There remains a belief in some quarters (usually the fevered imagination of Tory politicians and Daily Mail columnists) that universities are still hotbeds of left-wing politics - dangerous places where our impressionable young people are corrupted by being taught to think critically and question the status quo. The mass redundancies announced at the University of Leicester's School of Business - and especially the rationale behind them - should be enough to disabuse any rational person of that notion.
Take Sam Dallyn, for instance, who is being given the boot for focusing on "radical alternatives" to capitalism. Or Ronald Hartz, whose work "displays the profound questioning of the authority and relevance of mainstream management thinking". Or Simon Lilley, who simply has the audacity to conduct research from a sociological perspective. Or all of those whose work has been deemed not to "align with the school's strategy".
It's all very clumsy and sinister, but merely a particularly stark manifestation of the capitalist ethos and managerialism that now have a vice-like grip on university administration. It's also remarkably similar to the government's explicit warning to national museums and galleries if they fail to toe the official party line on "issues of contested heritage". When it comes to academia, the threat to specific disciplines and research agendas - and to academic freedom in general - certainly isn't only from the outside.
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