Investigations into the Modern University - “The Global University”
This is the third of a series of dispatches filed under the heading “Investigations into the Modern University”.
The first dispatch in this series put the modern university in its proper context in order to orient the reader with respect to the larger set of deathly power formations that the modern university supplements.
The second dispatch oriented the reader with respect to the peculiar organ of the modern university that I serve as a administrative functionary, the “Office of Global Affairs” which acts as the university’s “hub for global engagement”.
This third dispatch takes a step back from my own situation in order to provide additional context and orientation, by considering what makes a “global university” different from other universities and how it is rebels can go about un-making the “global university”.
These inquiries are not designed to ameliorate, to soften, or to render an oppressive power more bearable. They are designed to attack it wherever it is exercised under another name — that of justice, technique, knowledge, objectivity. Each inquiry must therefore be a political act.
They aim at specific targets, institutions that have a name and a place, administrators, officials, and directors — who victimize and also incite revolts, even among those in charge. Each inquiry must therefore be the first episode of a struggle.
Around these targets, these inquiries gather diverse social strata that have been segregated by the ruling class through the play of social hierarchies and divergent economic interests. [...] Each inquiry must constitute, at each strategically important point, a front, and an attack front.
These inquiries are not made from the outside by a group of specialists: the inquirers, here, are the inquiries themselves. It is for them to take the floor, to dismantle this stratification, to formulate what is intolerable, and to no longer tolerate it. It is for them to take charge of the struggle that will frustrate the exercise of oppression.
– From Investigation into Twenty Prisons by the Prisons Information Group (GIP)
Universities are institutions of “higher education” that effectively serve three functions: (i) they administer the production of knowledge (conducting studies and documenting findings), (ii) they administer the distribution of knowledge (facilitating learning and the sharing of knowledge), and (iii) they administer the certification of knowledge (filtering and channeling those determined to be knowledgable apart from those determined not to be so; distinguishing better/best practices from worse/worst practices; determining which curricula and research agendas are more worthy of consideration and which are less worthy).
This is to say, in other words, that universities (i) aim to guarantee that the “right” sorts of knowledges are produced and certified (and that other, “wrong” sorts of knowledges are factored out of production and certification processes) and (ii) aim to guarantee that knowledge is distributed to the “right” sorts of persons in the “right” sorts of places (and that other, “wrong” sorts of persons and places are factored out of distribution channels).
Universities first emerged in Western Europe during the Middle Ages to administer religious knowledges in Western European Christendom. But as modern, secular Western European nation-states were formed and as these states engaged in the brutal colonization of the greater part of the planet, universities were increasingly implicated in and tasked with the administration of secular, humanistic and scientific knowledges, especially those knowledges necessary for the establishment, maintenance, and advancement of racial capitalist empires and colonial corporate enterprises — e.g., the geographic categorization of conquered lands, the demographic categorization of exploited laborers, the anthropological categorization of colonized peoples, the bio-geo-chemical categorization of resources extracted from nature, and the development of engineering and logistical know-how to further the means and ends of empires of exploitative and extractive commerce, finance, and industry.
Today’s so-called “global universities“ are elite institutions that have become so immensely effective at administering the production, distribution, and certification of knowledges that they effectively shape how knowledges are produced, distributed, and certified all over the world. The actions and operations of a relatively small number of elite global universities profoundly influence the actions and operations of so many lesser universities that are only of regional or local significance: lesser universities are compelled to adopt terms set by elite global universities as to what knowledges are to be “rightly” produced and certified, and as to where and to whom such knowledges are to be “rightly” distributed.
Most of today’s elite global universities are concentrated in Europe, in the Anglophone settler colonies of North America and Oceania, and in the foremost “flying geese” of what was once Imperial Japan’s “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere”. The reason for this is rather simple but profound: no university can become a global university without the backing of an imperial nation-state and/or (neo-)colonial corporate enterprise. And the reverse is equally true: imperial nation-states and (neo-)colonial corporate enterprises need global universities to administer knowledges in ways that maintain and advance their own aims and interests.
