Mining and Fossil Fuel Entanglements with the University in an Era of Climate Change

Contemporary universities have been—and continue to be—reshaped by interrelated structural dynamics, including marketization, massification, and managerialism. This is now well documented, with outcomes including the commodification of research, the neoliberal capture of curricula, the dominance of precarious casual academic work, and declining levels of satisfaction among both staff and students. ¹ While these conditions all point to the contemporary university in crisis, it is also of the crisis. ² Put differently, universities are not simply victims but also directly implicated as enablers of neoliberal and colonial power relations that are reimagining research, teaching, as well as the very fabric of the university. This has significant impacts for academic freedom, with pressures from both within—and without—the university reconfiguring broad understandings about the expectations of what academic freedom might mean, and what might be required for its defense.