pathological in the sense that what it constitutes is ‘extreme, excessive or
markedly abnormal… in a way that is not normal or that shows illness or
mental problem’ (Merriam-Webster Dictionary 2016, http://www.mer-
riam-webster.com/dictionary/pathological). Riemer (2013) says that the
ascendancy of the PR and marketing aspects of universities is symptomatic

of this ‘new era of managerial radicalism’ where one of the most dramatic
dysfunctions is that ‘expenditure is lavished on marketing and landscape
while research and teaching are starved’. In this regard he says:
…the managerial stranglehold over academia shows striking parallels to the

disastrous financialisation of the world economy. The neoliberal superin-
tendents of the new academic order are, in their little world, just as detri-
mental to the public interest as the high priests of Lehman Brothers and
Goldman Sachs (https://newmatilda.com/2013/02/04/sandstone-aca-
demics-against-wall/)
I can illustrate in some detail what I mean about POD most expedi-
tiously, through what Hall (2014) has termed the university as the ‘anxi-
ety machine’. Collapsed down, Hall’s (2014) argument is that when the
intellectual capacities of universities are rendered in a way that makes
them ‘just another commodity in the market’ serving an ever-narrow-
ing conception of ‘economic growth’, then this marketized abstrac-
tion from reality means that everything in the university must be ‘made
contingent on the production of value’ (http://www.richard-hall.
org/2014/03/19/on-the-university-as-anxiety-machine/)—and this
can be money from research grants and student fees, but also in symbolic
forms like ‘status, rankings and citations’ (Berg et al. 2016, p. 171),
then we will have reached the point described by Hall (2014) where ‘we
are scrubbed clean of our humanity, and this is done systemically’. The
notion of ‘scrubbing’ our souls of any vestiges of humanity is an inter-
esting way of concealing what both Hall (2014) and Berg et al. (2016)
show is the production of ‘anxiety’ behind the veil of economic rational-
ity—that it is all about ensuring efficiency, viability, and institutional sur-
vival.
Insisting that university academics operate as if they are ‘small busi-
nesses’ (something I deal with in some detail in Chap. 7 and how this
demand arose), overrides and undermines the real purposes of universi-
ties with quite tragic consequences (also in Chap. 7). In an impassioned
letter to The Guardian newspaper (https://www.theguardian.com/edu-
cation/2015/jul/06/let-uk-universities-do-what-they-do-best-teaching-
and-research) that universities be left to do what they do best, 126 senior
academics in the UK put the dysfunctional effects of what was occurring
to academic work in the following terms:
Unprecedented levels of anxiety and stress among both academic and aca-
demic-related staff and students abound, with “obedient” students expect-
ing, and even demanding, hoop-jumping, box-ticking and bean-counting,
often terrified by anything new, different, or difficult.
The way Berg et al. (2016) describe this production of anxiety as being
held in place in the neoliberal university, happens in several ways. First,
there is what they term ‘precariousness and audit-induced competition’
(p. 176). Universities invariably interpret ‘state’ mandates more vigor-
ously and institute them even more intensely than the way in which they
are proclaimed—this has the effect of providing legitimacy for ‘com-
mand and control in academia’ (p. 176) in the form of what I describe
as ‘the enemy within’ form of managerialism (Smyth 1990, p. 63; and
Meisenhelder 1983, p. 303). Another anxiety-inducing mechanism is the
development of ‘grant income targets’ for academics at various levels,
often built into workload formulae, and that are made part of the ‘per-
formance requirement’ process (Berg et al. 2016, p. 176). Sometimes
referred to as ‘grant capture’ (p. 177), such targets can also be built into
formal contractual requirements of faculty. Second, the even more insidi-
ous way anxiety is produced is through what I term the ‘ever receding
horizon’—the work is simply never able to be finished; the goalposts are
continually moved by management, so that faculty are never allowed to
arrive at a definitive end to their work (p. 177). Third, anxiety is solidi-
fied by continuing to insist that academic work is not primarily about
the ‘production and dissemination of knowledge’, but rather it is part
of a macro-economic process of ensuring institutional survival and inter-
national economic competiveness—in other words, an endless process of
maximizing ‘profits’ for the university in the interests of ‘accumulation’
for those who hold power (p. 178).
These are themes that recur repeatedly throughout the literature on
academic work, and I will conclude on a summation by Horton and
Tucker (2014):
… academic workplaces are frequently characterized by isolated, individu-

alised working practices; intense workloads and time pressures; long hours
and the elision of barriers between work and home; anxieties around job
security and contracts (particularly for early career staff); and processes
of promotion and performance review that effectively valorise individual
productivity, and reward and institutionalise each of the above-listed char-

acteristics. (p. 85)
Here is an interesting little example from Höpfl (2005), who begins her
paper with a ‘conceit’ (an affectation) rather than an abstract:
‘Hang on. I am just parking the car. I am walking into the building. I am
now entering the mouth of hell…’ (Conversation with a friend who was
calling from his mobile phone as he entered his workplace).
‘My heart sinks every time I have to go there. It takes away your spirit’.
(Former colleague writing about her experiences of going to work). (p. 167)
The interesting imagery here is of the idea of ‘work as hell’ (p. 173)
and that it is taking away something of one’s spirit. Both of these lit-
tle vignettes fit with the provocative imagery conjured up by De Vita
and Case (2016) in their critique of the managerialist culture of business
schools in the UK, when they refer to the ‘climate of mistrust and aliena-
tion [engendered] amongst academics’ (p. 348) as fitting with the meta-
phor of ‘the smell of the place’—the notion that within a few minutes of
being inside a place you can quickly discern what it is really up to.
Ferrell (2011) sums up what is being lost or ‘wrecked’ here beauti-
fully, when she says:
…it takes candour and trust, to research, write and teach well. But that
trust is no longer there, between the university and its collegium. We are
no longer a guild, we have become ‘employed’; vocation has mutated into
vocational. (p. 181 emphasis original)
What Then Is My Perspective in This Book?

The approach I bring to this book is one that coalesces around a ques-
tion posed recently by a Wolverhampton born Oxford-educated
Guardian journalist, as to ‘why a forgotten 1930s critique of capitalism is
back in fashion’ (Jeffries 2016). The essence of his argument is that the
ideas of a group of German Jews (Walter Benjamin Max Horkheimer,
Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, and Erich Fromm known as the
‘Frankfurt School’ of ‘critical theorists’), opposed to the rise of fascism
during the Third Reich, are back in vogue because of their trenchant
WHAT THEN IS MY PERSPECTIVE IN THIS BOOK? 11
critique of capitalist society. Their critique in the 1930s was of the ‘per-
ils of customised culture’ which they saw as a ‘chimera’ because of the
way in which capitalist culture was transforming humans into ‘desir-
able exchange commodities, [to the point that] all that was left was the
option of knowing that one was being manipulated’ (Jeffries 2016). The
ideas of the Frankfurt School are as relevant for us today as then, because
of the exponential way we have been seduced by the marketing and
advertising industry—something that is very relevant to the invasion and
takeover by them of universities.
To expand on this point a little, I will need to make a brief excursion
into a key philosophical idea that will course through in the background
to this book, and that I will revisit in the final chapter in addressing the
‘so what’ question. My positioning in this book is that of a critical soci-
ologist—which is to say that I support, in a general sense, the idea of
critical social theory as a way of uncovering what is going on, how power
works, in whose interests, as well as providing a mindset or disposition
from which to act. My focus is on the notion of discontent, disturbance,
interruption, disruption, and how this feeds into the change process.
Critical social theory has many different adherents and variants, which
I will not go into here, but the particular inflexion I wish to bring to
bear is that espoused by Boltanski and Thévenot (1999), Chiapello
(2003), Celikates (2006), and Geuss (1981) in their slim but impres-
sive work titled The idea of a critical theory: Habermas and the Frankfurt
school. These commentators make an important distinction that is more
than a matter of mere semantics, as Celikates (2006) summarized in the
title of his paper ‘from critical social theory to a social theory of critique’.
The important point people like Boltanski and his collaborators are mak-
ing is that what they call a ‘practice of critique… [that] starts with the
critical capacities of the agents themselves’ (p. 35). What they are saying
is that critique is something that starts from within, rather than being
imposed from outside.
What is essential with this notion of critique is that it is founded on
the view that social change comes about through self-reflection on the
circumstances one finds oneself in. The way Celikates (2006) puts it,
the dispositions we hold are a product of the interaction of social forces
around us and the way we acquiesce to them. Change, therefore, can
only occur when discomfort is produced through ‘confrontation’ with
evidence about the way we see and judge things. Summarizing what
Geuss (1981) calls ‘reflexive unacceptability’, Celikates (2006) says:
…once I am shown that my judgments were made under conditions I did

not know and cannot approve of, I may have to revise them. (p. 33)
Critical theory, according to Geuss (1981), operates on the basis of ‘the

criterion of free assent’ (p. 80)—meaning:
…the agents [us] to whom the critical theory is addressed will both know
they are suffering pain and frustration and know the source of that frus-
tration. They know which social institution is repressing them, but accept
that repression and that institution because of the world-picture they have
adopted. (p. 80)
The crucial point made by Geuss (1981) is that:
The experience of pain and frustration is what gives [us] the motivation to
consider…[what needs to change] and to act on it to change [our] social
arrangements. (p. 80)
Where the cause for optimism comes in here is that, while ‘there cer-
tainly are dominant positions in the social field’ in which certain views
prevail over others, they can only be sustained and maintained as long
as they are accorded ‘stability [based] on a belief in their legitimacy’
(Celikates 2006, p. 35). In other words, dominant ideas might present
as ‘closed social conditions’ (p. 35), but there is always space in which to
engage in actions for their dislodgment.
To arrive at what Boltanski and Thévenot (1999) refer to as a ‘critical
moment’ (p. 359), which is really the point of ‘realizing that something
is going wrong’ (p. 360), requires a stepping back and placing some dis-
tance between the frustrating events and the past that has created them.
Boltanski and Thévenot (1999) argue that it is this ‘retrospective turn’
that effectively enables us to ‘stop…the course of action’. When some-
thing is not working, ‘we rarely remain silent’, because we are unable to
remain in a constant ‘state of crisis’ (p. 360), and we have to share our
discontent with others.
The first step in drawing others into sharing our frustration with
a state of affairs is some manifestation or ‘demonstration of this dis-
content’—this can be some kind of a ‘scene’—an argument, a dis-
pute, criticism, blaming, or violence. If this state of disputation is to
advance beyond name-calling, then it will have to be accompanied by
a ‘requirement for the justification of action’ (Boltanski and Thévenot

