 Questions for the Symposium 1. The institution of the university is itself--reflexively--becoming the object of study, the crisis in institutional culture the subtext of every academic conference. Please comment from a South African/Australian perspective on the things that most trouble us in the US university today--the shrinking of tenure-track jobs and a future for young scholars; reliance on grossly underpaid adjunct lecturers, a form of contingent labor; newly aggressive corporate-style management by university administrators; budget cuts by the state legislatures; a right-wing political agenda to shut down access and gear curriculum to the labor market just as more students of color and immigrants are making the public universities their own. Are there reflections of these changes in the South African/Australian university too? 2. What issues trouble you in the South African/Australian university that are quite different from those mentioned above? What is unique to your own situation? 3. Could you all comment on specific transformations in the post-apartheid universities? Is a reform agenda (e.g., affirmative action, curriculum changes for new student constituencies) well under way? What alternatives do you imagine for the University of Durban-Natal? 4. Macroeconomic constraints are often urged as the reason for budget cuts, downsizing, loss of tenured jobs, and narrowing of the curriculum. In the US we often don't believe this argument, but I get the sense that in South Africa there is general agreement that it is made in good faith by the post-apartheid State. What are your views? What is the view in Australia? 5. Aside from that argument, it is often said in the US that higher education is a private good, an investment by the student in his or her financial future. Is that conventional wisdom here too? How can we make the contrary case for higher education as a public good, a necessity in the public sphere? 6. Looking at what we can identify as issues we have in common in South Africa/Australia and the USA, how would you analyze their social roots? Cary Nelson speaks of late capitalism coming to the campus, with its scorn for labor and for academic tradition, its love of contingent labor and privatization, its instrumentalism and economic determinism, its global reach, its belief in pure market forces. How much of the explanation of our woes lies here? How else do you see it? 7. These questions have emphasized structure, but there is also and always agency. What forms of faculty organization have been tried to defend faculty interests and ally faculty with the interests of students? Is unionization the answer? What are the problems of effective unionization of faculty? What should be the scope of a union of intellectuals--bread-and-butter unionism, or social-movement unionism? How can a faculty union link up with the larger union movement? 8. To the extent that we have issues and interests in common in the South African/Australian and the US university, how can we join forces and share experiences? What forms of solidarity or common action can you envisage? Is it possible to act together as intellectuals across national borders? 9. Finally, please comment on other questions you think are important.
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