Out d’Coup LIVE | François Furstenburg on his article, ”Higher Ed’s Grim, Soulless, Ed-Techified Future”

On this episode of Out d'Coup LIVE, I welcome François Furstenburg to the show. François is a Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University. We'll be talking about his latest article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, "Higher Ed's Grim, Soulless, Ed-Techified Future: Temple's Jason Wingard Championed "Skillification." He's Out, but His Vision Lives On." 

NOTE: we ran into a little issue with François's mic around 19m 15s. It only lasts about a minute, then we get it fixed. 

In the wake of unabashed anti-union tactics during the recent Temple University graduate university workers’ strike and an overwhelming vote of no-confidence by the faculty union, Temple University president Jason Wingard resigned. However, as we'll talk about today, Wingard's ideas for higher education will, in the words of François Furstenburg, “continue marching across the landscape of higher education like zombies, transforming the content and purpose of curricula in the image of our post-industrial, financialized moment," unless a broader coalition mobilized to stop them. 

François has been a professor of history at Johns Hopkins University since 2014. He previously taught at the Université de Montréal from 2003-2013. He is the author of various books and articles on early American and Atlantic history, as well as co-author on a college textbook. He began writing essays on the state of higher education during the pandemic, in 2020, when he became alarmed by the corporatization of American universities. His writing on the topic can be found at the Chronicle of Higher Education, the American Prospect, and the AAUP magazine and blog.

LINKS: 

• François Furstenburg on his article, "Higher Ed's Grim, Soulless, Ed-Techified Future," in The Chronicle of Higher Education | https://bit.ly/3HcCwTU
• François Furstenburg's webpage | https://bit.ly/3H95G6a

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