1999, p. 359). What this means is that in order to engage in criticism,
we have to produce ‘justifications’ in support of those criticisms that fol-
low certain ‘rules of acceptability’ (p. 360). In other words, they will
have to go beyond the kind of personal accusation that ‘I don’t agree
with you because I don’t like your face’ (p. 360).
Boltanski and Thévenot (1999) claim that, in the second step, what
has to occur is the ‘establishment of equivalence’ (p. 361)—or to
put it another way, we have to establish a set of connections between
events and occurrences so that people can see commonalities. What this
amounts to are narratives or stories of some kind that move back and
forth, in ‘intercrossing’ (p. 374) ways, between the situations being
described so that a ‘matrix’ of ‘legitimate criticisms’ (p. 374) is able to
emerge.
In the instance of academic work being canvassed in this book, it is
not quite that simple. The deeply entrenched problem that is the central
focus of this book and that is causing so much frustration and angst in
universities worldwide, and that goes under the rubric of ‘neoliberalism’,
has an inbuilt refusal to countenance any other possible views. As Giroux
(2004) summarized it, as the ‘paragon of modern social relations’, the
ideology of neoliberalism has arrogantly assumed the ‘market’ to be
the undisputed regulator of all aspects of our lives. In Giroux’s (2004)
words:
…neoliberalism attempts to eliminate [any] engaged critique about its

most basic principles and social consequences by embracing the ‘market as
the arbiter of social destiny.’ (Rule 1998, p. 31) (p. 494)
Accompanying, and exacerbating this obdurate unwillingness to debate

its agenda, intent, processes, cultural ends, or purposes, has been what
Preston and Aslett (2014) refer to as ‘an unwavering confidence in
managerialism and economic rationality as “best practices” for any
organizational setting’ (p. 503). The defining hallmark of this intrusive
and alien ideology of the market in universities and other educational
organizations, is the way it constructs an unassailable singular view of
‘market-driven identities and values’ that the market both produces and
legitimates (Giroux 2004, p. 494) . This is given most prominent expres-
sion in the fanatical ‘preoccupation with efficiency and outputs, and [in
the] consumerization of students’ (Preston and Aslett 2014, p. 504).
The ‘glue’ that holds this perverse and quite ridiculous idea of the
supremacy of the market together in universities, and allows it proceed
uninterrupted in doing its deforming and disfiguring work, as I argue at
some depth in various chapters of this book, is the notion of fear. This
works at a number of mutually-reinforcing levels, but the strategy always
has the same hue—if we do not follow the rules by playing the ‘only
game in town’, then catastrophic consequences will befall us individually
and collectively. The notion of fear is ‘constructed’—it is not something
that is a natural occurrence.
At a national level, the spectre of fear is constructed that our econ-
omy will ‘tank’ if we don’t outrank universities in other countries on
international league tables, such as ‘the academic rankings of world uni-
versities (ARWUs, formerly known as the Shanghai Jiao Tong Index)—
they will steal a competitive edge from us, and we will be the poorer for
it; at the level of individual universities, the fear is perpetrated that fail-
ure to grab a large share of the best students or the most coveted com-
petitive research grants, will somehow diminish the university; at the
level of individual academics, the fear is promulgated that unless they
participate fully in this game of greed, not only will their university be
punished, but their careers, promotion prospects, and even their jobs will
be in jeopardy—this is also used to hold a range of managerialist prac-
tices in place (see Zipin 2006); and at the level of students, the fear is
conveyed that unless they make the right choice and get admitted into
a high-ranking university, and then out-compete their fellow students in
the grade–performance exchange game, then their prospects of getting a
job will be doomed. Fear, fear, fear!!!
Davis (2011) provides some interesting insights into how the spectre
of fear is infused into the neoliberal ideology and management practices
of a public university. In the first of three incidents, she examined how she
was silenced and her activities as a faculty member domesticated and tamed
(in what had previously been an activist university committed to advanc-
ing civil rights), by threats that unless she desisted from forms of activ-
ist teaching, she risked losing her job. In the second incident, her failed
attempt to introduce a Global Black Studies programme, in the face of a
demonstrable lack of support from the university, were portrayed by her
managers as tantamount to actions that impugned the marketability of the
university. The third incident pertained to a partnership her university was
urged to enter into with a prestigious private university, which resulted in
herself, her colleagues, and students, being ‘sold out’ and sold off to the
more powerful and prestigious partner in a number of quite demeaning

ways—giving them an unequivocal lesson of where they sat in the hierar-
chy of private/corporate-public values. Davis’ (2011) conclusion is espe-
cially sobering and informative of what was occurring, and how:
These events, both the experience and re-examining them … created a tre-
mendous degree of personal discomfort and a dilemma. Experiencing the
anxiety associated with fear of retribution – real or perceived – meant that I
was for the most part, unable to fully enjoy my nascent entrée in the acad-
emy. I became overly concerned with how I would be judged and if that
judgment was negative, then what would be the outcome. I negotiated
these fears in relative silence not wanting to appear irrational. I also faced
the dilemma of ‘going public’ with the same sort of trepidation one might
have telling family secrets. It was not that the College was an inherently
bad institution, but rather that it was caught up in the matrix of a particu-
lar political moment…Neoliberalism and its impact then, is not something
that is borne out in the lives of others. It is borne out in the everyday work
experiences of academics…. (p. 65)
What is clearly occurring here, according to Zipin (2006) [and here I

am deeply indebted to Zipin for drawing his insightful interpretations
to my attention], is not that university managers are necessarily setting
out to ‘purposefully’ engage in bullying, but rather that their tactics
are buried in an ‘organizational logic’ and workplace practices, that are
designed to ‘limit academic autonomy and agency’ (p. 30). When chal-
lenged about this kind of behaviour, Zipin (2006) invokes Saunders
(2006), who argues that managers are able to deftly hide behind ‘pas-
sages [they quote] from their university’s workplace grievance policy and
procedures’ (Saunders 2006, p. 15). Saunders (2006), however is far
less generous, and is scathing in his assessment of institutional bullying,
masquerading in Australian universities as management practices, when
he concludes that: ‘Since the 1990s to be an academic in Australia is to
some extent…a living lie…[M]anagerialism in Australia’s tertiary educa-
tion system today doesn’t simply foster bullying, but it is bullying… (p.
17 emphasis in original).
These matters are part of the much larger issue of how some coun-
tries have taken on the neoliberalization of their universities more vig-
orously than others—and Australia and New Zealand have been world
leaders in this regard (Heath and Burdon 2013; Thornton 2012; Shore
and Davidson 2014).
How Is This Book Structured and Organized?

To round out this background introduction, and to position the book a
little more clearly, I will make my final introductory point by addressing
what Bourdieu (2003) referred to as the ‘commercial logic’ (p. 67) that
is underpinning academic work in universities. The way Zipin (2006),
invoking Bourdieu, put it without mincing words, is that this ‘aggres-
sive intrusive commercial logic’ has gone considerably beyond being an
annoying irritation, and it is producing pathological consequences in the
form of ‘strong-handed managerialism…underpinned by institutionalised
bullying… [that] weaken[s] the autonomy and agency of academics…
channelling their practices and muting critical-ethical resistance’ (p. 26).
I am writing this book from my location in Australia, which is an
especially advanced instance and leader in the imposition of market logic
on universities, among ‘developed’ countries. Zipin (2006) observes
that, ‘as a US transplant to Australian universities’ (p. 26), he has person-
ally experienced and observed what is happening to Australian universi-
ties as occurring ‘with greater extent and force’ than elsewhere, with the
result that ‘Australia could well be viewed as an extreme case of the way
in which government ‘commands the sector, submits it to market log-
ics, and transforms institutions of governance’ (p. 26). As a result of the
panoply of managerial practices that flow from the marketized univer-
sity, Saunders (2006) accords Australia the unique distinction of having
academics who ‘are possibly the most tightly controlled in the Western
world’ (p. 10). As I have indicated in my own body of writing on aca-
demic work (Smyth 1990, 1991, 1994, 1995a, b, 2016a, b), the ‘market
turn’ and managerialization of universities in Australia can be fairly accu-
rately dated to the reforms introduced under the banner of creating a
‘unified national system’ of universities brought in in 1988 by Education
Minister John Dawkins, formerly Minister for Trade. Australian universi-
ties, even by the most sober assessment, have drifted quite dramatically
from being involved in what Marginson (2003) referred to as ‘nation-
building’ agenda, to promulgating ‘corporate hubris’ (p. 112). As
Zipin (2006) summarized it, prior to their being hijacked by the market
agenda, Australian universities ‘had significant self-governing autonomy
over their core work of teaching and research’ (pp. 26–27).
What the requirement upon universities to cover increasing propor-
tions of their operating costs from outside (i.e. non-government) sources
has meant, practically speaking, is that power in universities has become
concentrated more and more in the hand of non-academic managers.
1 INTRODUCTION: ‘GETTING AN ACADEMIC LIFE’ 17
Zipin (2006) notes that this managerial control of academic work has
been ushered in under the requirement that the nexus between academ-
ics and the governance of their disciplines be severed—power has to be
heavily concentrated in the hands of non-academic managers (includ-
ing Vice Chancellors and Presidents), so as to legitimate their muscular
actions as being in response to government imposed forms of ‘institu-
tional accountability’ (p. 27). The effect has been devastating, with an
exponential growth in ‘an elite oversized caste [of managers] that self-
referentially seeks to “performance-manage” quality rather than enable it
by protecting academic autonomy’ (Zipin 2006, p. 28 emphases in origi-
nal). An indication of how far this has gone in Australia is that in some
universities, upwards of 60% of resources are now consumed by non-core
activities (i.e. not directly connected to teaching or research).
All of this raises the perplexing question I posed over 20 years ago
(Smyth 1995a, pp. 1–2), and the dire consequence I predicted (see Chap.
7 of this book) would flow, and the reason why academics seemed so reti-
cent to oppose the intrusion of an agenda that was demonstrably against
their own personal and professional interests—a question also raised by
Hinkson (2003) in ‘why academics don’t resist’ (p. 233). Addressing the
question of the ‘remarkably passive’ nature of academics ‘apart from some
desultory grumbling in the corridors’ (Thornton 2005, p. 10), in its vari-
ous forms of complexity, is really what the rest of this book is all about.
If I had been of a frivolous persuasion, which I am not, I might have
taken my cynicism about what is happening to universities, to a similar
extreme. For example, I could well have titled the chapters that follow,
something like this:
• pit ponies in the academic mines;

