In the run up to the American election we talked to Todd Wolfson, the new President of AAUP, about how public disinvestment from higher education and the culture wars have transformed colleges in ways that make them less democratic places — and imperil democracy across the country.
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 monthly 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.
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