Tuesday, 19 November 2013

Moral cowardice

Even with my own views on UK journalism, I have to admit that this is a valuable comment on University managements' crackdown on protest on campus, just one symptom of the moral indigence that pervades University administration in a neo-liberal world where Universities are being turned into nothing more than for-profit corporations, where you can get a chair simply on the amount of money you can bring in - regardless of whether or not you have a sophisticated analytical thought in your head.  I will have more to say on this.  For now, let me quote Chakrabortty's concluding paragraph, which is very good:
Where universities were historically places of free expression, now they are having to sacrifice that role for the sake of the free market. For students, that comes in the form of a crackdown on dissent. Yet the twentysomethings at university now will end up running our politics, our businesses and our media. You might want these future leaders to be questioning and concerned about society. Or you might wonder whether sending in the police to arrest a woman chalking a wall is proportionate. Either way, you should be troubled.