Comments on: Nietzsche’s Niche: Kirp on the University of Chicago

By: Zach

Zach — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 23:44:44 +0000

I’m kinda fascinated by the thought of Riesman, such an apologist for a deeply conservative mode of theorizing academic labor in an earlier moment of academic crisis, now having to take up arms to defend the university against neoliberalism, as if the postwar university was entirely divorced from fiduciary concerns. Kirp’s tone is definitely insulting, and I know it’s a general-audiences pop-scholarship text, or whatever, but I feel like the way he deploys the idea of an “academic commons” is so ahistorical and underinterrogated that it winds up being a bit reactionary. I’ll admit to only having read a few chapters from the book, though.

By: eli

eli — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 17:09:10 +0000

Thanks, Mike! By the way, I wrote to Greenwood to ask for clarification about output controls. I think we will probably hear some more details from him before too long, so perhaps there will be a more empirical basis for continuing our earlier discussion about american university neoliberalism…

By: Michael Bishop

Michael Bishop — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:20:32 +0000

Ha! This was a fun read… I think that writing like this serves some of the same good purposes as requiring the disclosure of more standardized information… informing students, faculty, and the public about the true nature of an institution will help discipline it when it is bad, and reward it when it is good.