• rocketing up the world university rankings;
• applying the performativity whip to the backs of academic serfs;
• the greedy ruthless slope of academic competition;
• the ungainly scramble for institutional positional advantage;
• the insatiable quest for putting student bums on seats (just in case
international readers do not get the idiom, in the deregulated uni-
versity, this is the requirement that universities bring in student fees
to cover operating expenses);
• gaming the market of academic casino capitalism; and
• aspiring to mounting the winning podium in the academic
Olympics.
Fortunately, I regard what is being ‘done to’ universities as being deadly

serious, and my more serious take on how to make sense of this goes as
follows:
How the myth of vulnerability has been perpetrated and become so
deeply insinuated into our societies through the dominant ideological
prism of neoliberalism, is the primary concern in Chap. 2. The chap-
ter commences by explaining what is meant by neoliberalism, where
it comes from, how it has been allowed to infiltrate universities, and
whether on close analysis, it is as robust and viable in addressing our
vulnerability as its proponents would have us believe. The chapter then
debunks the idea that universities have somehow had a set of institution-
ally hostile views imposed upon them, with the inhabitants being unwit-
tingly duped. The chapter reveals a more complicated picture of how the
ideology of neoliberalism has become a form of ‘enchantment’ for some,
and a form of ‘entrapment’ for others, who have become willing accom-
plices and conformists. The chapter shows that what remains largely
uncontested is the ‘corrosion of character’ (Sennett 1998) that is well
underway, and how this is leading to a corruption and proletarianization
of academic work. Having tentatively set up the broad parameters of the
argument of this book, the chapter then embarks upon a discussion that
courses through the remainder of the book as to where the spaces are
within which to contest the kind of academic identity being constructed
by the toxic or neoliberalizing university.
Trying to understand how neoliberalism has become an alien
‘interloper’ into universities, Chap. 3 draws from the ideas of politi-
cal anthropologist James C. Scott and his notions of ‘official or public
transcripts’—those ideas that are publicly avowed and that people sub-
scribe to—and, ‘hidden or private transcripts’—those that are tacit, invis-
ible, and acceded to, but that are nevertheless acted upon. Through the
cases of two quite different academics, we get to see some vignettes of
the practical detail of how power works and of how these two academics
make active decisions to live out their academic identities in quite differ-
ent ways—in a context of similar prevailing conditions. Running through
the lives of both academics is the way in which the neoliberal agenda
being pursued by the university has hollowed out the work, through a
process of ‘identity theft’, to the point where the culture of the univer-
sity is epitomized in what Alvesson (2014) called the ‘triumph of emp-
tiness’—emaciated, eviscerated, and evacuated of meaning. Against this
fairly pessimistic and dismal portrayal, the chapter concludes with a
HOW IS THIS BOOK STRUCTURED AND ORGANIZED? 19
discussion of how academics have become complicit and compliant in

constructing a culture that is toxic to the very nature of their critical and
inquiring being.
None of what is occurring to and in universities is innocent—it is hap-
pening with the active support and explicit involvement at the highest
levels of leadership in universities. Chapter 4 traces out how universities
have been seduced into enacting ‘zombie’ forms of leadership—which
is to say, they are acting out a set of dead economic ideas—that have
been thoroughly discredited, abandoned, disavowed, and even jettisoned
by the sources from whence they came (a topic revisited in Chap. 9 in
light of the most explosive and damning evidence yet to emerge). The
question of why a set of dead, debunked, and discredited ideas around
the fanciful notion that universities can be constructed as marketplaces,
and the ensemble of weird rituals and practices that accompany this is,
and how this has been sustained and tolerated for so long, is one of the
perplexing unexplained educational puzzles of our times. In the attempt
to try and explain the continuance of this bizarre behaviour, this chapter
concludes by looking at how witchcraft and the occult work, to try and
cast some light on the entrepreneurial university as a living instance of an
‘occult economy’ (Wood 2010).
Were it simply the case that universities were engaged in some silly,
harmless, bizarre, and meaningless incantations, then we could turn our
heads the other way, get on with our work, and leave it at that. However,
the stakes are much higher. Universities are one of the few crucial
remaining places for the construction, preservation, and contestation of
knowledge and ideas, and all of us stand to lose if this process is cor-
rupted and corroded. Chapter 5 deals with a particular, but not so well-
examined perversion of this—the manner in which universities, on the
one hand, champion and fabricate alien and ultimately unhelpful forms
of competition between academics, while on the other hand, severely
undermining and impugning notions of collegiality and collaboration
that are indigenous to academic work, by creating ‘rock star’ academic
researchers as a way of ‘gaming’ other universities in the quest to pass off
fake hierarchies as if they represented ‘real’ academic worth.
The idea that universities are ‘classed’ institutions is usually given trac-
tion through the way in which universities are seen as both reflecting,
and being implicated in, reproducing classed hierarchies among those
who attend, namely students. That is to say, universities are in the main
institutions for the progeny of the middle and upper classes. This is
largely an economic and Marxist-based view of social class. In Chap. 6,

a quite different inflexion is given to what social class might be taken to
mean, and the effects of this on academic work. The central notion being
proposed here, following Holloway (1998), is that if we dislodge class
from its economic moorings, then it is possible to envisage what goes
on as a consequence of social cleavages, as having to do with ‘dignity’.
That is to say, dignity becomes the lens through which worth is judged
and affirmed. When something or someone is besmirched, demeaned,
or otherwise denigrated, then dignity is impugned. That is precisely
what is happening in contemporary universities with the performative
apparatuses of neoliberalism—measuring, calibrating, ranking, rating,
comparing, and auditing. These surveillance activities are gross forms
of institutional humiliation and exclusion. The discussion in this chap-
ter argues that what is being appropriated in the neoliberal university is
the ownership of academic work by ‘others’ who lay claim to its outputs
and products, who are diverting it and using it for their own perverse
purposes—enhancing brand, competitive position, or hierarchical sta-
tus. On the other hand, when dignity is taken as the defining hallmark
of how class operates, then worth can be restored to those who create it
by allowing them ‘story-telling’ rights as to how academic work is being
created. This constitutes the turning of a more optimistic corner.
By this stage of the book there is likely to be an expectation of a sober
assessment of the extent to which the contemporary university con-
stitutes a ‘basket case’, or not—and the prognosis does not look good.
Chapter 7 argues that by all of the epidemiological indicators, the patient
has reached the ‘cancer stage of capitalism’, as far as the university is con-
cerned. Taking the lead from Canadian moral philosopher and political
activist, McMurtry (1999) in his book The cancer stage of capitalism,
the chapter starts out by arguing that the absence of a deeply reflexive
pose by universities as to what they are doing, for whom, and with what
effects, is a deeply troubling malaise. The insouciant way universities
regard the polluted, malignant, and defiled practices that pass for neolib-
eral forms of governance and leadership, and their unhealthy preoccupa-
tion with fiscal matters, is having the effect of completely wrecking their
moral and ethical immune systems. Following McMurtry (2012), what is
being destroyed is the notion of the ‘civil commons’, defined as ‘any and
all social constructs which enable universal access to human life goods
without which people’s capacities are always reduced’ (p. 2). When uni-
versities become monetized, privatized, and decoupled in the way they
HOW IS THIS BOOK STRUCTURED AND ORGANIZED? 21
are from the life world by private interests, then the civil commons is
deeply endangered. This chapter concludes by discussing this detach-
ment through an especially tragic case of a UK academic, and the urgent
lessons that need to be learnt from it.
There is a very interesting metaphor that draws from the symbolism of
the iconic art nouveau painting in 1893 by Edvard Munch’s The Scream.
As Paulson (n.d.) decribes it, it is a painting dripping with symbolism
with an ‘androgynous skull-shaped head, elongated hands, wide eyes,
flaming nostrils and ovoid mouth’. We can only speculate as to what was
animating the anguished utterance that must surely have emanated. This
is a nice way to segue into Chap. 8 entitled Enough is enough…of this
failed experiment of ‘killing the host.’ The imagery is multiple here, and
the chapter starts out with a call to reject the ‘econobabble’ (Denniss
2016) that has so deeply afflicted and damaged our academies. Drawing
from the work of economist Michael Hudson (2015), the chapter fol-
lows his argument as to how the financial parasites and their predatory
ideology are destroying the global economy. In a like manner, this chap-
ter argues that the totally dependent practices of neoliberalism that have
been allowed to invade universities are diverting and consuming uncon-
scionable proportions of resources from the core activities of teach-
ing and research. We then hear this refrain again, this time through the
‘voices of the academy’, through a sojourn into the titles of over 100
scholarly tomes, from dissident academics who are standing up and
speaking out about the extent and depth of the problem.
The question about what is to be done is the subject of Chap. 9, and
it is tackled in a somewhat novel way. First, the evidence is presented
of a major confessional recant by the international agency, arguably the
most ardent proponent of the neoliberal agenda over the past 40 years.
The chapter argues that considering the evidence that neoliberalism has
demonstrably failed, even on its own terms, has to be the first crucial
step in convincing those who have unthinkingly taken it on, that they
have made a dreadful mistake. Second, the chapter argues that what has
to be confronted is what Alvesson and Spicer (2016) call the ‘stupidity
paradox’ in order to develop an alternative that has to be built around
de-stupidification, and some strategies are suggested for doing this.
Third, in a rather cheeky reversal of the strategy proposed by a neo-
liberal management consultant cheerleader (Collins 2001), the chap-
ter argues that those who ‘do’ the academic work in universities, and
who are therefore the major stakeholders in its ownership, are uniquely
positioned to convey the message to the misinformed, that the game is

over and it is time to ‘get off my bus’ (a reversal in the direction of the
message proposed by Collins 2001). The chapter concludes on a much
more optimistic note than the book commenced with, by providing sug-
gestions about a dialogical process with which to develop an alternative
to the Toxic University.
Something to be borne in mind when encountering this depressing and
disturbing story about what is being done to academic work is that it is
crucial work but it can be rewarding and enjoyable—as long as we hold on
to what is important about it. As Morrish (2016) summarized it, the chal-
lenges are formidable indeed, not unlike those of a long-distance swimmer:
…the quite unattainable expectations being placed on many academics …

