It’s not easy being made redundant. It’s an act of violent separation. Over the past decade, thousands of lecturers and researchers have experienced this attack on their income, autonomy and dignity; thousands more, at around 70 universities, are currently at risk of losing their jobs. Universities are in crisis – and 40% of institutions are projected to be in financial deficit this year. 

University bosses lack the vision necessary to do anything but mimic their competitors. The new Labour government, like its Tory predecessor, is sanguine about job cuts, course closures and even university bankruptcies. The leadership of the University and College Union seems impotent in the face of the onslaught, happy to embrace a mediocre and exploitative system of higher education. 

Even as many alternative spaces of accessible learning, such as trade unions, have faced huge challenges, every year sees fresh attempts at political education. In reading groups, community art projects, trade unions, social centres, and religious spaces, people continue to engage in collective self-education.

This event will explore the contours of the crisis in universities, and consider possible routes out of the mess made by neoliberal management. We will ask, what would education look like without the profit motive? How can we resist the university’s relentless mediocrity in order to build something better, whether on campus or beyond?

OUR PANEL

Sita Balani is a UCU branch committee member at Queen Mary University of London. She will talk about political education, including Study and Struggle, a course/reading list designed to be used both inside and outside of the university.

Nicholas Beuret is a member of inCommons, a collective project which is bringing together scholars, activists and organisers to offer residential courses on commoning, free to students and outside of the university.

Zara Dinnen is branch co-chair at Queen Mary University of London UCU, where she has been involved in political education in meetings, pickets and beyond. She is co-author of the essay “How to Stop a University”.

Becca Harrison contributes to UCU committees (OU branch, national exec, higher education, equalities) and organises against institutional and gender-based violences. She is the author of ‘Fuck the Canon,’ which calls for a remaking of film and media studies, and is a contributor in Al Jazeera’s ‘Degrees of Abuse’ series.

David Harvie was a UCU organiser at University of Leicester until being made redundant – part of an attack on trade union organisation – in 2021. Now a deprofessionalised intellectual, he’s co-author of Shaping for Mediocrity: The Cancellation of Critical Thinking at Our Universities (2024) and, since June 2023, has been UCU’s (national) honorary treasurer.

Rehana Zaman has been a UCU executive committee member at Goldsmiths since 2021, most recently in the role of co-President. She is also an artist and filmmaker often engaging issues around labour and immigration through collective forms of practice.

As always, tickets are priced on a sliding scale. If you are unable to pay for a ticket please do not hesitate to contact us at shop@housmans.com, and a free ticket will be made available.

If you choose ‘book + event entry’ your copies of the book will be available to collect on the evening. If you would like to collect it earlier, or arrange for delivery, please contact us (postage is £2.95). Telephone 020 7837 4473 or email shop@housmans.com.

Doors Open at 7pm, Event Starts 7:30

Feel free to BYOB.