i can't access any tumblr messages at all. but anon, when i say i want to abolish universities, i'm not proposing anti-intellectualism.
I was talking about how most universities keep their reading lists, access to good libraries and in the case of science, high-end equipment only for use of the students enrolled in that particular university or in rare cases for exchange programs.
When the type of structures I want to envision are ones that would allow access to those to anyone who wanted to really learn, irrespective of whether they joined that university or whether they could afford that. When I say I want to abolish university, I mean university as an institution as it exists right now. I don't want to abolish knowledge, how would that even work? and it seems facetious to imply that that was what I meant.
Why does it have to be a slippery slope when we point out that universities are a high end club which really mainly serve for entry into the professional classes, and serve to gatekeep knowledge otherwise, to assuming I'm proposing I don't want any knowledge centres or learning to exist or anti-intellectualism? Intellectualism shouldn't be limited to universities anyway.
I do want centers of learning and knowledge, but university as it exists right now is not serving the purpose of disseminating knowledge. Academics regularly complain how students use chatgpt for assignments and are only interested in passing courses and getting a university degree and not learning for learning's sake but that's because the structures are set up to incentivise that.
A lot of people here see universities as a requirement to get a white collar job. Universities still mainly serve as a way to make connections with other people in the industry more than for any other thing. What I'm suggesting is de-linking that.
Also there are other criticisms about university, such as how they prioritise certain ways of examining texts and critiquing them over others and certain ways of writing essays, which are rooted in western colonial knowledge production models. Universities also take concepts like decolonisation and de-fang them till they lose all meaning and edge. It irks me when universities do land acknowledgements while continuing to take large grants and monies from wealthy billionaires and the military industrial complex. So many western universities have deals with weapons manufacturers and many engineering students go on to work for them. Universities are bearing down on their own students for pro-Palestine protests right now. Universities as they exist uphold the status quo, they do not abolish it.
Modern universities as they exist are also deeply extractivist and colonial in nature. They use the knowledge of local communities and then publish papers on it. I do have lots of examples from my own political work infact. We get lots of requests from universities for doing research on the grassroots communities, for giving access to those communities, but in the end, the researchers carry out their research, publish it in big name journals, get fame, and do nothing material for the community. We turn them down almost immediately now.
And yet we also need the legitimacy of universities to ensure that the work we're doing gets better reach. If we don't quote western philosophers in our research, we also don't get legitimacy anywhere. I do find that deeply deeply unfair. Our work with grassroots communities is producing knowledge and even if i may be so bold, new knowledge theories applicable to our society. It is just not something that can be made palatable for universities as they exist. And people from grassroots communities have a lot of knowledge and could probably write many papers, but since they cannot be part of universities they cannot publish that work and get recognised for it as having created that knowledge, as having contributed to research.
Also this is a small point, but, even when it comes to universities, there's a hierarchy. universities in the west carry more prestige and legitimacy compared to universities in third world. It doesn't matter whether the learning is the same, research from third world universities is never taken as seriously by anyone. This is why many students from here want to enroll in foreign universities all the time. But the barriers to entry for foreign students, especially from third world countries are immensely high. Western universities select for the elite class from here to educate in their own universities, these people are already indoctrinated in western ideals and ideas. It is an exception when a working class student from here gets accepted to a western university on scholarships, not the rule.
Not to mention how university requires years of schooling, which itself relies on you being able to conform to the capitalist system as it exists since schooling also serves to produce complacent workers. If you're disabled, if you otherwise cannot conform, then barriers to entry make it almost impossible to enter university even though you might be interested in learning, even though you might have a lot to contribute. Not to mention exorbitant fees involved especially if you're an international student, but for local students too, people go into debt to be able to afford universities in US. But there are many issues with universities even beyond fees.
So no, I am not advocating for mass anti-intellectualism, I never did. I still stand by abolishing universities as they exist now.
