A.01. Academic Capitalism and the Business Of War: Neoliberal Higher Education Confronting the Rise of the Military-industrial-academic Complex

The ongoing expansion of the defense industry, fueled by the sharp global increase in public military spending, will have widespread and significant societal impacts. The research conducted in the US and UK after 9/11 and the war on terror shows that the link between university and military research is a crucial part of this society-wide politico-economic and cultural restructuring. How will global higher education systems, deeply affected by successive waves of neoliberal reforms, respond to the redirection of public and private funds toward the defense sector? How does the militarization of science get promoted by reforms like the managerialization of university administration and governance, the use of competition as the main principle in relations among national or international higher education institutions, the redesign of academic programs to supply companies with the skill profiles they need, and the allocation of research funds toward marketable products?

The combination of academic capitalism and the selective increase in military spending risks creating a global version of what H.A. Giroux (2007), studying the North American case, identified as an update of the classic post-war defense sector encroachment on society, which he called the ‘military-industrial-academic complex’.

The panel welcomes critical social research on this topic, both theoretical and empirical, which focuses on the consequences of the rise of the military-industrial-academic complex on the varieties of academic capitalism, its meaning for the role of universities in society, its impacts on research funding and teaching freedom, and its effects on the political and cultural life of universities.