(EDU7b) Creating Care and Community in the Neoliberal University II: Belonging and Resistance

Scholars have observed the increasing neoliberalization of higher education, wherein education is transformed into a commodity or service that is provided by faculty and consumed by students (Mohanty 2003). In this climate, the pursuit of profit takes precedence over the pursuit of knowledge and the well-being of students and faculty, often putting students and faculty into adversarial positions. These effects are particularly acute for those already marginalized in academia, such as racialized, working class, first generation, queer and trans, and Indigenous members of the university community. At the same time, universities are sites of resistance enacted by students, faculty, and staff. This session features papers exploring how students and faculty navigate belonging, care, and community, especially for members of equity-seeking groups who have historically been excluded from full membership in universities. The papers explore the processes through which the “ideal worker” or “ideal student” is constructed, and how that idealized figure is racialized, gendered, and/or classed. Further, these papers address the structural conditions under which the labour of creating community and care occurs, and which members of the university community carry unequal burdens of care labour. Finally, the papers address how students and faculty are challenging the neoliberalization of the university by creating spaces of community, joy, and resistance. Tags: Communities, Education, Equality and Inequality, Teaching

Organizers: Yukiko Tanaka, University of Toronto Scarborough, Bahar Hashemi, University of Toronto Scarborough

Presentations

Momo Tanaka, University of Toronto

Teaching, learning, and caring in a neoliberal institution: Lessons from a global pandemic

The taken-for-granted practices of academic teaching and learning were unexpectedly disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. University campuses across the globe suddenly implemented social distancing practices such as work-from-home and virtual course delivery. Faculty and students had to find strategies to integrate their academic practices into their home, adapt to an unfamiliar method of teaching and learning, and adjust to isolation during a period of intense uncertainty and unease. Drawing from a larger scoping literature review on the sociological research published on the work-life nexus between March 2020 and March 2023, I argue that the COVID-19 pandemic revealed the inadequacy of the neoliberal academic institution to give care and accommodate care responsibilities of its faculty and students. I specifically highlight the profound impact of neoliberal policies on the experience of the pandemic on women faculty, parents, early-career academics. (While these were not the only groups affected by the neoliberal nature of the academic institution, these were the groups that were most frequently discussed in the literature captured by this review). The pandemic underscored that the neoliberal academic institution’s proclivities towards productivity, top-down decision-making, and focus on maintaining income are often contradictory to the needs and desires of academics. Academics (particularly young, early-career academics) felt threatened by the pressure to maintain pre-pandemic productivity with the loss of childcare and the workload of transitioning to remote instruction. They found themselves at odds with the spectre of the “ideal academic worker.” Faculty frequently expressed a desire to extend care to their students, making use of personal resources to fill the gaps where the institution failed to provide proper support for both students and faculty. This gap-filling was a gendered phenomenon; female academics were more prone to recognizing the gaps and to take on additional care responsibilities. However, there was also a discussion about the ways academics resisted the neoliberal expectations of academia, including self-care practices as a form of resistance. This included simply identifying the needs of carers and taking time and space to address those needs. By “unmasking” their parenthood and revealing the limits of the “ideal academic,” academics offered each other a space to be vulnerable and acknowledge the reality of the obligations and relationships to others instead of insisting on the individualized and disembodied narrative of the neoliberal institution. In making care responsibilities visible, there was an opportunity to foster connectedness between academics and create a more compassionate environment for students and faculty. Ultimately, the neoliberal institutions inherent emphasis on productivity is contradictory and incompatible with care needs and care responsibilities. The unexpected rearrangement of teaching, learning, and research during the pandemic resulted in a heightened manifestation of pre-existing failings of the academic institution. However, although the academic institution failed to prioritize care and relationality, some saw the pandemic as an opportunity to reimagine and reconstruct academic structures rooted in principles of equity, solidarity, and inclusivity. 

Yusuf Olaniyan, University of Bath

Higher Education Is A Scam: A Critical Media And Websites Analysis Of Constructing Higher Education And An Ideal Student In Nigeria

Recently, Nigeria witnessed the shocking reality of a graduate whose case generated massive attention in the media. Oludare, a university graduate, challenged the university by returning his certificate and requesting a refund because to him, the education he received added no value to his life. "The certificate we are collecting in Nigeria now is a scam; I keep my certificate inside since it is of no use to me”… I am suffering; take your certificate, return my money", he repeatedly lamented in the viral video" (Vangardngr, 2022, p.1). Oludare was not merely another face in the crowd of graduates, distinguishable only by the varying colours of their academic gowns. He was a man who became a symbol of an undercurrent of discontent that had been growing for years beneath the veneer of the neoliberalised and internationalised ontologically driven system of Nigerias HE (Chukwu, 2020; Stephen et al., 2022; Adesina, 2006). In this marketised model, a degree is commodified and viewed as a transactional entity that should guarantee a return on investment - in this case, improved employability and income prospects (Mogaji et al., 2020; Oludeyi, 2022; Nwagwu, 2020; Binuomoyo, 2020; Wong et al., 2020). His lament, “I am suffering”, resonated with the sentiments of countless others feeling similarly let down by their HE (Adegbite, 2022, p.1). The incongruity between the perceived value of the degree and the actual return on investment deepens the sense of disillusionment, exacerbating feelings of being cheated or scammed. This is arguably a consequence of the consumerist education model, where a narrow focus on employment outcomes overshadows the value of knowledge and learning (Brooks et al., 2023; Tomlinson, 2017; Bamberger et al., 2019; Wong et al., 2020). While much research has studied the challenges and transformational aspects of HE in Nigeria (see Okebukola, 2006; Ogunode et al., 2021; Jaja, 2013; Uduk, 2016; Oni et al., 2010; Ogunode and Musa, 2020; Asiyai, 2013; Ogunode et al., 2023), only a few have explored how HE and an ideal student is being constructed in public discourse. Ademilokun et al. (2023) recently took stock of the discursive branding of HE in Nigeria and found seven branding identities used by Nigerian universities to marketise themselves, but this study does not combine media and universities websites to explore these branding identities. Therefore, this unattended need has instigated the importance of examining this issue from a different theoretical and methodological lens. This research used Critical Discourse Analysis and Bourdieu’s “institutional habitus” and “Social Magic” to unpack the construction of HE and an “ideal student” from an academic capitalism philosophical paradigm. It makes an original contribution to policy and sociological studies of inequalities by suturing the intersectionalities of globalisation, neoliberalism and internationalisation. The finding shows a hegemonic construction of HE and an “ideal student” in Nigeria, where academics and the government have prominent voices in the media. These voices construct HE and an “ideal student” as the ones driven by globalisation, neoliberalism and internationalisation ontologies. Global forces positioning HE as service providers delivering skills and qualifications in exchange for fees, and blurring the normativity of the “ideal” conception of students to the ones who have the “real currency” or conform to the philosophical architects of academic capitalism. A redefinition of “ideal employment” or ‘manpower" as synonymous with “decent jobs” was also found, a Euro-America metric to measure employability and job satisfaction. This study is considered as “Unlocking a Door to a Corridor of Many Rooms” because it only scratched the surface and opened further research recommending the representation of silenced voices in this discourse for policy change and practice, especially with decolonial praxis as a response to academic capitalism. With its connection to the theme of this conference on the neolibralisation of HE, this research holds “elephantic” weight, because it unravels the explicit and implicit suppositions about the universal construction of student and HE in a developing nation like Nigeria, “whose universities are found on the colonial structure and still entangled with the remnants of post-colonial legacies” (Livsey, 2017, 2014). It also carries importance in understanding the alignment between the portrayal of students on university websites, the policy makers perspective, and the interpretations of other crucial societal actors such as the media.

Mojtaba Rostami, University of Calgary

The Commuter Campus: Unravelling Neoliberal Higher Education's Failure in Fostering Multiculturalism in Canada

Neoliberal policies in higher education, emphasizing privatization and reduced government funding, have shifted the financial burden of post-secondary education onto students, making it an expensive endeavour. Interviews with student leaders from four Alberta universities highlight broader impacts beyond financial strain, including diminished social interactions and intercultural contact due to off-campus work demands. These conditions hinder the development of an inclusive campus culture, allowing microaggressions and stereotypes to persist. The study reveals a significant erosion of the social aspects of university life, criticizing the neoliberal approach for failing to foster cultural competence and inclusivity. Recommendations are made for enhancing social life and intercultural training in higher education.

