Tuesday 24 February 2009

Student apathy is good for business

Crackdowns on a resurgence in activism highlight universities' transformation into businesses selling employable students
Comments (129)

Hicham Yezza
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 19 February 2009 19.30 GMT
Article history
Over the past four weeks, the UK student community has been witnessing an unprecedented political awakening not seen since the anti-apartheid protests of the 80s, and yet you would be forgiven for being completely oblivious to it. Coverage in the media has been sporadic and muted at best, mostly confined to a few orphan stories in local outlets and a couple of notices in the broadsheets. Since mid-January, students in more than 20 universities across the UK have been taking part in a series of sit-ins or soft "occupations" of university spaces. These have for the most part consisted of dozens of students peacefully remaining in lecture theatres and using the act as a gesture of protest against what they perceived to be the shameful silence and collusion of many British universities in the horrific ongoing suffering in Gaza. The movement has even spread to US campuses.
Many issued lists of demands that included requests for educational equipment to be donated to Gazan schools as well as scholarships for Palestinian students. Crucially, no lectures were to be disrupted and indeed, when covering the Nottingham University protests for Ceasefire Magazine, most lecturers and students I spoke to were happy to continue studying in the occupied spaces.
For anyone interested in the health of our political system, these events are highly instructive. For a start, they would have been unthinkable a decade ago: everyone remembers the quasi-proverbial, and not wholly undeserved, reputation students have cultivated over the years for extreme political apathy. Indeed, the extent of the indifference to the political process among the youth was a source of national despair, wistfully and routinely bemoaned by politicians across the spectrum. More importantly, these protests have also been very indicative of some larger truths: not only have they highlighted a rise in political awareness among a new generation raised in the shadow of the Iraq war debate, they have also exposed what has for long been a suspected but unspoken reality: rather than being the centres of learning, debate and intellectual engagement of yore, British universities are now little more than businesses purveying a product, employable students. The message is unambiguous: political engagement might be good for the mind but it is very, very bad for business. The last four weeks have given us ample evidence to that effect. Take Nottingham University, where senior management responded to a peaceful sit-in by sending in private security agents to drag the students out of the building and into the snow (injuring some in the process according to media reports). To their credit, the students responded by launching a "books not bombs" campaign aimed at initiating a campus-wide debate about the university's links to the arms trade. Things were not much better at Sheffield Hallam where students had agreed to end their sit-in when threatened with police action but were suspended from their course anyway, a lesson to everyone else.
Thankfully, not everyone was this draconian: many of the universities, including King's College, Oxford University and the London School of Economics, engaged in reasonable dialogue and several sit-ins ended in amicable agreements (after negotiations) where some or all of the demands were satisfied: Edinburgh University granted scholarships for Palestinian students. Glasgow University offered to send equipment to Gazan educational institutions. Unfortunately, these have been the exception rather than the rule.
How is it that a peaceful movement (both in its aims and actions) that has received support from members of both houses of parliament – not to mention a long list of academics, politicians and public figures (including Tony Benn, Noam Chomsky, Desmond Tutu and MPs such as Alan Simpson) has come to be seen as such a grave threat to the public image of a university? Since when has a group of peaceful protesters organising lectures, film screenings, open discussions and live acoustic gigs been deemed worthy of heavy-handed tactics and deployment of considerable university security resources and police time?
The answer is rather simple. Many universities have now grown to see their task as that of churning out generic, malleable clones for the consumption of ever more regimental recruiters. Students now spend their university years being bombarded with instructions on how to turn themselves into perfect job interview candidates. Countless career tutorials, taster sessions, seminars, workshops and presentations drum into students the notion that any semblance of political consciousness will damage employability – and that employability is everything. What is being lost on many is that such a shift is draining this young generation of bright, capable graduates of their essential critical instincts. The unquestioning deference to authority and the blind adherence to the party line are now seen not as impediments, but as the pre-requisites for anyone serious about getting a job with a top recruiter.
Let us be clear: this is obviously not about the political merits of the protests per se. The problem is not that university managers disagree with their students' demands (which they are perfectly entitled to do), but that they view the very act of students engaging with the wider reality of their world as a subversive phenomenon to be nipped in the bud before it infects the rest of the student population. In an attempt to discredit the protests, some university authorities simply resorted to calling them "disruptive" despite incontrovertible evidence to the contrary. This PR-obsessed mindset now prevalent amongst university managers perceives any discussion of controversial topics to be a nuisance they can ill afford and an unacceptable threat to the image of Stepford-like stability, homogeneity and conformity that is at the very heart of their international recruitment efforts.
We can dismiss these sit-ins as simple-minded tantrums by soixante-huitards manqués all we like but, ultimately, if British universities are serious about remaining a competitive presence in the international market of ideas, whether in the natural or social sciences, it is essential the ongoing rot is brought to a halt as a matter of urgency. It is simply not enough to pay lip service to an esoteric, non-existent "right to protest". Students must be encouraged, not quelled and intimidated, in their efforts to engage with the complex realities of the world. Sure, some of the demands might be unrealistic and arguably naive in their assumptions, but that is beside the point: whether they're right or wrong in their political positions, students need to be heard and respected, not patronised and infantilised for their dissent.

1 comment:

Dominic H said...

I just wanted to post a piece that we did for our college podcast regarding an occupation that took place at King's College London.

Here's the Link
http://blip.tv/file/1706901

Dominic