An international research event organized by Edufactory and the Anomalous Wave at University of Rome La Sapienza on the 11th of June 2009. With Andrew Ross, Stefano Harney, Morgan Adamson, Dillip Kumar Dash, Pedro Barbosa Mendes, Christopher Newfield.

“As was the factory, so now is the university. Where once the factory was a paradigmatic site of struggle between workers and capitalists, so now the university is a key space of conflict, where the ownership of knowledge, the reproduction of the labour force, and the creation of social and cultural stratifications are all at stake.” A few years ago, in its manifesto, the Edu-factory collective underlined the productive and conflictive dimension of the contemporary university.

But in fact the university does not at all function like a factory, and we are not nostalgic for the struggles of the past. This statement was rather the indication of a political problem. If we begin with the incommensurable spatio-temporal differences between the actual functions of the university and those of the factory, what are the political stakes of their comparison? In other words: how can the problem of organization be rethought in the aftermath of the demise of its traditional forms such as the union and the political party?

Today the economic crisis has opened new spaces to rethink the function of the university and the production of knowledge itself on a global scale. In other words, we have the chance to rethink the raise of the global university, as well as its crisis. Within Edu-factory, we refer to this as the double crisis. On the one hand it is an acceleration of the crisis specific to the university that marks its end, the inevitable result of its eroded epistemological status; on the other hand it is also the crisis of postfordist conditions of labor and value, many of which are circulaited through the university.

“We won’t pay for your crisis”: this was the slogan of Italian “Anomalous Wave”, that is, the refusal to pay the cost of economic crisis and the crisis of university itself. The slogan was translated in other struggles, in different forms but with a common goal. Starting from this point, we want to outline this double crisis from a global perspective. From India to Brazil, from US to Europe, we want to focusing on different experiences to think about the production of a transnational common space of debate and action.

PROGRAM

Venue: Rome, Università ‘La Sapienza’, Facoltà di Lettere, Aula 1 [Map]
Date: Thursday, 11 June 2009

The Rise of the Global  University and its Crisis

Morning session: 14.00-16.30 hr
Introduction: Claudia Bernardi, Edufactory collective

• Andrew Ross, New York University
• Stefano Harney, Queen Mary University of London
• Morgan Adamson, University of Minnesota
• Discussion

The Global Struggles within the Crisis

Afternoon session: 16.30-19.30 hr
Introduction: Isabella Pinto - Lettere in onda

• Dillip  Kumar Dash, University of Hyderabad
  
• Pedro Barbosa Mendes, Uninomade Brazil
  
• Christopher Newfield, University of California Santa Barbara
• Final discussion

BIOGRAPHIES

Andrew Ross [webpage] is the chair of the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University. He is also the author of numerous books, such as No-Collar: The Humane Workplace and its Hidden Costs (2002), Fast Boat to China: Corporate Flight and the Consequences of Free Trade-Lessons from Shanghai (2006) and Nice Work If You Can Get It: Life and Labor in Precarious Time (2009).

Stefano Harney [webpage] teaches Strategy at Queen Mary University of London where he is Director of Global Learning for the School of Business and Management. He published State Work: Public Administration and Mass Intellectuality (2006).

Morgan Adamson is a PhD student at the department of Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature of the University of Minnesota. She wrote the essay “The Financialization of Student Life: Five Propositions on Student Debt” (Polygraph journal, forthcoming).

Dillip Kumar Dash is a researcher at the University of Hyderabad and he works with the Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group directed by Ranabir Samaddar. He is involved in the local social movements and his research is focusing on the Indian university system.

Pedro Barbosa Mendes is a researcher involved in the project Uninomade Brazil. He is working together with the Ministry of Education of Brazil on a project of social inclusion and access to university education.

Christopher Newfield [webpage] is a Professor in the English Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He wrote 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 (2003).

INSTITUTIONAL PARTNERS:

• Global Learning project, School of Business and Management, Queen Mary University of London

RESEARCH PARTNERS

• Edu-factory (trasnational network)
• Anomalous wave - Faculty of Humanities (Rome)
• Esc Atelier (Rome)