Truth, Politics, and Dark Academia

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session Eleven
  In Roundtable Session: Equity, Neoliberalism, and Dark Academia? Political Barriers and the Quest for Truth (Table 5)

Abstract

This paper seeks to explicate the transformation of the academy (an institution that was created to discover, speak, and stand guard over truths) into sites of radical non-thought. The first analysis recounts the origins of the university via Arendt’s essay “Truth and Politics.” Second, with attention to critical university studies and (auto)biography, I describe higher education’s top-down, administrative turn that Fleming calls dark academia. Dark academia is characterized by public-private industry partnerships, strict obedience to bureaucratization, the fetishization of performance metrics, and near manic student recruitment/retention initiatives. With tenure-line faculty adopting this creed that runs counter to education as the “pursuit of truth” (AERA, 2023), developing a unified voice on and concerted action against dark academia is this paper’s justification.

Author

• Hannah Spector, Pennsylvania State University - Harrisburg
  Presenting Author