Conserving the University as a Place for Liberal Learning

Abstract

Thatcherism is sometimes seen as the culmination of Cold War liberalism: Margaret Thatcher, with Ronald Reagan, not only reinvigorated a sense of the West as the paragon of freedom but also started a new ideological offensive against Soviet communism. One of the most contested arenas of the Cold War came to be the traditional place of learning and research: the university. The university of the free world was to reflect free market conditions—in Thatcher’s vision—not be sheltered from it. Of course, ironically, in the British university market competition did not at all emerge freely but was engineered by the state. With the fall of the Iron Curtain, the university policies initiated under Thatcher victoriously spread to the Eastern bloc as well as other parts of the world in the name of marketization. Governments adopted them not only as a means to ensure competition but also as a mechanism to reshape the very character of the scholar to make academics more productive, disciplined, and responsible. The current legitimation crisis of the university is now felt globally, but one might argue that it started with Thatcherism.