[in terms of] multiple research outputs classed as world-leading, confer-
ence participation, especially as keynote speakers, international collabora-
tions, innovation and leadership within one’s field, research grant ‘capture’
and income generation, proving impact of research, supervision of PhD
students, and, of course, high student satisfaction scores. (pp. 1–2)
Morrish says that of one thing we can be certain ‘…that, whatever the
milestones, they [will] keep shifting. You [will] always be judged by what
you … fail… to complete, rather than what you [have] accomplished’
(p. 2). Her advice makes a great deal of sense, and it is why we keep
doing this crucial work:
…in order to end your career with any sense of self-worth, you need to be
working for your own satisfaction. Ignore the false metrics and the exter-
nally-imposed benchmarks, and do it for yourself. Do it because you desire
the achievement and because it is what you were put on earth to do. Break
the whole endeavour down into very small parts; one stroke after another.
And keep going. Be sure to celebrate your success, and try to disregard the
setbacks and anything else that makes the journey seem hopeless. (p. 2)
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CHAPTER 2
Neoliberalism: An Alien Interloper

in Higher Education
The sociologist and critical theorist Theodor Adorno provided a most

appropriate opening move for this chapter in his Minima moralia, when
he said:
…the entire private domain is being engulfed by a mysterious activity that

bears all of the features of commercial life without there being any actual
business to transact…[T]he whole of society is becoming hierarchical…pro-
liferating wherever there used still to be an appearance of freedom… [now]
expressed in the parasitic psychology of the individual…an uncouth inter-
loper…seen as arrogant, alien and improper…. (Adorno 1994 [1974], p. 23)
Following on from Adorno, this is not a book for the faint-hearted. I

will not be holding back from a robust critique of what is being done to
universities worldwide, and for some, my critique may even be a tad too
harsh. Nor will I be pointing the finger of blame for all of the damage
solely as originating ‘outside’ of universities—there are some very potent
agencies ‘inside’ universities that have become heavily complicit in per-
petrating irreparable damage, and I will come to them in some detail,
shortly.
However, if this were merely another book providing a blistering
critique on the demise of the contemporary university fixated upon
a nostalgic look in the rear vision mirror at what is being lost, then I
will have failed demonstrably in my intent. As Couldry (2010) put it
in his influential book Why Voice Matters: Culture and Politics after
© The Author(s) 2017 27

J. Smyth, The Toxic University, Palgrave Critical University Studies,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-54968-6_2
28 2 NEOLIBERALISM: AN ALIEN INTERLOPER IN HIGHER EDUCATION
Neoliberalism, unless we ‘name the crisis’ confronting us, there is a ‘loss

of the connecting narratives’ that constitute the basis for identifying
‘the resources for thinking beyond it’ (p. 1).
I need to, therefore at the outset, comment briefly on the tone and
direction of the remainder of this book.
As a way out of the seemingly inextricable higher education bog, we
have allowed ourselves to become implicated in, I want to posit a hope-
ful vision or disposition on what we might begin to do about it. The
starting point is Couldry’s (2011) enunciation of Andrew Ross’ (2008)
point that we must start by acknowledging ‘the new geography of work’
in which we develop a commitment within the modern university to
being ‘clear-sighted about the conditions of our own practice’ (Couldry
2011, p. 7). In other words: ‘We must recognize our location in the
‘neoliberal university’ (Couldry 2010, p. 7) by unpacking the conditions
within which to enact what Couldry (2010) calls ‘sociologies of voice’
(Chap. 6). For Nick Couldry (2010, 2011) and Butler (2005), this
involves ‘giving an account’ of ourselves. Once we jettison this capac-
ity, or assign it to others, we lose the capacity to ‘narrate things about
ourselves’, and as Couldry (2010) argues, this is tantamount to ‘treat-
ing people as if …they [are] not human’ (p. 1). According to him, the
notions of ‘voice as a process’ and ‘voice as a value’ are crucial to develop-
ing the kind of social cooperation and forms of solidarity necessary to
‘countering neoliberal rationality’ (Couldry 2010, p. 11)—which will be
the basis for a deeper discussion later in this book.
With this as a broad orienting context for the book, before I can
properly articulate the nature of an alternative or a way out of the cur-
rent desultory situation, I need to be clear as to the extant state of affairs
as they exist in universities. In particular, with regard to the relation-
ship of neoliberalism to universities, I need to do some ground-clearing
around:
• where the term neoliberalism comes from;

• the forces that are arguing for this way of defining and organizing
universities;
• when and where the term neoliberalism was first used in relation to
universities; and
• in the end, how useful the concept actually is, in a context where no
countries have the kind of ‘free market context’ argued for in the
ideal concept.
‘THE END OF THE UNIVERSITY AS WE KNOW IT’ … 29
I will deal with these ideas interactively rather than serially or sequen-
tially, because that is in reality how they exist.
‘The End of the University as We Know It’

(Brown 2011, p. 117)
As I indicated in my opening in Chap. 1, we are relentlessly assailed and
assaulted these days by the elevated clamour about the fear of terrorism;
it is pervasive, insistent, and fed insatiably by the mass media and self-
seeking complicit politicians. There is no doubt an element of truth in the
claims posed by terrorism, but it is also a massive distraction from the even
more insidious ‘stealth revolution’ (Brown 2015) that has hijacked and
completely taken over our lives, institutions, and societies, with scarcely a
word of opposition being uttered. Wendy Brown (2015) argues that one
of the great ‘political ironies’ (p. 9) of our times, is that at precisely the
time we are smugly celebrating and congratulating ourselves on the end of
the Cold War, a ‘new form of governmental reason has been unleashed in
the Euro-Atlantic world that [has] inaugurate[d] democracy’s unmooring
and substantive disembowelment’ (p. 9). What Brown is referring to is the
way in which neoliberalism as a ‘normative order of reason’ has, over the
past three decades, become ‘a widely and deeply disseminated governing
rationality… [that has] transmogrifie[d] every domain of human endeav-
our…’ (pp. 9–10). Neoliberalism has been able to do this because it is
more than ‘a set of economic policies, an ideology, or a resetting of the
relation between state and economy’ (p. 9). Neoliberalism’s defining logic
of reason is the dictum of homo oeconomicus that:
All conduct is economic conduct; all spheres of existence are framed and
measured by economic terms and metrics, even when those spheres are not
directly monetized. (Brown 2015, p. 10)
In other words, neoliberalism works through the way in which it ‘dissemi-

nates market values and metrics to every sphere of life and construes the
human itself exclusively as homo oeconomicus’ (Brown 2015, p. 176). Brown
(2015) argues that the very fibre of democracy which we understand to
be ‘individual and collective self-rule’ and which we take to be ‘a perma-
nent achievement of the West’ and that cannot be ‘lost’, is in the process
of being completely ‘overwhelmed and … displaced by the economium to
enhance capital value, competitive positioning, and credit ratings’ (p. 10).
What is animating Brown, in all of this, is the way in which neolib-

eralism as ‘a peculiar form of reasoning’ is coming to ‘configure…. all
aspects of existence in economic terms’ and is ‘quietly undoing basic
elements of democracy’ including ‘vocabularies’, ‘political cultures’,
‘habits of citizenship’, and ‘above all, democratic imaginaries’ (p. 17).
Neoliberal reason converts the distinctly ‘political character, meaning,
and operation of democracy’s constituent elements into economic ones’
(p. 17‚ italics in original), notwithstanding that the term democracy ‘is
among the most contested and promiscuous terms in our modern politi-
cal vocabulary’ (p. 18).
In her earlier treatise on Neoliberalized Knowledge, Wendy Brown
(2011) provides her understanding of the term as well as pointing to the
origins of the term neoliberalization in US higher education:
Neoliberalism, that often confusing signifier for a unique governmental

and social rationality—one that extends market principles to every reach
of human life—germinated in California during the Reagan gubernato-
rial years, 1967–1975. It wasn’t called neoliberalism then, but rather,
Reaganomics, supply-side economics or tax revolts or rebellions against
“big government.” (p. 118)
What lies at the ‘heart of these reforms’ in higher education, she argues,
are the:
…basic neoliberal principles of deregulation, marketization, and privatiza-

tion of all public goods, a forthright attack on the public sector, and the
beginnings of casting every human endeavor and activity in entrepreneurial
terms. (p. 118)
As Brown (2011) goes on to say, neoliberalism is ‘more than mere eco-

nomic policy’ (p. 118). It is:
…a governing social and political rationality that submits all human activi-
ties, values, institutions, and practices to market principles. It formulates
everything in terms of capital investment and appreciation (including and
especially humans themselves)…. (p. 118)
As a governing rationality, neoliberalism extends from the management

of the state itself to the soul of the subject; it renders health, educa-
tion, transportation, nature, and art into individual consumer goods and
converts patients, students, drivers, athletes, and museum-goers alike into

entrepreneurs of their own needs and desires who consume or invest in
these goods. (p. 118)
Brown (2011) says that:
Neoliberal rationality takes aim at the very idea of a public good’ (p. 118)
encapsulated in the outrageous claim by Margaret Thatcher that “There is
no such thing as society... [only] individual men and women”. (Thatcher
1987, p. 18)
Public goods are ‘privatized’ in three senses, according to Brown (2011):
First, they are outsourced to nongovernment for-profit providers, hence

