Professor Ilan Gur-Ze'ev
Future University, Neo-Liberal Reforms and the Israeli Example
The future of the university in light of the fruits of the neo-liberal reforms in various universities around the glob with special emphasis on the Israeli example
During the last eight years I was active in this field of HE, publishing many articles and two (edited) books on this theme. I also initiated the organized resistance of the academic community in Israel in face of drastic neo-liberal structural restructuring of the Israeli universities and lead a working group that was focused on a comparative study of the fruits of neo-liberal reforms in different universities around the glob. I look forward for the opportunity of sharing my data and ideas with scholars from different countries and different perspectives in order to enhance my understanding of the current situation and its development toward the future. It was my intention to establish an ongoing international research group that will study the current developments in the field of Higher Education and will also relate to traditional and new possibilities toward the future.
My aims in the research proposal are the following:
1. Articulating the telos of the various concepts/models of the modern university and the relations to their structure with special attention to the ideal of academic freedom in the Bildung tradition.
2. articulating major trends in the discussion concerning re-thinking the aim of the university in light of the post-modern condition and the pre-conditions, ideals and ideological fruits of the globalization. Specially important for this part of the research are the arguments, the critique and the alternatives offered by neo-liberal reformers on the one hand and by the defenders of the traditional telos and structure of the university, on the other.
3. The fruits of the reforms in many countries were not yet systematically categorized and analyzed. I already began this work and I would like to further it and go into a reconstruction of the discourse in the various countries concerning the implications of these fruits. Israel will serve here as a special test case but I will relate substantially also to Australia, Britain and Japan.
4. The general reconstruction of the fruits of neo-liberal reforms in the academic world (in their very different kinds and their different levels of realization) will be relevant in the proposed study in two aspects: A. For the possibility of reconstructing a comprehending map of the current developments in global Higher Education. B. For better understanding the Israeli discussion concerning the need, the price and the fruits of restructuring Higher Education by implementing the logic of the market as the lighthouse for intellectual edification, cultural progress and scientific development.
5. What are the new and the traditional potentials for Higher Education in light of the current global and local developments and alternatives and in light of the various discussions that accompany them? Is it possible to develop a desirable model or offer an academic ideal that will be both relevant and desirable? This question is to be addressed from very different perspectives among which central are the humanist, postcolonialist and neo-liberal alternatives.
