week 5

Ju Kim
A02
Week 5: Imperial University

Controller

In order to maintain control, universities continue to use violence and other oppressing methods to stop students from expressing their own opinions. In the reading, it talked a lot about "academic freedom". It expresses how even with "academic freedom" there are limitations due to academic professionalism. In my opinion, i think that this academic professionalism is just another way for the university to maintain the control that they would like to have. Part of this need for control comes from the idea of nationalism. Many times, education is a key component in growing military powers. Therefore, lots of funding from the government goes into the science, technology and the more practical majors that would allow expansion of the military power. I think that the university is heavily influenced by their funding and continue to do what they can to ensure that they receive this current flow of money. So when students start to protest to have more classes for ethnic studies, universities see this as something that is unnecessary and harmful to their funding. In order to stop this corporation of universities, i think there should be laws and regulations that ensure universities take action in supporting education and do what they were meant to do. Students should not be violently controlled by police because of a peaceful protest. They should be able to do what they want as long as they are not harming anyone. I think that universities openly abuse their policing powers and create fear to ensure individuals do not go against them. This is unfair and there needs to be something that should allow students to be safe at school. 

question: throughout history what are some things that have been improved for university abusing their powers? 

Reference: 

Chatterjee, P. and Maira, S. (2014). Imperial University. Dissent Minneapolis- University of Minnesota Press

Shocklee. March 8, 2016. "How We Made Public Enemy's Fight The Power". Retrieved April 29 from: http://shocklee.com/2016/03/how-we-made-public-enemys-fight-the-power/