submitted to calculations of profit rather than public benefit. (p. 118).
Second, they are marketed and priced as individual consumer rather than
public goods… [user pays university fees are an example]. Third, … [since]
funding and accountability … are devolved to the lowest and smallest units
[in universities, they are called cost-centres], these units themselves are
forced into wholly entrepreneurial conduct… to protect and advance their
own interests without regard for common or public ones. (p. 119)
So, at its heart ‘neoliberal rationality challenges the very idea of a pub-
lic good’ (p. 119), while at the same time ‘displac[ing] democracy and
equality as governing principles in provisioning goods like education’,
with education becoming ‘an individual means to an individual end,
something individuals may or may not choose to invest in’ (p. 119).
Under neoliberal rationality ‘education is rendered a consumer good
in which students invest (often by incurring considerable debt) to
advance their own prospects for economic success. The value of being an
educated individual is reduced to its income earning capacities; being an
educated public registers no value at all by this metric’ (p. 120).
For their part, the ‘neoliberalization’ or ‘privatization’ of public univer-
sities ‘… is not simply a matter of converting them into private universities.
In fact, the process of making public universities entrepreneurial submits
them to far more vulgar forms of marketization…’ (p. 120). To take a
particular instance of this, the commodification necessary to replace the
diminution in public funding has meant that activities like research, which
is supposed to serve a broader social purpose, has become corrupted, cor-
roded, and distorted. As Brown (2011) put it:
Neoliberalization … means research [is] increasingly contoured by and to

corporate … funding [or the government’s desire that universities secure
this type of research funding], [with the effect that] research [is] both
curved toward potential sponsors … which risks overt compromise or cor-
ruption by the need to serve, attract, or retain them. (p. 122)
The distortion can be summed up in the cryptic comment ‘what can we

study that will sell? (p. 122) both in the literal and metaphorical senses,
as “scholars” own interests, questions, or approaches’ (p. 122) become
pragmatically subsumed to what they need to do to survive or keep their
jobs.
The imbrication of universities serving corporate and profit-seeking
interests, also bring into universities forms of governance that are alien,
foreign, and hitherto unwelcome, as neoliberalism insists on the ‘replace-
ment of principles and protocols of shared governance with managerial
and business principles’ (p. 123). As Brown (2011), argues, this insist-
ence comes via ‘increased involvement by non-academics in academic
matters (whether corporate funders…or managerially-minded administra-
tors deciding academic priorities)’ (p. 123). While the proximity of uni-
versities to ‘the world of financial capital is not [entirely] new… [w]hat
is novel is the degree to which the university is being merged with this
world and remade in its image—its powers, needs, and values’ (p. 123).
What is especially disturbing about the naturalization of this ‘merg-
ing’—or replacement—of university interests of independence, by corpo-
rate ones of subservience and dependence, is the acceptance of this as
normal ‘by a neoliberalized public that increasingly judges universities
through market metrics: the enhancement of earning power for students
and the development of profitable research’ (p. 123).
Transformed in this process is the very nature of knowledge:
Neoliberalization replaces education aimed at deepening and broadening

intelligence and sensibilities, developing historical consciousness and her-
meneutic adroitness, acquiring diverse knowledge and literacies, becom-
ing theoretically capacious and politically and socially perspicacious, with
[forms of] education aimed at honing technically-skilled entrepreneurial
actors adept at gaming any system. (p. 123)
According to Brown (2011), the project of neoliberalism will be complete

‘when all academic knowledge, and indeed, all university activity is valued
according to its capacity to augment human, corporate or finance capital’

but it will have brought with it ‘the disappearance of … an educated citi-
zenry and [along with it] the soul and sinew of democracy’ (p. 124).
Notwithstanding the potency of these trenchant criticisms, Boyer
(2011) argues that neoliberal governance in the modern university
‘should…not be seen as a novel institutional regime, but rather as the
selective intensification of longer term processes’ (p. 179). Analysing the
genealogy of the ‘idea’ of the university as a historical aristocratic elitist
institution, Boyer (2011) claims that:
Neoliberal academic governance, whether of the technocratic or market-

centred form, extends the late nineteenth century idea that universities
should function as crucibles for the generation of epistemic artefacts to the
present purposes of stimulating private commercial interests, or enriching
and empowering states in the global knowledge economy. (p. 179)
By way of explaining why there is so much internal unrest and dissention

in universities, Boyer (2011) says that the ‘dominant critical narrative’
emerges from the ‘dissipat[ion of] organizational and collegial auton-
omy in order to better saturate universities with market-oriented prin-
ciples (knowledge as commodity, faculty as wage labour, administration
as management, student body as consumer public, university as market-
place)’ (pp. 179–180).
The loudest opposition to this intensified neoliberal regime has come
from ‘faculty’ who, ‘among the three estates of the university (students,
faculty, administrators)…has experienced the deepest erosion of auton-
omy under the current reforms’ (Boyer 2011, p. 180). Coupled with this
is the view that students stand to ‘enhance their social power with their
new image as sovereign consumers, and the re-imagination of the uni-
versity as a kind of for-profit corporation run by profit-minded managers
has helped to cement the political hegemony of administrators’ (Boyer
2011, p. 180).
While there can be no denying the reality of intensified faculty work-
load, alongside the diminution of faculty autonomy, these have failed to
attract wider public condemnation. This is due largely to the widely held
perception of universities as aloof institutions, with the result that this
degradation, rather than attracting public condemnation, has instead had
a certain degree of ‘populist political’ (p. 180) appeal, especially Boyer
(2011) argues, in the US.
Turning to what might be done to oppose or turn around what some

would argue is a juggernaut ideology (Doherty 2015) that has Western
societies in its vice-like grip, will entail much more than vague utterances
and calls around the necessity of a nostalgic return to forms of ‘criti-
cal thinking’. As Brown (2011) put it, ‘critical thinking, great historical
ideas and literatures do not address what markets and students think they
need’ (p. 124). Challenging this obdurate entrenched ideology that has
captured universities worldwide will need to be far more sophisticated,
strategic, and nuanced. It will require:
… persuad[ing] a [skeptical] public that our worth lies apart from science
and the market and that [the alternative that we envisage] is one that a
democracy, a self-governing or even self-regarding people, cannot do
without. This means developing a compelling account of what we do that
articulates with extant public meanings, desire and anxieties without capit-
ulating to the dominant normative valuations and schematics of them and
especially without submitting to neoliberal criteria. (p. 125)
We need to be crystal clear about what the antithesis to neoliberalism

is, and we will need to craft a convincing and compelling story about its
merits as an alternative ‘platform [to that of] capital accumulation and
appreciation’ (p. 125). In essence, we will need to convey an image of
the ‘prophylactic against the reduction of us to specks of human capital,
against the flattening and hollowing of self and world toward which neo-
liberalism drives (pp. 125–126).
Countering the ‘one-dimensionality of homo economicus’ as the defin-
ing force in our lives will necessitate demonstrating ‘precisely what
a neoliberal rationality would extinguish in us individually and collec-
tively’ (p. 126) and how what is needed in its place, is a political alterna-
tive ‘featuring shared power and purpose, [that will open up] the play
of ambiguity, vulnerability, awe, ambivalence, psychic depths, bound-
ary, identity, spirit, and other elements foreign to neoliberal ration-
ality’ (p. 126). As Brown argues, this does not mean that the survival
of the academy as a social institution depends upon all of us having
‘to become marketable, immediately applicable, or scientific in [our]
method’ (p. 127). However, it will require that we ‘recover our con-
nection and value to enriched human life’, and become better at
‘explain[ing] or justify[ing] our value to the public or even other univer-
sity colleagues…’ (p. 127). This will not only be the means of saving the
obliteration of our own disciplines and their ‘cannibalization’ in the uni-

versity, but resistance of this kind will ‘exploit the link between human-
istic inquiry and prevent the complete neoliberalization of knowledge
and humanity’ (p. 127). Above all, this will require us to demonstrate
a broader and more comprehensive ‘connection with purposes broader
than our own small professional universes’ and a rejection of the ‘nose-
in-the-air posture toward those too ignorant to appreciate what we do
or an equally useless moral righteousness about how good and true, if
undervalued, we are’ (p. 127).
The last word on this recovery, for the moment, to Brown (2011):
But [all of] this is only possible if we recover in our work as scholars and
teachers what is ineffably moving, sublime, or meaningful [in our work].
It is only so if we place these elements at the heart of a campaign to save
higher education from being reduced to an appendage of capital’s latest
and most remarkable modality. (pp. 127–128)
The more recent genesis of neoliberalism as it applies to universities in

Australia, at least as an illustrative case, had its beginnings in the mid-
1980s under the Labour Party Minister of Education, John Dawkins,
who had previously been Minister for Trade. Under policies introduced
by Dawkins, ‘Universities were redefined as competitive firms, rather than
branches of a shared higher education enterprise’ in which ‘deliberative
planning was quickly replaced by struggle for advantage, and a scramble
for amalgamations [that] produced [the] current odd collection of uni-
versities’ (Connell 2013, p. 1). In a country well known for its reliance
upon ‘extractive’ industries, Connell (2013) leaves us in no doubt as to
the nature of this neoliberal turn when she notes that: ‘Higher educa-
tion was increasingly seen by government as an export service industry
in which Australia could find comparative advantage, the cultural equiva-
lent of iron ore. High fees for overseas students monetised this idea…
[and domestic] fees were re-introduced… Federal government funding as
a proportion of the higher education budget collapsed, from around 90%
to under 50%… [bringing to an end] a national university system…of
remarkable uniformity…[and its replacement with a] new stratification…
[based upon] positional advantage….De-regulation [of university fees] is
currently being [further] deepened to include domestic students’ (p. 1).
In the Australian case, as elsewhere, the features of this neoliberaliza-
tion of universities is clearly on display:
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East. At Pao-Ting Fu, where women were said to have suffered
indescribable brutalities before being slain, investigation by
an American military officer convinced him that "there is no
evidence of any peculiar atrocities committed upon the persons
of those who were slain"; and the American Board of
Commissioners for Foreign Missions has publicly announced:
"While forced to believe that our missionaries in Shan Si and
at Pao Ting Fu were put to death by the Chinese, we have never
credited the published reports concerning atrocities connected
with their slaughter."
CHINA: A. D. 1901 (March).

Withdrawal of American troops, excepting a Legation guard.
The following order was sent by cable from the War Department
at Washington to General Chaffee, commanding the United States
forces in China, on the 15th of March: "In reply to your
telegram Secretary of War directs you complete arrangements
sail for Manila with your command and staff officers by end
April, leaving as legation guard infantry company composed of
150 men having at least one year to serve or those intending
re-enlist, with full complement of officers, medical officer,
sufficient hospital corps men and, if you think best, field
officer especially qualified to command guard. Retain and
instruct officer quartermaster's department proceed to erect
necessary buildings for guard according to plan and estimates
you approve."
CHINA: A. D. 1901 (March-April).

