ephemera 'University, Failed' issue released

The new issue (8.3) of ephemera: theory & politics in organization entitled 'University, Failed' has just been released at www.ephemeraweb.org.

This issue is a call to discussion regarding the modern university, and what we seek to achieve with it is to highlight the discussions already taking place within the university, and to spurn on some new ones.

Yet, as the entrance to today's Humboldt University tells us, such interpretation is not enough. What counts is change.  Such change cannot, we believe, be achieved solely by the university itself. This insight creates huge challenges for other issues and interventions regarding the university of tomorrow: to open the discussion to other shareholders and constituencies within the knowledge factory, to pave ground for other residuals, where a university may take place.

Where are these places? And what do 'the people' – the students, the politicians, the medias, the immigrants, the elderly, the people – want with the university? Underneath the seductive toasts and touching speeches that the university enjoys again and again, unmistakable signs of mistrust secrete. A dialogue about this mistrust (which dwells well, also, within the university itself) may be what lies ahead, meshed up with the ongoing grand failure of the university. 

The editorial collective

CONTENTS www.ephemeraweb.org    volume 8, number 3 (august 2008)

editorial University, Failed    Armin Beverungen, Stephen Dunne and Bent M. Sørensen

articles The Psychotic University     Burkard Sievers

Institutionalizing Critique: A Problem of Critical Management Studies Todd Bridgman and Murdoch Stephens

interviews Discussing the Role of the Business School      Stephen Dunne, Stefano Harney, Martin Parker and Tony Tinker

Epistemic Convenience: An Interview with Steve Fuller      Thomas Basbøll and Steve Fuller

notes No Future      Paolo Do

From Enthusiasm to Exhaustion:  A Day in the Life of a Human Geography Lecturer Kye Askins

I Wanted to Be an Academic, Not 'A Creative': Notes on Universities and the New Capitalism    Eeva Berglund

We Are All Workers: A Class Analysis of University Labour Strikes    Amy Pason

reviews What's It All For? Against Schooling in the Corporate University Chris Land

The Invention of the Business School Nick Butler