Lost in ‘Lost in Thought’

I have thought for a while that the modern university, often characterised by the term ‘neo-liberal’ is not the place where the most interesting scholarship is being done. The neo-liberal university is one which is managed by managers, bureaucrats, rather than academics. Those who have suffered under the management of academics might, of course, suggest that this is no bad thing, but the problem is that often neo-liberal managers have little idea of what a university is for, and how it works.

Practically, this means that the modern university and its staff and students are monitored by measurables. These metrics have to be things which can easily be collected and understood by a non-specialist in any given subject. Thus the number of papers published by a given academic staff member is established in a given time frame. Academics who fall short of this (or of some combination of number and impact factor of journals published in) are offered support in their writing. Similarly, there are reports that an academic is required (not contractually, of course, but who worries about that) to obtain a certain quantity of money per year, preferably in high profile big lumps of grants. Those who do not are again offered help in writing and submitting proposals and bringing in the big bucks.

When this is added to teaching loads, which are still high even though increasing numbers of undergraduates are taught by term time only contractors (zero-hours workers, if you will) and administration, and you can perhaps see why the core university is not producing the scholarship that might be expected. That is not to say that universities produce nothing, far from it. There is a bewildering and growing number of journals to publish in, even discounting the predatory ones who are after money. The demand for publication is as great, if not greater than ever. But where is the real time for reflection, for reading, for coming to insights and understandings about the human condition in the rough and tumble of grant applications, impact factors and student surveys?

The answer seems to be that thinking and reflection are often squeezed out. I am not suggesting that there really was a golden age of the university when there was not some rough and tumble, but that it is getting harder to find the time to think properly. Thus, it seems to me, scholarship which counts is more being done around the edges, in academic sabbaticals (that, after all, is the purpose of such) and by staff and research students who are not part of the machine.

One response to the neo-liberal university is a form of resistance, slow scholarship (for example Mountz, A., Bonds, A., Mansfield, B., Loyd, J., Hyman, J., Walton-Roberts, M., Basu, R., Whitson, R., Hawkins, R., Hamilton, T., Curran, T., 'For Slow Scholarship: A Feminist Politics of Resistance through Collective Action in the Neoliberal University', ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies 14, no. 4 (2015), 1235-59.) a problem is that such resistance is only available to those who already have substantive positions in the university. While the idea of taking ones time in research and scholarship appeals to most people if you are trying to get a post and move out of being a contractor then slow scholarship is not going to help.

Another option is to opt-out of the neo-liberal university rat race, more or less. I have been reading

Hitz, Z., Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020).

Zena Hitz has more or less followed a line of resistance which started with a PhD and professorial post in a prestigious US university and then rejecting the ‘brutal competition for status and prestige’ that the position entailed. After a period in a community she returned to her alma mater, a liberal arts college in the US which specialises in small group teaching, rather than the huge lectures and conveyor belt shovelling of knowledge into young minds of the conventional neo-liberal establishment. Her argument is that the activities of learning, knowing, studying and contemplating are what make us human, and that the ways of these activities can and should be taught aside from the endless round of content.

The point here is that human flourishing depends on reflection. Not everyone is a bookworm, but everyone reflects, or should be afforded to opportunity and tools to reflect on their experience. Hobbies, works, life and love are all common human experiences, and all have, or should have, the opportunity to reflect and to learn from them. How we do it is up to us – it might be intellectual activity, or music, the natural world, prayer or caring for the vulnerable. All of these need time for reflection.

Hitz’s argument is that for many this is achieved through hidden intellectual activity. This intellectual activity is not determined to an end, and it may well be declared to be useless. But our inner life is what matters in making us human, not the results of our learning and pondering. The journey is what is worthwhile.

Naturally, this has to exist alongside the provision of the basics of life. Justice has to be administered, food grown, processed, bought and eaten. These are things which necessarily frame our existence. But they are not the ends in themselves of human life. The accumulation of stuff, material goods (and many are good, not just pointless stuff) is not the aim of human existence, even though often it would seem to be the case. Making us wealthier does not necessarily make us happier. Making us wiser might just do so.

The problem is that learning is almost inextricably entwined with politics and technical and professional achievement, which brings us back to the problem of the neoliberal academy. To extract the habit of learning from the output-oriented goals of the university is no mean feat, and many academics cannot achieve it. Hence my initial suggestion, that the place for real scholarship to be achieved is outside, or on the fringes of the modern university.