Universities, precarity and political crises: Comprehending new authoritarianism in changing Higher Education landscapes

• In Event: Comparative Higher Education and the Populist Turn: Crises, Conflict, Coloniality and Capitalism in Turkish, British and Hungarian Universities

Proposal

In the last two decades, we have witnessed democratic decline worldwide (Diamond, 2021) during which the strength of democratic institutions (i.e., the rule of law, fair elections, human rights and freedoms) is also seen to be in decline, including within Higher Education (HE). This decline is largely seen as related to rising populisms and illiberalisms of the state (Bermeo, 2016; Cianetti et al., 2018). Consequently, HE is experiencing intensified scrutiny from governments (Meyer-Sahling & Toth, 2020) and is struggling to defend its‘democratic’ missions against ever increasing structural HE interventions, particularly those energised by political regimes that use the conjoint strategies of austerity and moral and cultural claim making (anti-Western or neo-nationalistic assertions) to achieve political statecraft. These assertions necessarily include an emphasis on the ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’ cultural identity divide through nation-building and neo-expansionist desires, invoking the idea of the ‘ethnic’ university. Yet, comparative HE research has failed to explore the links between advaned neoliberal HE transformations, HE as a site for the cultivation of sacred national identites and the rise of neo-nationalisms (Altbach et al., 2010; Buckner, 2017; Jessop, 2013).

In this comparative study, we explore the relationship between such advanced neo-liberalisation and moralising neo-nationalisms as they are manifested in HE in two countries: Turkey and Hungary. We do so to better comprehend Scott’s ‘problem’ space as it relates to particular HE contexts where populist political pressures loom large. For example, in both Turkey and Hungary, politically motivated structural transformations to HE (centralised patrimonial governance) are increasing (Doğan & Selenica, 2021; Ryder, 2022) and mirror the political conditions and illiberal, ‘post-liberal’ and/or authoritarian landscapes of these countries (Cianetti et al., 2018; Rupnik, 2012). We also explore the embeddedness of universities within each nation-state and the interconnectedness of universities and university actors (such as scholar activists and students) with national political systems and strategies in Turkey and Hungary. HE systems in both countries have also experienced state-driven populist ideological targeting and policy intervention (Phipps, 2017) due to their allegedly “liberal biases” and elitist and discriminatory systems, alongside renewed efforts to revitalise earlier imperialist conflicts over ethnic and religious legitimacy. For example, the banning Gender and Feminist Studies in Hungary (Marcus, 2014; Parson & Steele, 2019) and the increased targeting of Kurdish Studies in Turkey (Kandiyoti & Emanet, 2017; Tutkal, 2021) are framed within HE policy as “necessary” for preserving religious and national identitification (Trencsényi, 2021).
We draw particularly on Bruff’s (2016) concept of authoritarian neoliberalism to map HE policy discourses of regime governance and HE intervention past and present, contemporary student activist digital protests, and more recent national policymaking in two urban contexts: Instanbul and Budapest. We do so to illustrate the degree to which public HE missions and conceptualisations of political life are currently influenced by intersecting global economic processes and national populist pressures, particularly the political processes contingent on the growth of the authoritarian new right; and (2) the histories and legacies of imperialism and nationalism and their impact on varied scales of political conflict on HE.

Authors

• Zahra Jafarova, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto

• Elizabeth Buckner, University of Toronto OISE