Trickle-Down Managerialism: Accountable Faculty in the Financialized University of Managers

The goal seems to be to lift asset prices, as the Fed did after the financial panic, and hope that the wealth effect trickles down to the rest of the economy.”4 The federal government secured Wall Street wealth, offering Keynesianism for large companies, while the rest of the population was succored by free market bromides of our individual freedom and doing more with less, the refrain of neoliber. [...] Finally, critical thinking remains grounded in the idea of faculty expertise and judgment to produce new knowledge, and it encourages students and faculty to challenge naturalized truths that dispossess and marginalize vast sectors of the population, and to analyze and critique the systems of power that construct our collective realities. [...] The sovereignty of numbers stands in for the value of the editorial board and peer- review process, the quality of the argument, or academic judgment writ large. [...] As Louis Menand reminds us, “At the heart of the political and economic battles over the future of the university is the concept of academic freedom. [...] Paul Narkunas Notes 1 The federal government has demanded the reopening of the economy, in effect rendering some populations expendable, and reinforcing the structural racism and ageism of the United States as people of color and the elderly die disproportionately.