Qingyan Sun, University of Alberta

On Community and Belonging in the Corporate University- A Queer Loving Critique

In this paper, I explore the conditions of possibility for fostering transformative conceptions of community and belonging within the corporate university that is supported by the twinned forces of neoliberalism and white heteropatriarchy. Adopting an autoethnographic approach, I critically examine my experience of participating in a mentoring collective for racialized graduate students. I have been an active member of the collective since its inception, where Indigenous, Black and other racialized graduate students and the organizing faculty members routinely gather to commiserate and celebrate one another and circulate strategies of survival. Specifically, I interrogate a statement I made during one of the collective’s sessions that, as a gay man of East-Asian descent, I did not feel belonged at the gatherings. Leveraging feminist philosopher Judith Butler’s (2001) discussion of critique as a reflexive practice via which the terms of critique themselves are opened up for new possibilities of transformation, I contend that my words ideologically traded with a liberal-humanist model of belonging only available to some. By exposing that the binary feeling of either belonging or not belonging is produced by the colonial-capitalist structure to which the neoliberal university is also tethered, I first explore the possibility of a performative (Butler, 1998), praxis-oriented, and willful act “to belong” (Ahmed, 2006). I outline that, as the ontological premise and foundation of a community that centres overlapping situatedness, “to belong” gestures to Muñoz’s (1999) concept of disidentification via which we collectively seek to embody and live the relationships necessary to instill decolonial futurity. Thence, I suggest that we must resist the politically-vacated neoliberal model of community rampant in academic, administrative, and popular parlance which feigns evanescent amicability where it does not exist. Drawing on queer Asian studies (Eng, 2001), Indigenous queer studies (Belcourt, 2016), and intersectional feminism (Collins, 2019), I suggest that a radical community which fosters such resistance must remain willful, reflexive, flexible, and thus vigilant about shifting terrains of political alliance and opposition (Collins and Bilge, 2020; Young, 1994). What anchors this community is the shared positionality in and political will to dismantle infrastructures of white (hetero) patriarchal colonial capitalism, against the affective allure of emerging individually as fully legible subjects within the oppressive structures that attenuate our always already partial legibilities. Finally, I underscore that to construe community in this way also inevitably requires critical tensions to be held between our agency as (queer) racialized researchers and our complicities in Canada’s settler colonialism and its attendant gender and sexual norms.

Carae Henry, University of Toronto

Illuminating Joy in the Margins: An Exploration of Black Women Faculty's Coping Strategies in the Face of Institutional Race-Based Harm

In Canadian higher education institutions, Black women are largely underrepresented as faculty. Despite efforts to increase their recruitment and retainment in the academy, Black women remain relegated to the margins. As researchers have noted, many of these faculty recruitment efforts focus their attention toward financial incentives rather than holistic improvement of faculty wellbeing. Previous work in Canada and the United States has identified patterns of structural racism that impact Black women faculty’s experiences in higher education, and in some cases, result in their departure. Accordingly, much of the literature that has emerged has considered the psychological harm done to Black women and Black faculty broadly in these work environments shaped by race-based harm. While these works illuminate pathways of harm that shape Black women faculty’s experiences, there is risk of the reproduction of damage-centred narratives of Black women’s mental health that confine Black women to narratives of dismissal, disappearance and death at the hands of the academy. Alternatively, some American researchers have taken a turn toward the study of Black joy/happiness as a new frame to reconceptualize the relationship between Black faculty mental health and retainment within higher education. In Canada, initiatives in response to anti-Black racism such as the Scarborough Charter highlight a clear desire within academic to make room for Black faculty to flourish. Joy-oriented inquiries offer greater for desire for Black women in the academy, highlighting their agency in responding to adversity within the academy and beyond. This paper responds directly to scholarship in Black studies, higher education studies and the sociology of mental health by placing the study joy firmly at the centre of Black women faculty’s experiences. Taking the form of a critical literature review, it functions as a preliminary step to future research on the coping strategies that Black women faculty employ to navigate predominantly White institutions in Canada. This work is led by three primary questions: (a) What is known about the coping strategies/strategies of resistance that Black women faculty employ in response to institutional race-based harm?; (b) How does a focus on Black faculty joy/happiness opened new possibilities to interpret Black women faculty’s responses to race-based harm, independent of retainment?; (c) What is the potential of healing for Black women faculty through joy-oriented research of their mental health experiences? This piece will investigate the discourse surrounding Black women faculty’s efforts to navigate their mental health, with emphasis on the literature that frames these efforts through the lens of joy rather than imminent, unavoidable, damage and deficit. Informed by critical Black feminist thought, with particular attention to intersectional analysis. In her early work on intersectionality, Kimberle Crenshaw had utilized the concept to speak to the ways that intersections between race and gender shaped the employment experiences of Black women (1991). Later, Crenshaw would develop the theory to examine the ways that race, and gender contributed to “structural, political and representational aspects of violence against women of color” (1991:1244). While the theory has since been widely applied to other axes of identity since, its conceptual foundations suggest that it is well suited to an analysis of Black women faculty’s mental health experiences within and beyond higher education experiences. More broadly, this work follows the tradition of critical Indigenous feminisms in conversation with Black feminist thought, seeking to uncover a radical, decolonized ‘elsewhere’ that prioritize Black wellbeing and futurity within and beyond the academy (King 2019). What is more, this research is firmly interested in the pursuit of desire-based – rather than damage-centred – images of Black women faculty and their mental health experiences being produced (Tuck 2009). As Black women, these faculty are treated as fungible; they are recruited primarily for their optical or practical use value that is far removed from their personhood. As such, this work aligns strongly with the calls to action in Session EDU7: Creating Care and Community in the Neoliberal University. This paper is a challenge to the neoliberalization of higher education that relies on commodified of Black labour, the disposability of Black bodies and the illusion of “strength” throughout the process. An orientation towards Black women’s joy as faculty opens possibilities for communities of belonging and care to emerge within and beyond the university that may not only sustain these faculty, but the students whom they encounter for the long term.