468. NEOLIBERALISM, FREE SPEECH, AND THE AMERICAN COLLEGE CAMPUS

Willie Hiatt 

The war on “wokeism,” the backlash against student protests and free speech, and the efforts to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives reflect not just the raw political divisiveness of our time. The upheaval on college campuses is the result of more than forty years of the marketization of higher ed—that is, the view that colleges and universities exist above all to serve capitalist interests and prepare students for the modern workforce. As scholar and cultural critic Henry Giroux asserts, “There can be little doubt that neoliberalism has undermined, if not crippled, the notion of higher education as a democratic public sphere.” This lecture charts the path of neoliberalism since the 1980s and explores how relentless market fundamentalism contributed to the current higher ed crisis.

 10:00 – 12noon                                                                                                                               1 Session

Wednesday, June 11                                                                                                                       Fee:  $30 

A B O U T  T H E  L E C T U R E R

Willie Hiatt, a Kentucky native, is an Associate Professor of History at Long Island University, Post Campus, and a former Society for the Humanities Fellow at Cornell University (2019-20). He’s the author of The Rarified Air of the Modern: Airplanes and Technological Modernity in the Andes (Oxford, 2016). His current research is an oral history project examining how Maoist insurgents in Peru targeted high-tension towers during the Shining Path movement (1980-92).