Keen On

We’ve done a couple (here and here) of shows recently about the war on cars. But we never discussed the connections, both literal and metaphorical, between the damage of “Big Car” and “Big University” . According to the tenured Emory law professor Deepa Das Acevedo, what she calls in her new book, The War on Tenure, is really an attempt to transform the modern university into an academic version of Uber. By getting rid of tenure, Acevedo argues, academia is creating a new precariat of adjunct professors who are living in their cars. What she calls the “uberification” of academia is, so to speak, driving an assault not just on tenure, but on free thought and intellectual innovation. The war on tenure, then, is part of the broader neo-liberal project to replace full-time jobs with precarious labor. Academics - you have nothing to lose but your cars!1. The Charlie Kirk Fallout is a Watershed MomentIn just one month, an estimated 40-60 professors have been fired over social media posts about the assassination - w