Whenever university radicalisation is condemned, it should be remembered that radicalism is partially the purpose of the university. It has long been among the core functions of the university to reconsider the self-explanatory. "Radical", a return to the beginning, comes from radicalis, meaning "of roots". This radicalism is evident: as atomism was validated by 17th and 18th century chemistry, shattering all that seemed solid into (predominantly) air, other fields realised that they too must be radical.
While AC Grayling's New College of the Humanities proposes a free-market value system as a potential saviour of the humanities, increasingly, especially among early career researchers, more radical opposition to many aspects of academia is taking form. Foremost is an anger at the increasingly "business-like" approach imposed upon postgraduate study which has been highlighted by The Economist. Here it is argued that university education has lost its supposed purpose of furthering scientific knowledge; fostering and renewing critical appreciation of the arts and educating a critically self-aware population. Instead, it is seen as a space for the functional benefit of the economy, while the latter goal is dropped entirely. Under such a model, several movements now seek a return to the idealistic root of the university. The postgraduate sits at the eye of this commodified storm, poised between the student and faculty worlds. However, they are also the least empowered to effect practical change. Perceiving the differences is only the start; how could disempowered postgraduates influence the extremely hierarchical world of academia?
The answer came from last year's protests against the damaging changes to HE funding structures. Among these protests were occupations, in which students commandeered a building - most significantly, spaces on university campuses - and converted them into places of learning; those in occupation held discussions, readings, workshops and meetings relating to their cause. Some instances replicated traditional lecture formats while others attempted to challenge the established pedagogy of debt and higher education. Regardless of one's stance towards the politics, it was clear that these transformed spaces had been re-appropriated in the name of learning. They represented the struggle, but also the desire for an alternative.
This has led to a proliferation of radical spaces - both virtual and physical - to transform or critique through a longer term, idealistic struggle. Some have been ephemeral; the University of Strategic Optimism has held 'flash-mob' lectures across London in places such as Tesco stores and outside the bank of the Royal family, Coutts & Co. Some, such as the Really Open University in Leeds and Leicester's Third University are more conceptual in nature, aiming to provide a space to reimagine and implement real, radical futures for higher education. Finally, others are theorising long-term strategies, such as the Social Science Centre in Lincoln, where education will be delivered as part of a cooperative, rather than a commercial, operation. All share similar goals, where education is presented as being something more than a commodity and students more than consumers; the university as other than a training for employment.
While these experiments in re-imagined beginnings cannot possibly hope to thoroughly integrate within a society so rooted in free-market economics - or even at a more fundamental level, propose how expertise should be remunerated given resource scarcity - their tear-it-down to build-it-up radicalism is important, perhaps if only as a theoretical idea, and sits at the very heart of what the university should be. To quote Naomi Klein: "These are movements that do not seek to start from scratch but rather from scraps, from the rubble that is all around."