Dirty Knowledge: Academic Freedom in the Age of Neoliberalism

by Julia Schleck

Dirty Knowledge explores the failure of traditional conceptions of academic freedom in the age of neoliberalism. While examining and rejecting the increasing tendency to view academic freedom as a form of free speech, Julia Schleck highlights the problem of basing academic freedom on employment protections like tenure at a time when such protections are being actively eliminated through neoliberalism’s preference for gig labor. The argument traditionally made for such protections is that they help produce knowledge “for the public good” through the protected isolation of the Ivory Tower, where “pure” knowledge is sought and disseminated.

In contrast, Dirty Knowledge insists that academic knowledge production is and has always been “dirty,” deeply involved in the debates of its time and increasingly permeated by outside interests whose financial and material support provides some research programs with significant advantages over others. Schleck argues for a new vision of the university’s role in society as one of the most important forums for contending views of what exactly constitutes a societal “good,” warning that the intellectual monoculture encouraged by neoliberalism poses a serious danger to our collective futures and insisting on deliberate, material support for faculty research and teaching that runs counter to neoliberal values.

 

Genres: Nonfiction

148 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2022

Reviews

[Emma Ferguson · Rating 5 out of 5]

life-changing earth-shattering. she basically argues that in the late capitalist era, the corporate model of universities (short-term contract workers propping up the majority -- 73%!!!!!! -- of the professoriate, only research considered 'profitable' being funded) kills off a sort of 'biodiversity' of ideas which we may need as a seed bank for the future. e.g. how plague historians were suddenly in demand (which no one expected) due to covid, how linguistics was dying off like the rest of the humanities until AI and computer science made it suddenly relevant. we can't predict which ideas we need in the future so we can't just fund those we currently deem exigent, or let them 'survival of the fittest' themselves.

also if nothing else this was just so fluid and such a pleasure to read and such a lesson in how to develop an argument smoothly and clearly without being too repetitive or 'talking down' too much

but also i should not have read this bc now i want to throw myself out of a window and also die

[Steven Volk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting take on (as the subtitle has it), what academic freedom means in an age of neoliberalism. Or, to put it a different way, what good are academic protections to a faculty that is almost 75% contingent (and can simply be let go at the end of the semester/year)? Also quite useful for the concept of "dirty knowledge," by which Schleck means that the knowledge produced in higher education is not "neutral" but rather will always be "dirty," i.e., somehow engaged in discussion, debate, "politics." Good recommendation for a book group reading.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting hypothesis, descriptions of neoliberalism are useful if you’re unaware.

[Lindsay McBride · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the arguments in this book and it made me think differently about universities and their role in the public sphere, but it also was repetitive and some comparisons were problematic to me.