Introduction: Left Intellectuals and the Neoliberal University

Neoliberalism, as JeffMaskovsky writes, focalizes a number of important developments: "consumerist, market-driven learning; the privatization, corporatization, and branding of the university; the decline in public spending on higher education;... outcomes assessment and other efficiency-oriented interventions; and the casualization of academic labor." The successes and setbacks of recent protests on campuses highlight the precariousness of collective action at the university.9 And collaboration between academics and activists can be challenging because of the hierarchical terrain of knowledge production, not only the difficulties "translating" academic arguments or framing what Mukhopadhyay calls "grassroots theory" but also the tendency of academic work to turn "people's lived struggles" into a "dead object, museumified and mummified for elite consumption," in Sycamore's words.