Barbara Read

Since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, we have seen existing patterns of inequality in Higher Education exacerbated.  For example, in the context of the UK, women and black minority ethnic staff were already disproportionately on temporary and insecure contracts in the sector before the pandemic (see e.g. UCU, 2016), and it is those who are already in precarious situations in academia that are now most in danger of further cuts and job losses in the sector ‘post’-Covid (see e.g. RRIF, 2020). 

In addition, the programmes and departments that seem at greatest risk in HE across Europe and the Global North are often those that are socially gendered as ‘feminine’ such as the Arts and Humanities, that contain a greater proportion of women staff.  In contrast STEM disciplines are more likely to be highly valued and supported, especially in the context of the pandemic, both by HEIs and also by national governments wishing to capitalise on the knowledge economy in ways that support specifically nationalist visions of their country’s future.

Diversity is endangered in this context, with serious consequences for the forms of knowledge produced and shared in higher education. Moreover, alongside the neoliberal dynamics of precarity and the impact of the pandemic, the global rise of right-wing ‘neo-populism’ (Krämer, 2014), brings additional challenges with its attack on ‘elites’, including the intellectual elites teaching and researching in HE academic institutions (Clarke and Newman, 2017). Right-wing discourses of ‘resistance’ to university elites are often framed as the encouragement of ‘free speech’ (‘spirited debate’) as opposed to a perceived climate of censorship on campus in the name of ‘political correctness’ (Phipps, 2017).

Underpinning both the dynamics of precarity and of neo-populism are complexly gendered, classed and racialised conceptions of the future of higher education and of the forms of knowledge that should be produced and valued within and beyond the academy.  In this talk I will be discussing the implications of such conceptions of our higher education future for any progressive mission to diversify the academic workforce. In particular, what are the implications of precarity – and of the influence of right-wing politics - for the heterogeneity of academic staff across the disciplines in HE, and the forms of knowledge that will most likely be funded and disseminated in the sector as we move into the ‘post-pandemic’ landscape?