We Who Are About To Die Salute You

It's one thing to know that your entire existence and purpose means nothing to those in charge: it's another to hear it articulated explicitly by your employer as though this was entirely natural, a fact of life to which the only possible response is rueful acceptance. 

I went along to the faculty online staff meeting today. It was - as usual - mostly bad news, but the big item was the university's response to the government directive that schools, colleges and universities must carry on doing face-to-face teaching this week. The guidance was posted on-screen, and some nugatory advice around mask-wearing was added. This was a continuation of a pattern: management points at what the government says, explains with a shrug that we're not allowed to do anything more than that, and leaves students and staff to their fates. All very regrettable. 

The difference this time is that several universities have ignored the government, including (as the Dean pointed out), Manchester University. So universities do have a degree of autonomy remaining. It's just that some institutions are more autonomous than others. I don't want to put words in the mouth of my Dean: he's a humane, reflective and enormously intelligent individual, but the clear implication is that only the prestigious universities can afford to do the right thing by their students and staff. He's right. This government doesn't like intellectuals anywhere, but it does like the idea of the institutions its members attended. It is seeking multiple ways to shut down places like mine: unfashionable, architecturally unappealing and stuffed with poor, black and mature students and staffed with, they think, bearded Corbynite subversives - the latest wheeze is to deny fee loans to entrants with lower previous educational achievements, while shutting courses attended by people who then enter low-paid jobs of no obvious benefit to society (nursing, teaching, social work, anything in a depressed post-industrial area like mine) rather than joining one of those industries which genuinely adds to the public good and is famously open to all-comers (hedge-fund trading, journalism, mergers and acquisitions law). There are multiple motivations for this kind of vandalism. Some of it is self-preservation: they've noticed that increased educational attainment leads to voting for liberal or leftwing parties, so suppressing critical thinking maintains their supremacy. Then there's the economic model they favour: having become the party of international capital rather than business - you all remember what Boris wants to do to that - or, heaven forfend, actual people, it's in their interest to stoke their donors' share prices by screwing down wages, exporting jobs and keeping the majority of the population poor and needy. They're much better behaved that way. Keep blaming boat people and the turkeys will continue voting for Christmas. 

All this is so familiar, so predictable. What was shocking, today, was to hear highly intelligent and caring people openly accept that the threats to universities are so real and so irresistible that we just have to accept it: that there will be collateral damage in terms of lives and social/cultural damage. That some of our colleagues and students will die or get sick because they're at the wrong institution. I don't blame my managers for one moment. We boycotted the league tables for years because they were distorted and damaging: not a single other university joined us and so we eventually fell back into line. Coronavirus is the same. Manchester, Imperial and the others can afford to ignore government guidance because they have money, prestige and influence. Places like mine - places that specialise in welcoming the marginalised and dispossessed while being judged on the same criteria ruthlessly selective and moneyed HEIs are assessed on - have to rely on crossed fingers. Should the worst happen, neither the government nor other universities will lift a finger to help: the universities minister spends her time encouraging students to sue for breaches of the consumer marketing act while inventing fantasies about woke mobs; other HEIs' marketing teams will behave like sharks scenting blood. Solidarity never existed, while university autonomy is one of those comforting myths that vanishes into the air the moment it's tested. 

The immediate situation doesn't affect me: I taught face-to-face on Monday and all day Tuesday, but remaining classes were already scheduled to be online. As a union rep though, I'm getting calls from colleagues with health issues and caring responsibilities who feel abandoned by a management that has given up doing anything more than pointing at the Office for Students guidance and shrugging 'not me guv'. The government hates us; recruitment has collapsed; why stick our heads in the wasp's nest for the sake of a few points on the infection scale? This is where a culture of fear leads to: a senior management that has internalised the market logic and culture war rhetoric, is understandably very tired physically and spiritually, and lacks the self-confidence to individually or collectively do the right thing: their only response is to get out and they're doing that in droves to the extent that the Marie Celeste would seem livelier than the executive suite. We've got a new interim VC whose former field was spinal injuries and sport. Let's see if he can restore some backbone.

You may be unsurprised to learn that my morning alarm features a range of songs that Eyeore might consider a little on the gloomy side: Bonnie Prince Billy's 'Another Day of Dread', Smog's 'No Dancing', Lambchop's 'The Man Who Loved Beer' and Mazzy Star's 'Into Dust'. 

Weirdly though, if I ignore all the above and the relentless misery of this dreadful country, I'm having a great time. Teaching has been absolutely fantastic this year. I'm teaching first and second year modules and in every class there's a critical mass of intellectuals who've stretched me more than usual, a return of mature students who always add something special, a smattering of ever-welcome European students, and even more likeable, interested, talkative and funny people than usual, plus my wonderful colleagues. Despite the presence of the grim reaper at one of the desks towards the back, I've looked forward to every session. It feels a bit weird with the second-years though: I taught them online throughout their first year, only met them this semester, and because of the way my teaching load has worked out, I'll never see them again other than the few whose dissertation I'll supervise. It's a shame that their younger siblings and children won't have the chances they've taken such enthusiastic advantage of. Still, I'm sure delivering burgers on a gig-economy non-contract will feel just as liberating and fulfilling. 

Happy Christmas!