The geographical distribution of global universities on a world map warped to reflect national wealth.
The geographical distribution of global universities on a world map warped to reflect national population sizes
Despite their reliance upon global universities to administer knowledges in support of empire and enterprise, imperial nation-states and (neo-)colonial corporate enterprises have tended to be wary in their interactions with global universities, knowing the global university to be a pharmakon. In other words, global universities are known to be, at one and the same time, (i) necessary supplements to the maintenance and advancement of empire and enterprise, (ii) possible threats to the maintenance and advancement of empire and enterprise, and (iii) scapegoats for failures to maintain and advance empire and enterprise. The reason for this is, again, simple but profound: in order to become the arbiter of “right” and “wrong” knowledges, one must develop a deep familiarity with “wrong” knowledges. Thus, in addition to producing, distributing, and certifying the “right” knowledges, the global university has always also been a place where people could become familiar with hazardous varieties of “wrong” knowledges that can inspire rebellions against established notions of what makes for “right” and “wrong” knowledges.
Historically, it has been incredibly difficult for peoples in rebellion against racial capitalist empire to infiltrate and discover themselves within the imperial nation-state and within the (neo-)colonial corporation. By contrast, though not at all easy, it has been far less difficult for peoples in rebellion to infiltrate and discover themselves within the global university. Indeed, in ways that became noticeably successful during the second half of the 20th century, peoples in rebellion have infiltrated and subverted the global university in order to produce, distribute, and certify anti-colonial and anti-racist knowledges (especially in the form of Black Studies, Indigenous Studies, Gender Studies, and other ethnic and cultural studies programs), and they have, thereby, diminished the global university’s capacities to serve the state and capital.
But to live by the sword is to die by the sword — more and more, we find that peoples in rebellion are paying for their successful subversions of the global university. Given that the global university has provided rebels with one of the very few vectors by which they might infiltrate and undermine the workings of racial capitalist empire from within, too many rebels have become protective of the global university for fear of losing a privileged point of entry and attack. Recognizing this, imperial nation-states and (neo-)colonial corporate enterprises have effectively turned the tables on many rebels by setting lures and booby traps within the global university that work to compel rebels to increasingly take responsibility for “reforming” the global university, to the detriment of their capacities for rebellion. Indeed, this turning of the tables has been so effective that some anti-colonial and anti-racist rebels now believe that reforming the global university is a genuine calling when, in fact, meaningful anti-colonialist and anti-racist action demands that the global university be dismantled alongside the imperial nation-state and the (neo-)colonial corporate enterprise.
Having invested so much time and energy in infiltrating the global university, too many rebels now find themselves “in too deep”. Consciously or unconsciously, too many rebels have divested from the endeavor of (re-)creating alternative forms of higher education for peoples in rebellion against racial capitalist empire and enterprise. As Sharon Stein writes in Unsettling the University, “Western universities claim universal relevance as if they were synonymous with higher education itself, despite being rooted in the particularities of medieval Christian Europe and later of the European Enlightenment and industrial capitalist society. However, if we define higher education as the pursuit of specialized learning, then arguably every society has its own form of higher education.” Stein cites Blair Stonechild, who reminds us that long before European colonization and the establishment of settler colonial colleges and universities, Indigenous peoples everywhere “had traditional concepts of ‘higher education’ in which they undertook lifelong pursuit of specialized knowledge in order to become hunters, warriors, political leaders, or herbalists.” If rebels are to evade the lures of the global university, rebels inside and outside of the university will need to devote more time and energy to “de-universalizing the institutionalized modern university as the only viable model of higher education” and, going further, they will need to prototype forms of higher education for the alternative societies that they aim to (re-)create. Otherwise, rebels with intellectual inclinations and ambitions will have no place to actualize themselves apart from the global university, and this is precisely what racial capitalist empire and enterprise would prefer to happen.
