Knowledge Under Siege: Charting a Future for Universities - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1779401248 ISBN 13: 9781779401243

Publisher: University of Regina Press, 2026

Synopsis

At a time when universities are being defunded by governments and vilified by ultra-conservative pundits, defining their value has never been more urgent

For decades, efforts to quantify the value of universities in dollars and cents led to the corporatization of institutions that are meant to serve their students and society by creating knowledge and teaching―not by turning a profit. Now more than ever, the role of the university in advancing discovery, democracy, equity, and in contributing to its students’ success is under siege and needs to be defended.

Knowledge Under Siege picks up where Spooner and McNinch’s Dissident Knowledge in Higher Education left off and analyzes today’s volatile higher education landscape―one where hostility towards the academy is a growing trend across the globe. Bringing together leading international voices, including Gloria Ladson-Billings, Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Christopher Newfield, Kevin Kumashiro, and many others, the book considers how universities are facing unprecedented threats that include defunding, criticism of and the dismantling of initiatives to diversify the academy, academic gag orders, and efforts to undermine tenure and academic freedom. It asks how institutions can resist these incursions while working towards becoming engines of social mobility for a diverse student body (not merely serving the most privileged) and graduating critical thinkers who aspire to build a better world.

There is a consensus in higher education that universities must remain autonomous so that our societies can better understand both our history and our rapidly changing world. Knowledge Under Siege is a call to action to fight for our institutions and make them self-reflexive spaces where truth and learning continue to thrive.

About this title

About the Authors

Marc Spooner is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Regina. His research interests include audit culture, academic freedom, the effects of neoliberalization and corporatization on higher education, social justice, activism, and participatory democracy.

James McNinch is professor emeritus and former dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of Regina. His research and publications have focused on teaching and learning in higher education, gender and sexual diversity, racism and white privilege, and the social construction of masculinity.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

In the many months since the symposium was held which prompted this collective musing on the question “what are universities for?” the world continues to be a complex, complicated, and highly contested space. The role of universities has been under greater scrutiny, from within the institutions themselves, but to an even greater degree from those who live, work, and think outside its borders.

This exterior agitation poses the same question, “what are universities for?”, but it does not start with the assumption that a university is an institution whose purpose is to seek (research) and disseminate (teach) the truth (in all its contested meanings). Those working inside the university understand its fundamental values: freedom of inquiry and expression, academic freedom and intellectual integrity, and the equality and dignity of all people (Turpin & Bailey, 2024). How those values play out in the everyday is constantly being tested.

The contributors to this book trouble both the internal and external assumptions about what universities have been in the past, what they are like currently, and what they might, could, or should be in the future.

A medieval institution at once steeped in tradition and yet ever-evolving to respond to current pressures and demands, the university is an entity like no other in society. Perhaps best described as a “multiversity” (Kerr, 1963/2001, p. 5). Kerr explains its ever-evolving nature “The Modern University” was as nearly dead in 1930 when Flexner wrote about it as the old Oxford was in 1852 when Newman idealized it. History moves faster than the observer’s pen. Neither the ancient classics and theology nor the German philosophers and scientists could set the tone for the really modern university– the Multiversity...Newman's “Idea of the University” still has its devotees– chiefly the humanists and the generalists and the undergraduates. Flexner’s “Idea of the Modern University” still has its supporters– chiefly the scientists and the specialists and the graduate students. “The Idea of a Multiversity” has its practitioners– chiefly the administrators,...These several competing visions of true purpose, each relating to a different layer of history, a different web of forces...The university is so many things to so many people that it must, of necessity, be partially at war with itself. (p. 5-7)

Universities have adapted, and continue to adapt, in response to the demands, constraints, and needs placed upon them by the governments, societies, and communities in which they reside and indeed serve. One argument we wish to make explicit here is that universities operating in a liberal democracy have a special role to play; one that sets them apart from universities in totalitarian regimes and authoritarian and illiberal states.

In addition to seeking truth, making discoveries, and passing on knowledge and wisdom, the university in a democracy has as its unique purpose that of asking difficult questions of governments, other power structures, and of society itself. Its role includes ensuring the best available evidence is informing public policy, as well as helping to foster critical and creative, participatory citizens, whose formation prepares them for a lifetime of meaningful employment, volunteering, following interests, and democratic engagement. When a society and a university are operating in an optimal fashion, these processes are occurring both inside and outside of campus. The university is in the service of our current society, but more importantly, to the one on the horizon we aspire to become.

Though this collection is not intended as another “academia in crisis book”, it is imperative to acknowledge the moment we are in as well as the trajectories of our near past that affect and inform our present and future.

In the last hundred years or so, the modern public universities of North America have experienced a variety of watershed moments and crises. This can be observed from the first Red Scare which led to the creation of the Association of American University Professors (AAUP) in 1915 (https://www.aaup.org/about-aaup), to the 2nd World War and the advent of the 2nd Red Scare and the creation of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) that eventually devolved into the full-blown McCarthyism of the early 1950s (Cole, 2009). The turbulent 1960s witnessed student unrest and calls to end the Vietnam war, as well as the many disruptions from a variety of social movements demanding equity and greater inclusion. The mid-1980s saw growing Boycott Divestment Sanctions [BDS] calls in an effort to end South African apartheid.

Recently, encampments have dotted campuses throughout the United States and Canada, joining similar worldwide calls to action and denunciations of the ongoing genocide in Palestine. Many of these camps and unrest have been met with judicial injunctions and in several instances the use of state force to remove them.

Among a variety of developments of concern, our current moment features the outright banning of entire areas of study, the abolishment of tenure, and the curtailment of academic freedom, as well as a near ubiquitous push towards performance-based funding (Spooner, 2024). It also features chronic underfunding, international student quotas, and anti-woke sentiment with pushback against equity, diversity, and inclusion initiatives meant to permit greater participation in increasingly conservative and authoritarian interventionist states.

Still other developments include the widespread use and advancement of Artificial Intelligence and the uncertain ground upon which universities have based their diverse responses to it. It is a time of audit culture, anti-intellectualism, and disinformation (Spooner 2018, 2024).

It can be stated with little hyperbole that from our fields of study to our campus greens, academies and academics are under attack, just as our global democracies equally find themselves so challenged.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Regina Press
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1779401248
• ISBN 13: 9781779401243
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 360
• Editor: Spooner Marc, McNinch James