Turning the Gaze Inward: Academia, Knowledge Production and COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and exacerbated existing social and gendered fault lines, social and political hierarchies, and inequalities. It has further exposed asymmetries of power in the status of knowledge production of the capitalist Neo-liberal system we live in. Particularly concerning is the status of academia which was certainly not immune to the ramifications of privatization, and profit pursuit characterizing Neo-liberal ideology prior to the pandemic (1). Operating as a market with limited state intervention (1), and decreasing federal and state funding, the higher education sector generates most of its revenue through (predominantly international) student enrollments and external research income through highly competitive bidding processes. This has had consequences on the way academia operates with the increase in an audit culture (2), the increase (with geographic mobility) in number of fixed-term employment, and ‘casualization’ of the workforce (3). The impact of this has already been felt prior to the pandemic, but was further aggravated throughout the pandemic with far-reaching implications into the future. I will address each of these points below while acknowledging that experiences are shaped by mutually reinforcing and interconnecting social positions to include gender, race, ethnicity, class, nationality, religion, migrant status, parental status, (dis)ability, and sexual orientation reflecting multiple interlocking systems of privilege and oppression (4).
The audit culture incentivizes and celebrates metrics and mass citations, external research revenue generation, gives little incentives for teaching, and with global north-south asymmetries in knowledge production notwithstanding, assigns hierarchies to journals with preference given to highly ranked international journals over regional or local ones (2). Against this backdrop and with scarcity of time felt more pronounced when work shifted home-bound, the pandemic has exposed gendered fault lines and further disadvantaged a particular demographic of scholars- the carers.
The increase in geographic mobility and number of fixed-term employment beyond national borders has made academic work much more precarious. Having to work on temporary working visas, with limited or no access to publicly subsidized health care (including childcare for parent academics), and prolonged and complex pathways to permanent residency in their countries of work was already perilous before the pandemic. The pandemic has further amplified social and political hierarchies when countries closed their borders except for their citizens and permanent residents. Academics on global work trips suddenly found themselves stranded and faced separation from their families, while those that remained within national borders omitted from government protection packages invoked only to citizens and permanent residents.
The increase in the ‘casualized’ workforce on hourly wages or short-term research or teaching contracts are what I call the skilled proletariat. Already in very precarious conditions, the pandemic has amplified their disadvantages. Rendered expendable, they were the first to lose their jobs or face the potential of losing them in the near future.
The viability and well-being of our workforce, the sustainability of our higher education system, the quality of knowledge we produce, and our ability to train the next generation of clinical and academic scholars, medical doctors and public health professionals is contingent on our collective critical appraisal of the way academia operates. The current pandemic is a wake-up call that our ways of operating are not sustainable. We have a window of opportunity to challenge and change the current status quo.
References
(1) Harvey, D. 2005. A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
(2) Welch, A. 2016. Audit Culture and Academic Production. High Education Policy, 29: 511–538. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41307-016-0022-8
(3) Vik Loveday. 2018. The neurotic academic: anxiety, casualisation, and governance in the neoliberalising university. Journal of Cultural Economy, 11(2): 154 166. DOI: 10.1080/17530350.2018.1426032
(4) Crenshaw, K. 1989. Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: a black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory, and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum; Crenshaw, K. 1991. Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6): 1241–1299.