Discussion of the question of indemnity.
Uneasiness concerning rumored secret negotiations of
Russia with the Chinese government relative to Manchuria.
As we write this (early in April), the reckoning of

indemnities to be demanded by the several Powers of the
Concert in China is still under discussion between the
Ministers at Peking, and is found to be very difficult of
settlement. There is understood to be wide differences of
disposition among the governments represented in the
discussion, some being accused of a greed that would endeavor
to wring from the Chinese government far more than the country
can possibly pay; while others are laboring to reduce the
total of exactions within a more reasonable limit. At the
latest accounts from Peking, a special committee of the
Ministers was said to be engaged in a searching investigation
of the resources of China, in order to ascertain what sum the
Empire has ability to pay, and in what manner the payment can
best be secured and best made. It seems to be hoped that when
those facts are made clear there may be possibilities of an
agreement as to the division of the total sum between the
nations whose legations were attacked, whose citizens were
slain, and who sent troops to crush the Boxer rising.
Meantime grave anxieties are being caused by rumors of a

secret treaty concerning Manchuria which Russia is said to be
attempting to extort from the Chinese government [see, in this
volume, MANCHURIA], the whispered terms of which would give
her, in that vast region, a degree of control never likely to
become less. The most positive remonstrance yet known to have
been made, against any concession of that nature, was
addressed, on the 1st of March, by the government of the
United States, to its representatives at St. Petersburg,
Berlin, London, Paris, Vienna, Rome, and Tokio, as follows:
"The following memorandum, which was handed to the Chinese

Minister on February 19, is transmitted to you for your
information and communication to the government to which you
are accredited: "The preservation of the territorial integrity
of China having been recognized by all the powers now engaged in
joint negotiation concerning the injuries recently inflicted
upon their ministers and nationals by certain officials and
subjects of the Chinese Empire, it is evidently advantageous
to China to continue the present international understanding
upon this subject. It would be, therefore, unwise and
dangerous in the extreme for China to make any arrangement or
to consider any proposition of a private nature involving the
surrender of territory or financial obligations by convention
with any particular power; and the government of the United
States, aiming solely at the preservation of China from the
danger indicated and the conservation of the largest and most
beneficial relations between the empire and other countries,
in accordance with the principles set forth in its circular
note of July 3, 1900, and in a purely friendly spirit toward
the Chinese Empire and all the powers now interested in the
negotiations, desires to express its sense of the impropriety,
inexpediency and even extreme danger to the interests of China
of considering any private territorial or financial
arrangements, at least without the full knowledge and approval
of all the powers now engaged in negotiation.
HAY."
----------CHINA: End--------
CHINESE TAXES.
See (in this volume)

LIKIN.
CHING, Prince:
Chinese Plenipotentiary to negotiate with the allied Powers.

CHINA: A. D. 1900 (AUGUST-DECEMBER).
CHITRAL: A. D. 1895.
The defense and relief of.

INDIA: A. D. 1895 (MARCH-SEPTEMBER).
CHITRAL:A. D. 1901.
Included in a new British Indian province.

INDIA: A. D. 1901 (FEBRUARY).
CHOCTAWS, United States agreements with the.

INDIANS, AMERICAN: A. D. 1893-1899.
CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR, The Young People's Society of.
The nineteenth annual international convention of Young

People's Societies of Christian Endeavor was held in the
Alexandra Palace, London, England, from the 13th to the 20th
of July, 1900, delegates being present from most countries of
the world. Reports presented to the convention showed a total
membership of about 3,500,000, in 59,712 societies, 43,262 of
which were in the United States, 4,000 in Canada, some 7,000
in Great Britain, 4,000 in Australia, and smaller numbers in
Germany, India, China, Japan, Mexico, and elsewhere.
{145}
The first society, which supplied the germ of organization for

all succeeding ones, was formed in the Williston
Congregational Church of Portland, Maine, on the 2d of
February, 1881, by the Reverend Francis E. Clark, the pastor
of the church. The object, as indicated by the name of the
society, was to organize the religious energies of the young
people of the church for Christian life and work. The idea was
caught and imitated in other churches—Congregational,
Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, and others—very rapidly,
and the organization soon became, not only widely national,
but international. In 1898, it was reported that Russia then
remained the only country in the world without a Christian
Endeavor Society, and the total was 54,191. In the next year's
report Russia was announced to have entered the list of
countries represented, and the number of societies had
advanced to 55,813. In 1900, the numbers had risen to the
height stated above. The Epworth League is a kindred
organization of young people in the Methodist Church.

EPWORTH LEAGUE.
CHRISTIANS AND MOSLEMS:

Conflicts in Armenia.

TURKEY: A. D. 1895.
CONFLICTS IN CRETE.

TURKEY: A. D. 1897 (FEBRUARY-MARCH).
CHUNGKING.
"Chungking, which lies nearly 2,000 miles inland, is, despite

its interior position, one of the most important of the more
recently opened ports of China. Located at practically the
head of navigation on the Yangtze, it is the chief city of the
largest, most populous, and perhaps the most productive
province of China, whose relative position, industries,
population, and diversified products make it quite similar to
the great productive valley of the upper Mississippi. The
province of Szechuan is the largest province of China, having
an area of 166,800 square miles, and a population of
67,000,000, or but little less than that of the entire United
States. Its area and density of population may be more readily
recognized in the fact that its size is about the same as that
of the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Kentucky combined,
but that its population is six times as great as that of those
States. Its productions include wheat, tobacco, buckwheat,
hemp, maize, millet, barley, sugar cane, cotton, and silk."
United States, Bureau of Statistics,

Monthly Summary, March, 1899, page 2196.
CHURCH OF ENGLAND: A. D. 1896.

Papal declaration of the invalidity of its ordinations.

PAPACY: A. D. 1896 (SEPTEMBER).
CIVIL CODE: Introduction in Germany.

GERMANY: A. D. 1900 (JANUARY).
-------CIVIL-SERVICE REFORM IN THE UNITED STATES: Start-----
CIVIL-SERVICE REFORM IN THE UNITED STATES: A. D. 1893-1896.

Extensions of the Civil-Service rules by President Cleveland.
"Through the extensions of the Federal classification during

President Cleveland's second administration, the number of
positions covered by the civil-service rules was increased
two-fold. On March 3, 1893, the number classified was 42,928.
By a series of executive orders ranging from March 20, 1894,
to June 25. 1895, 10,000 places were added to the list,
bringing the total, approximately, to 53,000. Meanwhile, the
Civil Service Commission had recommended to the President a
general revision that would correct the imperfections of the
original rules and extend their scope to the full degree
contemplated by the Pendleton Act. After much correspondence
and consultation with department officers, and careful work on
the part of the Commission, the rules of May 6 [1896] were
promulgated. They added to the classification about 29,000
more places, and by transferring to the control of the
Commission the system of Navy Yard employment, established by
Secretary Tracy, brought the total number in the classified
service to 87,117. The positions in the Executive branch
unaffected by these orders included those classes expressly
excluded by the statute—persons nominated for confirmation by
the Senate and those employed 'merely as laborers or
workmen'—together with the fourth-class postmasters, clerks in
post-offices other than free delivery offices and in Customs
districts having less than five employees, persons receiving
less than $300 annual compensation, and about 1,000
miscellaneous positions of minor character, not classified for
reasons having to do with the good of the service—91,600 in
all. Within the classified service, the list of positions
excepted from competitive examination was confined to the
private secretaries and clerks of the President and Cabinet
officers, cashiers in the Customs Service, the Internal
Revenue Service and the principal post-offices, attorneys who
prepare cases for trial, principal Customs deputies and all
assistant postmasters—781 in all. The new rules provided for a
general system of promotion, based on competitive examinations
and efficiency records, and gave the Commission somewhat
larger powers in the matter of removals by providing that no
officer or employee in the classified service, of whatever
station, should be removed for political or religious reasons,
and that in all cases like penalties should be imposed for like
offenses. They created an admirable system, a system founded
on the most sensible rules of business administration, and
likely to work badly only where the Commission might encounter
the opposition of hostile appointing officers. President
Cleveland's revised rules were promulgated before the
Convention of either political party had been held, and before
the results of the election could be foreshadowed. The
extensions were practically approved, however, by the
Republican platform, which was adopted with full knowledge of
the nature of the changes, and which declared that the law
should be 'thoroughly and honestly enforced and extended
wherever practicable.' … Mr. McKinley, in his letter of
acceptance and in his inaugural address, repeated the pledge
of the Republican party to uphold the law, and during the two
months of his administration now past he has consistently done
so. He has been beset by many thousands of place-seekers, by
Senators and Representatives and by members of his own
Cabinet, all urging that he undo the work of his predecessor,
either wholly or in part, and so break his word of honor to
the nation, in order that they may profit. … At least five
bills have been introduced in Congress, providing for the
repeal of the law. … Finally, the Senate has authorized an
investigation, by the Committee on Civil Service and
Retrenchment, with the view of ascertaining whether the law
should be 'continued, amended or repealed,' and sessions of
this Committee are now in progress. … Mr. McKinley, by
maintaining the system against these organized attacks, will
do as great a thing as Mr. Cleveland did in upbuilding it."
Report of the Executive Committee of the New York

Civil Service Reform Association, 1897.
{146}
In his annual Message to Congress, December, 1896, President

Cleveland remarked on the subject:
"There are now in the competitive classified service upward of

eighty-four thousand places. More than half of these have been
included from time to time since March 4, 1893. … If
fourth-class postmasterships are not included in the
statement, it may be said that practically all positions
contemplated by the civil-service law are now classified.
Abundant reasons exist for including these postmasterships,
based upon economy, improved service, and the peace and quiet
of neighborhoods. If, however, obstacles prevent such action
at present, I earnestly hope that Congress will, without
increasing post-office appropriations, so adjust them as to
permit in proper cases a consolidation of these post-offices,
to the end that through this process the result desired may to
a limited extent be accomplished. The civil-service rules as
amended during the last year provide for a sensible and
uniform method of promotion, basing eligibility to better
positions upon demonstrated efficiency and faithfulness."
United States, Message and Documents (Abridgment),

1896-1897, page 33.
CIVIL-SERVICE REFORM IN THE UNITED STATES: A. D. 1894.

