What's Happened To The University? A Sociological Exploration Of Its Infantilisation

Description

The radical transformation that universities are undergoing today is no less far-reaching than the upheavals that it experienced in the 1960s. However today, when almost 50 per cent of young people participate in higher education, what occurs in universities matters directly to the whole of society.

On both sides of the Atlantic curious and disturbing events on campuses has become a matter of concern not just for academics but also for the general public. What is one to make of the growing trend of banning speakers? What's the meaning of trigger warnings, cultural appropriation, micro-aggression or safe spaces? And why are some students going around arguing that academic freedom is no big deal?

What's Happened To The University? offers an answer to the questions of why campus culture is undergoing such a dramatic transformation and why the term moral quarantine refers to the infantilising project of insulating students from offence and a variety of moral harms.

Author description

Frank Furedi is Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University of Kent, UK

Table of contents

Introduction 1. The Weaponisation of Emotions 2. The Harms of the Academy 3. Culture War 4. Safe Space - Quarantine Against Judgment 5. Verbal Purification- The Diseasing of Free Speech 6. Micro-aggression: The Disciplining of Manners and Thought 7. The Quest for A New Etiquette 8. Trigger Warnings: The Performance of Awareness 9. Why Academic Freedom Must Not Be Rationed - An argument against the Freedom-Security Trade Off