In this edited collection, philosophers and critical theorists develop theoretical tools to conceptualize and evaluate the neoliberal university, working together both to interrogate how it reproduces systems of oppression and exploitation and to identify more liberatory and egalitarian alternatives.
Acting and organizing within and against neoliberalized higher education in the Western capitalist world, the international group of scholars included in this volume experience the contradictions and possibilities of the contemporary configuration of the university daily. And yet the crisis in higher education is only one aspect of a much broader social crisis in which neoliberalism and related social inequalities, rapid climate change, de-democratization, rising authoritarianism, war, and genocide interconnect. Edited by Brandon Absher, this volume critiques and intervenes in higher education in the midst of this unprecedented social and natural crisis; at once to expose its structure and inadequacies and to envision an alternative based on the principle of the commons.
What can higher education be, and how might it contribute to a more just, egalitarian, and liberated world?
Edited by:
Brandon Absher
Imprint: Rowman & Littlefield
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
ISBN: 9781666939835
ISBN 10: 1666939838
Series: Collective Studies in Knowledge and Society
Pages: 256
Publication Date: 19 March 2026
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction: Intervening in Neoliberal Higher Education Brandon Absher Section I: Neoliberal Realities, Emancipatory Possibilities Chapter One: Theorizing the Post-Pandemic University: Making Live and Letting Die in Neoliberal Higher Education Brandon Absher Chapter Two: The Conflict of the Faculties Redux: Subject-Formation, Capital, and the State Ammon Allred Chapter Three: Is It Morally Wrong to Publish? Justin Pack Chapter Four: One-Dimensionality and Critical Education in Herbert Marcuse Leandro Sánchez Marín and J. Sebastian David Giraldo Section II: Authoritarianism and Resistance in the Marketplace of Ideas Chapter Five: “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen”: The Orwellian State of Higher Education in Florida Margaret A. McLaren, Shelley M. Park, and Eric Smaw Chapter Six: University as a Space of Resistance: The Case of Bogaziçi University Emre Çetin Gürer and Sonay Ban Chapter Seven: Authoritarianism and Democracy in Higher Education Noëlle McAfee interviewed by Brandon Absher Section III: The Neoliberal Philosophical Curriculum Chapter Eight: Brainwashing in the University: Astro-Education and Collective Critique Tanya Loughead and Jasmina Tacheva Chapter Nine: Diversity in Modern Philosophy: A Productive Contradiction John Harfouch Section IV: Towards a Commons-Based Alternative Chapter Ten: Higher Learning and Critical Theory Today: Ecosocialism, Ecofeminism, and Ecopedagogy Charles Reitz Chapter Eleven: From the Neoliberal University to the University of the Commons Christian Laval About the Contributors
Brandon Absheris associate professor of philosophy at D’Youville University, USA.