Constitutional provision in New York.

CONSTITUTION OF NEW YORK.
CIVIL-SERVICE REFORM IN THE UNITED STATES: A. D. 1897-1898.

Onslaught of the spoils-men at Washington.
Failure of the Congressional attack.
"During the four months following the inauguration [of

President McKinley] the onslaught of place-seekers was almost
unprecedented. Ninety-nine out of every hundred of them
discovered that the office or position he desired was
classified and subject to competitive examination. The tenure
of the incumbent in each case was virtually at the pleasure of
the department officers; removals might easily be made; but
appointments to the places made vacant could be made only from
the eligible lists, and the lists were fairly well filled. It
is true that the rules permitted the reinstatement without
examination of persons who had been separated from the service
without personal fault within one year, or of veterans who had
been in the service at any time, and that some removals were made
to make room for these. But the appointments in such cases
went but a very little way toward meeting the demand. The
result was that almost the whole pressure of the
office-hunting forces and of their members of Congress was
directed for the while toward one end—the revocation or
material modification of the civil service rules. President
McKinley was asked to break his personal pledges, as well as
those of his party, and to take from the classified service
more than one half of the 87,000 offices and positions it
contained. … But the President yielded substantially nothing.
… The attack of the spoils-seekers was turned at once from the
President to Congress. It was declared loudly that the desired
modifications would be secured through legislation, and that
it might even be difficult to restrain the majority from
voting an absolute repeal. In the House the new movement was
led by General Grosvenor of Ohio; in the Senate by Dr.
Gallinger of New Hampshire. … The first debates of the session
dealt with civil service reform. The House devoted two weeks to
the subject in connection with the consideration of the annual
appropriation for the Civil Service Commission. … The effort
to defeat the appropriation ended in the usual failure. It was
explained, however, that all of this had been mere preparation
for the proposed legislation. A committee was appointed by the
Republican opponents, under the lead of General Grosvenor, to
prepare a bill. The bill appeared on January 6, when it was
introduced by Mr. Evans of Kentucky, and referred to the
Committee on Reform in the Civil Service. It limited the
application of the civil service law to clerical employees at
Washington, letter carriers and mail clerks, and employees in
principal Post Offices and Customs Houses, proposing thus to
take from the present classified service about 55,000
positions. A series of hearings was arranged by the Civil
Service Committee, at which representatives of this and other
Associations, and of the Civil Service Commission, were
present. A sub-committee of seven, composing a majority of the
full committee, shortly afterward voted unanimously to report
the bill adversely. About the same time, the Senate Civil
Service Committee, which had been investigating the operation
of the law since early summer, presented its report. Of the
eight members, three recommended a limited number of
exceptions, amounting in all to probably 11,000; three
recommended a greatly reduced list of exceptions, and two
proposed none whatever. All agreed that the President alone
had authority to act, and that no legislation was needed. …
The collapse of the movement in Congress has turned the
attention of the spoilsmen again toward the President. He is
asked once more to make sweeping exceptions."
Report of the Executive Committee of the

New York Civil Service Reform Association, 1898.
CIVIL-SERVICE REFORM IN THE UNITED STATES:A. D. 1897-1899.

Temporary check in New York.
Governor Black's law.
Restoration of the merit system under Governor Roosevelt.
"In June [1897]—after the Court of Appeals … had declared that

the constitutional amendment was self-executing, and that
appointments made without competitive examination, where
competitive examinations were practicable, must be held to be
illegal—steps were taken to secure a reduction of the exempt
and non-competitive positions in the State Service. A letter
was addressed to Governor Morton, by the officers of the
Association, on June 8, asking that the service be
reclassified, on a basis competitive as far as practicable.
The Governor replied that he had already given the subject
some thought, and that he would be glad to give our
suggestions careful consideration. On the 4th of August he
instructed the Civil Service Commission to prepare such a
revision of the rules and classification as had been proposed.
On the 11th of November this revision, prepared by
Commissioner Burt, was adopted by the full Commission, and on
the 9th of December the new rules were formally promulgated by
the Governor and placed in immediate operation. … The
Governor, earlier in the year, had reversed his action in the
case of inspectors and other employees of the new Excise
Department, by transferring them from the non-competitive to
the competitive class. … This marked the beginning of a
vigorous movement against the competitive system led by
chairmen of district committees, and other machine
functionaries.
{147}
Governor Morton's sweeping order of December completed the
discomfiture of these people and strengthened their purpose to
make a final desperate effort to break the system down. The
new Governor, of whom little had been known prior to his
unexpected nomination in September, proved to be in full
sympathy with their plan. In his message to the legislature,
Mr. Black, in a paragraph devoted to 'Civil Service,' referred
to the system built up by his predecessor in contemptuous
language, and declared that, in his judgment, 'Civil service
would work better with less starch.' He recommended
legislation that would render the examinations 'more
practical,' and that would permit appointing officers to
select from the whole number on an eligible list and not
confine them to selections 'from among those graded highest.'
Such legislation, he promised; would 'meet with prompt
executive approval.' Each house of the legislature referred
this part of the message to its Judiciary Committee, with
instructions to report a bill embodying the Governor's ideas.
… Within a few days of the close of the legislative session,
the measure currently described as 'Governor Black's bill was
Introduced. … The bill provided that in all examinations for
the State, county or municipal service, not more than 50 per
cent. might be given for 'merit,' to be determined by the
Examining Boards, and that the rest of the rating,
representing 'fitness,' was to be given by the appointing
officer, or by some person or persons designated by him. All
existing eligible lists were to be abolished in 30 days, and
the new scheme was to go into operation at once. … A hearing
was given by the Senate Committee on the following day, and
one by the Assembly Committee a few days later. … The bill,
with some amendments, was passed In the Senate, under
suspension of the rules, and as a party measure. … It was
passed in the Assembly also as a caucus measure."
"Early [in 1898] after time had been allowed for the act to
prove its capabilities in practice, steps were taken toward
commencing a suit to test its constitutionality in the courts.
… Pending the bringing of a test suit, a bill was prepared for
the Association and introduced in the Legislature on March
16th, last, one of the features of which was the repeal of the
unsatisfactory law. … The bill … was passed by the Senate on
March 29th. On the 31st, the last day of the session, it was
passed by the Assembly. … On the same date it was signed by
the Governor and became a law. This act has the effect of
exempting the cities from the operation of the act of 1897,
restoring the former competitive system in each of them."

"As a result of the confusing legislation of [1897 and 1898]

at least four systems of widely differing character had come
into existence by the first of [1899]. New York city had its
charter rules, … the state departments were conducted under
two adaptations of the Black law, and in the smaller cities
the plan of the original law of 1883 was followed. In his
first annual message, Governor Roosevelt directed the
attention of the Legislature to this anomalous condition and
strongly urged the passage of an act repealing the Black law
and establishing a uniform system, for the state and cities
alike, subject to state control. Such an act was prepared with
the co-operation of a special committee of the Association. …
After some discussion it was determined to recast the measure,
adopting a form amounting to a codification of all previously
existing statutes, and less strict in certain of its general
provisions. … The bill was … passed by the Senate by a
majority of two. … In the Assembly it was passed with slight
amendments. … On the … 19th of April the act was signed by the
Governor, and went into immediate effect. … The passage of
this law will necessitate the complete recasting of the civil
service system in New York, on radically different lines."

Modification of Civil Service Rules by President McKinley.
Severe criticism of the order by the National Civil
Service Reform League.
On the 29th of May, 1899, President McKinley was persuaded to

issue an order greatly modifying the civil service rules,
releasing many offices from their operation and permitting
numerous transfers in the service on a non-competitive
examination. This presidential order was criticised with
severity in a statement promptly issued by the Executive
Committee of the National Civil Service Reform League, which
says: "The National Civil Service Reform League, after mature
consideration, regards the order of President McKinley, of May
29, changing the Civil Service rules, as a backward step of
the most pronounced character. The order follows a long
succession of violations, of both the spirit and the literal
terms of the law and rules, in various branches of the
service, and must be considered in its relations to these. Its
immediate effects, which have been understated, may be set
forth as follows:
(1) It withdraws from the classified service not merely 3,000

or 4,000 offices and positions, but, as nearly as can be now
estimated, 10,109. It removes 3,693 from the class of
positions filled hitherto either through competitive
examination or through an orderly practice of promotion, and
it transfers 6,416 other positions in the War Department,
filled hitherto through a competitive registration system,
under the control of the Civil Service Commission, to a system
to be devised and placed in effect by the present Secretary of
War.
(2) It declares regular at least one thousand additional
appointments made temporarily, without examination—in many
cases in direct disregard of the law—in branches that are not
affected by the exceptions, but that remain nominally
competitive.
(3) It permits the permanent appointment of persons employed

without examination, for emergency purposes during the course
of war with Spain, thus furnishing a standing list of many
thousands which positions in the War Department may be filled,
without tests of fitness, for a long time to come.
(4) It alters the rules to the effect that in future any

person appointed with or without competitive examination, or
without any examination, may be placed by transfer in any
classified position without regard to the character or
similarity of the employments interchanged, and after
non-competitive examination only.
{148}
(5) It permits the reinstatement, within the discretion of the

respective department officers, of persons separated from the
service at any previous time for any stated reason.
The effect of these changes in the body of the rules will be

of a more serious nature than that of the absolute exceptions
made. It will be practicable to fill competitive positions of
every description either through arbitrary reinstatement—or
through original appointment to a lower grade, or to an
excepted position without tests of any sort, or even by
transfer from the great emergency force of the War Department,
to be followed in any such case by a mere 'pass' examination.
As general experience has proven, the 'pass' examinations, in
the course of time, degenerate almost invariably into farce.
It will be practicable also to restore to the service at the
incoming of each new administration those dismissed for any
cause during the period of any administration preceding. That
such a practice will lead to wholesale political reprisals,
and, coupled with the other provisions referred to, to the
re-establishment on a large scale of the spoils system of
rotation and favoritism, cannot be doubted."
In his next succeeding annual Message to Congress the

President used the following language on the subject: "The
Executive order [by President Cleveland] of May 6, 1896,
extending the limits of the classified service, brought within
the operation of the civil-service law and rules nearly all of
the executive civil service not previously classified. Some of
the inclusions were found wholly illogical and unsuited to the
work of the several Departments. The application of the rules to
many of the places so included was found to result in friction
and embarrassment. After long and very careful consideration
it became evident to the heads of the Departments, responsible
for their efficiency, that in order to remove these
difficulties and promote an efficient and harmonious
administration certain amendments were necessary. These
amendments were promulgated by me in Executive order dated May
29, 1899. All of the amendments had for their main object a
more efficient and satisfactory administration of the system
of appointments established by the civil-service law. The
results attained show that under their operation the public
service has improved and that the civil-service system is
relieved of many objectionable features which heretofore
subjected it to just criticism and the administrative officers
to the charge of unbusinesslike methods in the conduct of
public affairs. It is believed that the merit system has been
greatly strengthened and its permanence assured."
United States, Message and Documents

(Abridgment), 1890-1900, volume 1.
At its next annual meeting, December 14, 1900, in New York,

the National Civil Service Reform League reiterated its
condemnation of the order of President McKinley, declaring:
"The year has shown that the step remains as unjustified in
principle as ever and that it has produced, in practical
result, just the injuries to the service that were feared, as
the reports of our committee of various branches of the
service have proved. The league, therefore, asserts without
hesitancy that the restoration of very nearly all places in
every branch of the service exempted from classification by
this deplorable order is demanded by the public interest and
that the order itself should be substantially revoked."

