From Upton Sinclair's 'Goose Step' to the Neoliberal University: Essays on the Ongoing Transformation of Higher Education

This is a unique collection of 15 essays by two Purdue University professors who use their institution as a case-in-point study of the changing nature of the American 'multiversity.' They take a book from an earlier time, Upton Sinclair's 'The Goose-Step A Study of American Education' from 1936, which exposed the capitalist corruption of the ivory tower back then and brought it up to date with more far-reaching changes today. the authors go into some detail on how the military industries are not only penetrating the universities but pushing out the liberal arts at the same time. They also include, as an appendix, a 1967 essay by SDS leader Carl Davidson, who broke some of the original ground on the subject.

Daniel Morris is the author of seven books on twentieth- and twenty-first century poetry and visual culture, editor or co-editor of five essay collections, and author of four books of poetry. Recent titles include Not Born Digital (Bloomsbury), Blue Poles (Marsh Hawk Press), a paperback reissue of his study of Nobel Laureate Louise Glück (University of Missouri Press), and, as editor, The Cambridge Companion to American Poetry and Politics since 1900. He is a professor of English at Purdue University, where he has taught since 1994. Harry Targ taught United States foreign policy, US/Latin American relations, international political economy, and topics on labor studies in the Department of Political Science and a program in Peace Studies, both at Purdue University. He retired in 2019. He sees connections between theory/education and political practice. Consequently, he has been a political activist, co-chair of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS), and a member of the Purdue chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). Formerly he was a member of the Northwest Central Labor Council (AFL-CIO) and the Lafayette Area Peace Coalition (LAPC). He has published ten books, including Diary of a Heartland Radical, available at Changemaker. He blogs at www.heartlandradical.blogspot.com.