Dr. Michael Schapira    (Hofstra University)

The Longing for Total Revolution Revisited: Total Critique in an Age of Crisis

The economic collapse of 2008 intensified a discourse that had been building since the early 21^st century, namely that the modern university was in a state of crisis. Crisis discourse in higher education has become as ubiquitous as it is imprecise, focusing on issues as desperate as curricular reform, student debt, the obsolescence of tenure, and the corporatization of university management. In this presentation, the author takes a historical perspective to show that this current talk of the “university in crisis” is not unique. He discusses two prior iterations of crisis – the global student protests of 1968 and debates within German universities in the early 20^th century – to highlight the background conditions which lead to the crisis designation, and then links this with a 19^th century tradition of social critique which Bernard Yack has called “the longing for total revolution.” He concludes by suggesting that our talk of the “university in crisis” could benefit from revisiting this history to clarify how critics and defenders alike imagine the purpose and function of the 21^st century university, especially in how they envision its relation to both the state and the economy.