(Neo)liberal-democratic backsliding and the western(ized) university

Can it, and ought it, be saved by critical feminist theory and practices?

With the participation of

• Dr. Annelise Erismann (GRAU)
• Dr. Anukriti Dixit (University of Bern)
• Dr. Gunjan Sondhi (Open University)
• Dr. SM Rodriguez (London School of Economics)

The roundtable will be moderated by Dr. Kwaku Adomako (GRAU, University of Bern) and accompanied by a poetry interlude by Dr. Muneeb Ul Lateef Banday (GRAU, University of Bern).

This event will be followed by a vegan apéritif.

Description: In times of systematic dehumanization of targeted groups such as trans and queer people across the globe; where students protesting the horror and carnage in Gaza choking their social media feeds are met with reprisals from universities and the police; where mouthpieces of higher learning institutions say little to nothing about the islamophobia that renders Palestinian grievances inaudible, their deaths unseeable, and the word genocide unsayable; where enduring racism normalizes black death in Africa to such a degree that Sudan and the DRC remain an afterthought, while the global trade in weapons in exchange for their minerals works to the benefit of countries such as Switzerland, the SAGS Research Network on Globalization, Race, and Alterity in and beyond the University (GRAU) asks how we can (re)assert higher education as a viable vehicle through which to speak truth to power.

Considering the dizzying myriads of events that cannot be captured exhaustively, GRAU invites you to tarry in the ambivalent space that higher learning institutions occupy. These institutions attempt to position themselves as spaces of oftentimes (self) critical knowledge production on the one hand, while beholden to politicians who wield immense political pressure behind the states that fund them on the other. As is being seen everywhere, Swiss academia is currently reeling from the political priorities that led to its defunding. As we are in the midst of what can be termed a (neo)liberal-democratic backsliding, where then can “western” universities (or the universities across the globe shaped by “western” imperialism) stand? And how do critically academic spaces endure the politically muzzling and violently exclusionary (neo)liberal democracies within which they sit, and which render higher education increasingly unfree, unequal and precarious?

We invite panellists to reflect on issues that include, but are not limited to, what has been outlined in this call when addressing the following topics:

• Deconstructing how violent headlines shape academic debates in their home institutions

• Concrete strategies informed by critical feminist traditions for building safer institutional and public spaces in higher education

• The politics (and risks) of scholarly responsibility