Covid-19 and the Hopeless University at the End of the End of History
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Covid-19 and the Hopeless University at the End of the End of History Richard Hall 1 # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Keywords Academic alienation . Anxiety machine . Grief . Hopeless University . Humane
values . Self-care
Introduction It’s Monday, 23 March 2020. I am in my study looking out over the Western Park area of Leicester, with blue sky and wisps of cloud. A Sikh man just walked past a cherry tree in the garden on the next road over from ours. The cherry tree is in blossom, and the silver birches on that road and the young oak tree in the garden just down from where I sit are in the process of leafing-up. The beauty of this is that I can see the return of the blue tits and great tits as they feed on-and-in the Buddleia, and skip between those trees. I can see a heron following the line of the brook towards Braunstone Park each day. I have seen a little egret heading the other way. I see this life unfolding as I work from home, for (can I still say at?) De Montfort University in Leicester. I work in the Education Division. I also work across the institution on projects in relation to decolonising the University, which is really important to me as I explore the idea of the abolition of the University. I am also a Universities and Colleges (trade) Union (UCU) committee member. Whilst I do some undergraduate teaching for first and second years, most of that took place in semester one. I have nine PhD students and a Masters student, with whom I work. And, of course, there are other things, but these are on my mind. They are on my mind because they centre people and relationships at a time of great stress, uncertainty, and anxiety. Placing people and individual/collective well-being at the centre pushes back against the idea of the University-as-was before Covid-19, which demanded that academic commodities take centre stage. These commodities are the things that higher education (HE) in the global North says that it values, like project deliverables, research outputs, public engagement activities, or human capital in the
* Richard Hall [email protected]
1
De Montfort University, Leicester, UK
Postdigital Science and Education
form of graduate earnings. Under the treadmill of competition between national HE sectors, institutions, subjects, and individuals, there is a demand that these things are quantified and turned into proxy metrics so that judgements can be made about performance. Competitive edge sets individuals against each other in a scramble for value, which in turn damages our physical and emotional species-being, communality, and sense-of-self (Dyer-Witheford 2004; Engels 1845/2009; Marx 1845/1974). The Covid-19 pandemic has forced us into an appreciation of how relationships have been subsumed and re-engineered under discourses of employability, entrepreneurship, excellence, impact, satisfaction, and value-for-money. I want to push back against this, and centre the traumas, griefs, separations, and reflections of people as the virus forces them to reinterpret themselves and their prioriti
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