Transforming Universities in the Midst of Global Crisis

This book calls into question the colonial and neoliberal university, presenting alternative models of higher education that can more effectively respond to today’s intersecting social, economic, environmental and political crises. The authors argue that universities should be driven by a different set of core values – one that promotes the common good over private or commercial interests, individualism and market fundamentalism. Presenting a broad range of educational initiatives from around the world that reflect life-affirming regenerative and relational practices, Indigenous intellectual sovereignty, and principles of social and ecological justice, the authors contend that pathways toward transforming higher education already exist within and without the university. This task, say the authors, is urgent and necessary if universities and other institutions are to hold relevance in a rapidly changing global environment.

This book makes a unique contribution to critiques of the modern, neoliberal university by looking for alternatives within and beyond traditional institutions of higher education. In doing so, the authors dismantle the longstanding 'ivory tower' image of the university, instead resituating education within broader social and ecological communities.

Transforming Universities in the Midst of Global Crisis is aimed at all those who have a direct or indirect interest and stake in universities, from the general reader to futurists, ecologists as well as students, academics, administrators, managers, policy makers and politicians.

Richard Hil is adjunct professor in the School of Human Services and Social Work at Griffith University, Gold Coast, adjunct professor in the School of Arts and Social Sciences at Southern Cross University, member of the editorial collective of Social Alternatives, board member of the Justice for Fallujah Project and former convenor of the Ngara Institute. Richard’s work has been published extensively, the most recent of which is The Sacking of Fallujah: A People’s History, with Ross Caputi and Donna Mulhearn. Over the past five years Richard (under his own name and as ‘Joseph Gora’ and ‘Henry Barnes’) has written on Australian higher education for The Australian, Campus Review, New Matilda, Arena Magazine, The Advocate, Social Alternatives, University World News, The Conversation, Overland, Online Opinion, Pearls and Irritations and Countercurrents. His views about higher education are best encapsulated in Whackademia: An Insider’s Account of the Troubled University, published in 2013 by New South, and Selling Students Short: Why You Won’t Get the University Education You Deserve, published by Allen and Unwin in 2015.

Kristen Lyons lives on Yuggera Country, where she is a proud long-term NTEU member, and professor of environment and development sociology at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. Her research sits at the intersection of environmental justice, development and human rights, as well as the future of higher education. Over at least twenty years she has engaged in research in Uganda, Solomon Islands and Australia, and via partnerships with environmental and human rights organisations, Indigenous peoples and Traditional Owner groups, that is grounded in her commitment to social, ecological and economic justice. She is a senior research fellow with the Californian think tank the Oakland Institute, and sits on the editorial board of Australian Universities Review.

Fern Thompsett was raised on Gubbi Gubbi Country, also known as the Sunshine Coast, in Queensland, Australia. She is currently working on her PhD in cultural anthropology at Columbia University in New York City. Her research explores how people are living according to ‘anti-civilisation’ theories: essentially a body of environmental, anti-capitalist and anti-colonial critiques of mass agriculture. Previously, she lived, worked and studied for a decade in Meanjin, or Brisbane, where she co-founded the Brisbane Free University, cohosted a community radio show on 4ZZZ fm, and played in several bands.