ABSTRACT
Higher education is being transformed as universities worldwide, including in Europe and the United States, implement widespread surveillance. Framing university campuses as public spaces by virtue of both their physical nature and their role in the production of public discourse, this chapter’s broad historical approach contrasts recent developments in surveillance against the early development of universities and the ideals of academic freedom and inquiry that were articulated most powerfully during the 1960s. Driven by security fears and discourses of accountability, and powered by advancing technologies, universities now routinely shape and monitor the activities of students and faculty. This chapter describes the ways that surveillance erodes modern assumptions about the purposes of higher education, and drawing on Foucault’s notions of discipline, argues that surveillance gives institutions a degree of coercive power over individuals that more closely mirrors the early university.
