Academic activism & precarity - Doing tenure or doing good?

• In Event: The protest within: How to cope with protest academically vs. academic protesting?

Proposal

This part of the panel elaborates on the role of academic activism in the light of increasing precarity in academic employment contexts (Rogler 2019). More often than not, emerging, non-tenured researchers have to decide whether they engage in research that has societal impact or remain focused on strict pathways to tenure in order to fulfil tight regulations. These may not consider the impact of such types of research at all or relevant as such respectively. Considering that academic careers become more and more pre-determined with little options to derive unless this is an explicit part of the research agenda, the reference and importance of the nexus of academia and activism or open forms of protest are under threat (Richter et al. 2020). This does not only hold true for national contexts where universities might be closely affiliated to political entities or their influence. Using the example of the implementation of a re-qualification measure for internationally educated teachers (IETs) and the non-reference in the presenters’ qualification agreement at the University of Vienna, main lines of challenges of coordinating the needs of career advancement but also engaging in the ideals of one’s own politically infused discipline (in the given case inclusive education) will be entangled and opened up for discussion. This is - among other aspects - specifically geared towards analysing the threats to the importance of academic activism also as opposition to more and more neoliberalized academic biographies.

Author

• Michelle Proyer, University of Vienna