Steep cuts to the study of art, language, and philosophy aren’t simply the result of the inability of these curricula to contribute enough to the bottom line. The humanities are dangerous because they stoke critical thinking, question established norms, and encourage an iconoclasm that threatens power. In every realm, from labor relations to campus housing, higher education now pits the market against the public good. Giroux opens the book with a poetic analysis of this dystopic state of affairs: As a theater of cruelty and mode of public pedagogy, neoliberalism as a form of economic Darwinism attempts to undermine all forms of solidarity capable of challenging market-driven values and social relations, promoting the virtues of an unbridled individualism that is almost pathological in its disdain for community, social responsibility, public values, and the public good. Today, nearly 70 percent of the nation’s 1.5 million higher education researchers and teachers are contingent labor. Tens of thousands of faculty, including many at the most prestigious institutions, earn wages so low that they qualify for public assistance—until that too is entirely disposed of if current policies are not reversed.
Posted on: Thu, 06 Mar 2014 13:23:06 +0000
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