1. Some examples from Campus Review. On cuts in the Humanities--"20 universities have cut . . staff numbers and eliminated courses or . . . entire departments": at Adelaide, phasing out of dance, drama, Russian and downsizing of philosophy, history, linguistics and sociology; at La Trobe, closing of music, Hindi, and environmental science; at Melbourne, closing of classics; at Newcastle, the entire arts faculty split up into other parts of the university; in the Northern territory, closing of English; in Tasmania, classics and Italian closed; at Western Sydney, anthropology and drama closed; at VUT, phasing out of women's studies and sociology; at Monash in Melbourne, the largest university in Australia, 70 faculty lines cut in the Faculty of Arts and a further 60 scheduled to go--out of 300 total (Vol. 8 No. 29, July 29-Aug. 4, 1998, p. 3). On adjunct labor: Alan Gilbert, the "entrepreneurial" vice-chancellor (president) of the University of Melbourne, wants to introduce in the next contract with the national academic union (NTEU) the euphemistic "development of American-style 'academic internships' involving teaching opportunities for research higher-degree students" (8.26, July 8-14, 1998, p. 3), an innovation which Peter Holbrook anticipates in the UQ symposium, but clearly not nearly as developed in Australia (or South Africa) as in the US. On removing opportunity from disadvantaged groups: in the context of falling enrolments generally with the new higher fees brought in by the Tories (Liberal and National parties), the NTEU said "the largest fall in commencing enrolments was in areas which had a high correlation with the most disadvantaged groups in Australia" (8.28, July 22-28, 1998, p. 3). On organizing: in "Monash, Epicenter of Arts Cuts," Geoff Maslen reports that the president, David Robinson, "told the NTEU it could not use university buildings to hold its forum" protesting the cuts, and "warned that all staff would have their pay docked unless they completed a form stating they had remained on duty" during the stop-work protest (8.29, July 29-Aug 4, 1998, pp. 1-2).
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2. Gerwel is a Left thinker and to great excitement became the Vice-Chancellor of the formerly Colored University of the Western Cape (UWC) at the end of the Eighties, attempting to realize his vision of the new univerity there. His view is defined and contrasted with the views of Neville Alexander (of the same university) in an article on university transformation politics in the South African transition by Ahmed Bawa and colleagues, as follows:

The first two of these approaches [to transformation] were pioneered by Jakes Gerwel and Neville Alexander. Gerwel's approach, commonly described as the 'Home of the Left' option, suggests the possibility of establishing an institution that is distinguished by its alternative radical agenda, reflected in its access policies, curriculum, and community orientation (Jakes Gerwel, "Inaugural Address," Transformation 4, 1987).

Alexander's approach emphasizes the limits of transforming institutions and suggests that no institution can be totally transformed outside a fundamental transformation of the society as a whole. Alexander then argues that the further transformation of individual institutions would be dependent on the capture of state power (Alexander, "The Politics of National and Institutional Transformation," National Conference of UDUSA [United Democratic Union of Staff Associations], 1-3 July 1992).

3. In "Death of the Intellectual, Birth of the Salesman: The South African Intellectual in the Democratic Transition" (a 1997 article discussed below), Ashwin Desai and H. E. Böhmke turn roundly upon a "wholesale retreat in the face of a world-hegemonic neo-liberal agenda" on the part of too many South African intellectuals, who have instead, the authors believe, "suddenly turned their attentions to making the system work" (2, 8). One of their examples of this retreat is an economist's setting the limits of the "real" by writing, as a consultant for the government, macroeconomic policy documents that set up "the very constraints and so-called realities, of which he then admonishes other university intellectuals to remain captive" (23). Matthew Shum also implies a need to interrogate the economic reality-effect: "The university of excellence is operated in the name of the real . . . and then I went home last night and saw interest rates up to 28%, my God!" (UND symposium, paragraph 46). A debate on economic "constraints" at an important University of Cape Town colloqium can be observed by comparing Charles Simkins' orthodox opening paper, "Equity, Efficiency, and Tertiary Education" (37-46), and the contestation of Simkins' priorities by the metal workers' union national organizer for training, Adrienne Bird, in her paper "Equity and Access: A Union Perspective" (225-36), both collected in Changing by Degrees? (1994). The problems of radical economists in an age of reform are addressed by Vishnu Padayachee (one of those criticized in "Death of the Intellectual") in the current issue of The Review of African Political Economy.
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4. The best treatment I know of the ANC-led shift from the "social market" Reconstruction and Development Program (RDP) to GEAR, its free-market successor, is Hein Marais' South Africa: Limits to Change. The Political Economy of Transformation. Frequent updates on the Southern African situation are succinctly presented in Southern Africa Report, edited by the distinguished Canadian scholar-activist John Saul et al.
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5. Both articles have been briefly referred to: Ahmed Bawa, Ashwin Desai, Adam Habib, and Vishnu Padayachee, "South African Universities: Transformatory Reform in a Context of Social and Political Transition?" (1992, unpublished); A. Desai and H. E. Böhmke, "Death of the Intellectual, Birth of the Salesman: The South African Intellectual in the Democratic Transition" (1997; a version was published in a South African Left academic journal, Debate 1.3 [1997], which I have not seen). I quote here from the manuscript versions of both. Adam Habib tells me that their 1992 piece remains unpublished because of political disagreements among the authors in 1993: "I think that was a mistake because it does reflect the thinking of an activist-intellectual layer in the early 1990s." The Desai and Böhmke paper is intensely critical, often in sharply ad hominem terms (e.g., "ex-intellectuals"), of many of the Left economists and social scientists in South Africa, and drew very strong reactions from some of them, as may be imagined; Desai was dismissed from the editorial board of the South African Labour Bulletin as a result, having been already suspended from UDW for his union militancy. For my purposes here, the '92 article illustrates an earlier and more optimistic view of radical reform in the university of the transition, while the harsh '97 piece has a definitely disabused, "morning after" tone. The UND symposium occurs in the latter period of GEAR Triumphant, and despite its excesses I think "Death of the Intellectual" goes far towards explaining the aporias and the feeling of endgame--the Palinurus mode--among the UND participants.
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6. At the convention, with 1200 delegates representing a million and a half organized unionists, I was very pleased to participate in the LP's setting up of a working committee on education (its current members active mostly in higher ed), which should be of great interest to our readers in the near future, and which we plan to link to this website.
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7. Dan O'Neill, "The University, the Student Movement, and Democracy" (174-86), and Peter Thomas, "The Student Movement Yet to Come" (187-200), both in the collection edited by another participant in the UQ symposium, Carole Ferrier: Ferrier and Pelan, The Point of Change.
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