Professor, Citizen, Parrhesiastes

Be productive. Produce quality. Achieve excellence. How familiar imperatives such as these have become, around the world, to so many who work in universities today. And this is the case not only for faculty but also for the burgeoning numbers of administrators employed in service of these ends. These are the watchwords of a university sector that has moved on, where responsiveness to globalization and realism about the financial bottom line are finally penetrating those last defenses of the ivory tower, of the complacent academy, comfortable in its irrelevance. And why, it might be said, should anyone object to this, for is it not right that the university should be productively engaged? How could it not be concerned with quality or excellence? Surely today the imperative is for change. And so, we are told that we must be productive, produce quality, achieve excellence. And in the process turn ourselves into entrepreneurs.