Today, academic leaders will be tempted to double down on the private good definition of universities under a president who reveres private wealth and transactional business relationships. This talk argues that this will further reduce the university’s stature in the eyes of both the Trump administration and the public. In contrast, restoring the university’s broad public impact will fix its public reputation and reenergize its students and personnel. This lecture extends the argument of Chris Newfield’s The Great Mistake: How We Wrecked Public Universities and How We Can Fix Them.

Christopher Newfield is Professor of literature and American studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Much of his research is in Critical University Studies, which links his enduring concern with humanities teaching to the study of how higher education continues to be re-shaped by industry and other economic forces. His most recent books on this subject are The Great Mistake (2016), Unmaking the Public University: The Forty Year Assault on the Middle Class (2008), and Ivy and Industry: Business and the Making of the American University, 1880-1980 (2003). He blogs on higher education policy at Remaking the University, and writes for the Huffington Post, Inside Higher Ed, and the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Sponsor:

CFA, NTFC Local #6546, English, IPRH, Unit for Criticism, Department of Education Policy, Organization & Leadership, CAS, Gender & Women’s Studies, and the Higher Education Collaborative in the College of Education.