The Observation Deck

The Imperial University



David Graeber, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Yale University proposes that an ideological shift is occurring in the model of American universities. In an interview, Graeber explains:



ìWe're moving from the neoliberal university to the imperial university. Or at least people are trying to move us there. It used to be as long as you didn't challenge the corporatization of the university, you'd be basically okay. But the neoliberal project - where the politicians would all prattle about "free markets and democracy" and what that would actually mean was that the world would be run by a bunch of unelected trade bureaucrats in the interests of Citibank and Monsanto - that kind of fell apart.î



For more: http://www.counterpunch.org/



Graeberís observation holds implications for Lakewoodís conversations and efforts to engage the universities in place-making and economic development strategies.



Incidentally, Graeber was recently informed by Yale University that his teaching contract would not be extended. Graeber's books include Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams and Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology.



Kenneth Warren

When we begin to talk about dealing with universities, it's best to avoid thinking about them as entities that posess or exhibit a kind of corporate intelligence. In fact, I use the jellyfish model to describe a university: It's a community of various specialized, high-functioning cells, but as an organism is incapable of rational behavior.
You may be deceived into thinking that the university/jellyfish is headed in a certain way, but what you're seeing is the work of a single cell or structure of cells or at most a trend in aggregate cell activity.
Without getting into further imagery, my advice is to anyone wishing to work "with a university" to concentrate on individual cells, that is to say, individuals. But if anyindividual cell dies, bitten off by a shark or lured away to Princeton, the jellyfish can replace the individual cell more easily than the university.
I find Graeber's comments interesting. My present employer is a state school under fire from the usual red-state suspects for hiring too many left-leaning faculty. Like a jellyfish, a university will gobble up whatever the current of public events wafts near it--neighborhoods, students, money, grants, etc.