Episode 13: Dirty Knowledge

Ryan’s guest on this episode is Dr. Julia Schleck, Associate Professor and Vice Chair of the English Department at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Schleck joins us to discuss her book, Dirty Knowledge: Academic Freedom in the Age of Neoliberalism, published in January 2022 as part of the University of Nebraska Press’s “Provocations” series. The book critiques traditional defenses of academic freedom, which tend to be based on the idea that universities serve the public good by being separate from the public, producing knowledge that is therefore “clean,” or, other words, apolitical. In reality, Schleck contends, the university is a place where what counts as public good gets debated and contested, and therefore knowledge is always “dirty.” By virtue of these very debates, she argues, universities can serve as a “seed bank” for potential future public needs, and academic freedom should be defended, materially and ideologically, in order to ensure the “biodiversity” of this seed bank.

Our interview covers these arguments and a range of topics, including: how the book was inspired by the termination of a UNL lecturer who went viral while protesting a conservative group on campus; the rise of “academic capitalism” and its impact on the notion that universities serve the common good; the contemporary tendency to define academic freedom in terms of free-speech rights, and why this is a problem; why faculty unions are necessary but not sufficient when it comes to defending academic freedom; how recent events like the COVID-19 pandemic have underscored the importance of historical knowledge produced in the humanities; and the possibility of solidarity between academics and other kinds of workers. Schleck also describes how her approach, which stresses the importance of ideological diversity, may serve to build bridges with conservative critics of the academy. For more coverage of her work, see this news story and this editorial, which appeared in the Lincoln Journal Star; for a review of Schleck’s book and two other recent books on academic freedom, see this piece in The Chronicle of Higher Education.