The State of Higher Education: Interview with Lorna Finlayson

One measure of the fragile state of many democracies is the way in which public universities have come under attack around the world. A new podcast series, produced as part of the Global Democracy Commons project, seeks to address the myriad forces seeking to foreclose public universities as spaces of critique and democratic protest across the globe.

The series explores diverse trends such as related to the defunding of higher education; its redefinition as a private not a public good; the increasing authoritarian nature of university management; the use of culture wars and discourses of civility to police classrooms; the waves of layoffs and closures of departments and programs; and the attempts to delimit academic freedom, free speech, and rights of assembly and protest.

We hope our conversations with those who work in higher education around the world will allow us to consider the degree to which the university has become the canary in the coal mine for the fate of democracy.

Episode 3

As universities across England and Wales continue to announce redundancies, close departments and programs we talk to political theorist Lorna Finlayson about the nature of the crisis, why academics are relatively restrained in their responses to it, and how students offer some hope for alternative visions of higher education.

 

A transcript of this interview can be found at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/finlayson.