Civil Service Rules in the Philippine Islands.
"An Act for the establishment and maintenance of an efficient

and honest civil service in the Philippine Islands" was
adopted, on the 19th of September, by the Commission which now
administers the civil government of those islands. The bill is
founded on the principles of the American civil service in
their stricter construction, and its provisions extend to all
the executive branches of the government. The framing of rules
and regulations for the service are left to the Civil Service
Board provided for in the act. A correspondent of the "New
York Tribune," writing from Manila on the day after the
enactment, states: "W. Leon Pepperman, who has long been
connected with the civil service in the United States, and who
has made a personal study of the systems maintained by Great
Britain, France, and Holland in their Eastern colonies, will
be on this board, as will be F. W. Kiggins of the Washington
Civil Service Commission. The third member probably will be a
Filipino. President Taft had selected for this post Dr.
Joaquin Gonzalez, an able man, but that gentleman's untimely
death on the eve of his appointment has forced President Taft
to find another native capable of meeting the necessary
requirements. Mr. Kiggins probably will act as Chief Examiner,
and Mr. Pepperman as Chairman of the board:" According to the
same correspondent: " Examinations for admittance to the
service will be held in Manila, Iloilo, and Cebu, in the
Philippines, and in the United States under the auspices and
control of the Federal Civil Service Commission." At the
annual meeting of the National Civil Service Reform League of
the United States held in New York, December 13, 1900, the
above measure was commended highly in the report of a special
committee appointed to consider the subject of the civil
service in our new dependencies, as being one by which, "if it
be persevered in, the merit system will be established in the
islands of that archipelago, at least as thoroughly and
consistently as in any department of government, Federal,
State or municipal, in the Union. This must be, in any case,
regarded as a gratifying recognition of sound principles of
administration on the part of the commission and justifies the
hope that, within the limits of their jurisdiction at least,
no repetition of the scandals of post-bellum days will be
tolerated. The ruling of the several departments that the
provisions of the Federal offices established in the
dependencies which would be classified if within the United
States is also a matter to be noted with satisfaction by the
friends of good government."
{149}

The "spoils system" of service in the House of Representatives.
The "spoils system" maintained by Congressmen among their own

immediate employees, in the service of the House of
Representatives, was depicted in a report, submitted February
28, 1901, by a special committee which had been appointed to
investigate the pay of the House employees. The report,
presented by Mr. Moody, of Massachusetts, makes the following
general statements, with abundance of illustrative instances,
few of which can be given here: "The four officers elected by
the House, namely, the Clerk, Sergeant-at-Arms, Doorkeeper,
and Postmaster, appoint the employees of the House, except the
clerks and assistant clerks of members and committees, four
elevator men, the stenographers, and those appointed by House
resolutions. The appointments, however, are made on the
recommendation of members of the House, and very largely,
though not entirely, of members of the dominant party in the
House. If a member upon whose recommendation an appointment is
made desires the removal of his appointee and the substitution
of another person, the removal and substitution are made without
regard to the capacity of either person. In case a member upon
whose recommendation an appointment has been made ceases to be
a member of the House, an employee recommended by him
ordinarily loses his place. Thus the officers of the House,
though responsible for the character of the service rendered
by the employees, have in reality little or no voice in their
selection, and, as might reasonably be expected, the results
obtained from the system which we have described are in some
cases extremely unsatisfactory. This method of appointing
House employees has existed for many years, during which the
House has been under the control of each party alternately. We
believe that candor compels us to state at the outset that
some of the faults in administration which we have observed
are attributable to the system and to the persistence of
members of the House in urging upon the officers the
appointment of their constituents and friends to subordinate
places, and that such faults are deeply rooted, of long
standing, and likely to continue under the administration of
any political party as long as such a system is maintained."
The committee found nothing to criticise in the

administration of the offices of the House Postmaster or
Sergeant-at-Arms. With reference to the offices of the Clerk
and the Doorkeeper they say: "We have found in both
departments certain abuses, which may be grouped under three
heads, namely: Transfers of employees from the duties of the
positions to which they were appointed to other duties,
unjustifiable payments of compensation to employees while
absent from their posts of duty, and divisions of salary.
"First. Transfers of employees from the duties to which they
were appointed to other duties.—Some part of this evil is
doubtless attributable to the fact that the annual
appropriation acts have not properly provided for the
necessities of the House service. An illustration of this is
furnished by the case of Guy Underwood, who is carried on the
rolls as a laborer at $720 per annum, while in point of fact
he performs the duty of assistant in the Hall Library of the
House and his compensation is usually increased to $1,800 per
annum by an appropriation of $1,080 in the general deficiency
act. Again, a sufficient number of messengers has not been
provided for the actual necessities of the service, while more
folders have been provided than are required. As a result of
this men have been transferred from the duties of a folder to
those of a messenger, and the compensation of some has been
increased by appropriation in deficiency acts. But evils of
another class result from transfers, some examples of which we
report. They result in part, at least, from an attempt to
adjust salaries so as to satisfy the members that their
appointees obtain a just share of the whole appropriation,
instead of attempting to apportion the compensation to the
merits of the respective employees and the character of the
services which they render. …
"Second. Payments of compensation to employees while

absent.—The duty of many of the employees of the House ceases
with the end of a session, or very soon thereafter. Such is
the case with the reading clerks, messengers, enrolling
clerks, and many others who might be named. Their absence from
Washington after a session of Congress closes and their duties
are finished is as legitimate as the absence of the members
themselves. But many employees who should be at their posts
have been from time to time absent without justification, both
during sessions and between sessions. In the absence of any
record it is impossible for the committee to ascertain with
anything like accuracy the amount of absenteeism, but in our

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The toxic university: zombie leadership,

academic rock stars and neoliberal

THE TOXIC UNIVERSITY

More information about this series at

The Toxic University

Palgrave Critical University Studies

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017938297

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017

Cover image: © Carolyn Eaton/Alamy Stock Photo

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

Naming this as a Critical University Studies Series gives it a very distinct

• the nature of academic work

emphasis on those perspectives and groups whose views have hitherto

• Whose interests are being served?

The series intends to foster the following kind of contributions:

• Critical studies of university contexts, that while they might be local

The series aims to encourage discussion of issues like academic work,

1.  There is a conspicuous absence of studies that give existential

We look forward to this series advancing these important agenda and to

1 Introduction: ‘Getting an Academic Life’ 1

2 Neoliberalism: An Alien Interloper in Higher Education 27

3 Why the ‘Toxic’ University? A Case of Two Very

4 Why Zvombie Leadership? 75

5 Cultivation of the ‘Rock Star’ Academic Researcher? 99

6 The University as an Instrument of ‘Class’ 125

7 The ‘Cancer Stage of Capitalism’ in Universities 149

8 Enough Is Enough…of This Failed Experiment

9 Gevt off My Bus! The Reversal of What We Have

Author Index 221

Subject Index 227

Introduction: ‘Getting an Academic Life’

What Is This Book About?

© The Author(s) 2017 1

as Furedi (1997, 2004, 2005) has shown—and this extends considerably

• Why have academics been so compliant in acquiescing to the con-

• Have universities become toxic places in which to work?

Why Am I Writing This Book, and in This Particular

requirements’, and who is not driven by the mantra of the performativity

significant sociologist ever, Charles Wright Mills (1971 [1959]) in his

…neoliberalism is a critical public issue influencing apparently private trou-

Pathological Organizational Dysfunction

Higher education on the corporate model imagines students as consumers,

What is not revealed in this glossy reading of neoliberalism is the way in

he invokes the term to refer to people ‘without consciences’ (p. 305).

The sensationalistic charge that all large corporations, including [universi-

Where Gatto (2001) is pointing to is that ‘psychopathic programming is

It lacks moral dimension or ethical mind beyond the pragmatic.

The way I have discussed this phenomenon in my own work, is by invok-

ascendancy of the PR and marketing aspects of universities is symptomatic

…the managerial stranglehold over academia shows striking parallels to the

… academic workplaces are frequently characterized by isolated, individu-

productivity, and reward and institutionalise each of the above-listed char-

What Then Is My Perspective in This Book?

…once I am shown that my judgments were made under conditions I did

Critical theory, according to Geuss (1981), operates on the basis of ‘the

The crucial point made by Geuss (1981) is that:

a ‘requirement for the justification of action’ (Boltanski and Thévenot

…neoliberalism attempts to eliminate [any] engaged critique about its

Accompanying, and exacerbating this obdurate unwillingness to debate

more powerful and prestigious partner in a number of quite demeaning

What is clearly occurring here, according to Zipin (2006) [and here I

How Is This Book Structured and Organized?

1. There is a conspicuous absence of studies that give existential

What Then Is My Perspective in This Book?

How Is This Book Structured and Organized?

‘The End of the University as We Know It’