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The Struggle against Corporate Takeover of the University

In 1984 I was invited to give a talk at Indiana University, Pennsylvania shortly after I lost my teaching job at a branch of the University of Wisconsin system. I entitled my talk “Toward a Corporate Service Station” because I believed this described the direction in which universities and colleges were headed. I thought that the ideals of the university, although often contested and interpreted differently by various constituencies, were being compromised by corporate power, and dissenters in the academy were being rooted out. It was a bad time and a “mean season” for anyone who questioned Reagan’s “morning in America” optimism. When I look back at that period it seems clear that universities were beginning to mimic the conservative trend in politics that Reagan helped to popularize. This was not the first time that universities had lost their nerve and bowed to pressure from the right; much the same had happened during the McCarthy era. Despite their professed openness to a diversity of opinion, universities seem to be particularly vulnerable to political pressure from the larger society. My fears about the university turning into a corporate service station were wellfounded; they prefigured what is happening now in higher education. During the George W. Bush era, we have witnessed: