Front cover image for The university in chains : confronting the military-industrial-academic complex

The university in chains : confronting the military-industrial-academic complex

The University in Chains argues that both the academy and democracy are in peril, that a fundamental assault has been launched on the academy's unfulfilled legacy of democratic education and its present and future role as a democratic public sphere. But the rigid ideological, economic, and religious chains that are now engulfing higher education so as to eliminate critical thought, noncommodified and nonmilitarized forms of knowledge, intellectual engagement with important social issues, and interdisciplinary social formations represent more than an attack on democracy. Such assaults also suggest an attack on politics itself-that is, on those forms of teaching, exchange, dialogue, and social relations that refuse to "methodically eliminate speaking and acting human beings. "The University in Chains makes a case for reclaiming higher education as a democratic public sphere and counterinstitution, one that enables teachers and students to engage in a culture of questioning, a pedagogy of critical engagement, and a democratic politics of civic responsibility
Print Book, English, ©2007
Paradigm Publishers, Boulder, ©2007
viii, 223 pages ; 22 cm.
9781594514227, 9781594514234, 1594514224, 1594514232
86038285
Introduction : challenging the military-industrial-academic complex after 9/11
Arming the academy : higher education in the shadow of the national security state
Marketing the university : corporate power and the academic factory
The new right-wing assault on higher education : academic unfreedom in America
Breaking the chains : a strategy to retake the university