<CPOV> related event to cpov on thursday evening

[Geert Lovink]

(one of the cpov presenters, Amit Basole, will speak here /geert)

http://www.factoryofthecommon.org/amsterdam-edufactory-presentation

25 March 2010, 8pm at Galerie Schijnheilig
Passeerdersgracht 23, Amsterdam

Conversation and presentation of the book:
TOWARD A GLOBAL AUTONOMOUS UNIVERSITY

Cognitive Labor, The Production of Knowledge and Exodus from the  
Education Factory
(New York: Autonomedia, 2009) edited by the Edu-factory collective  
[publisher's website]

Edu-Factory is a transnational collective engaged with the  
transformations of the global university and conflicts in knowledge  
production. The website of the global network (link) connects  
investigations and reports from university struggles.

Jos Scheren will interview:

	• Amit Basole, University of Massachussets, Vidya Ashram, Varanasi
	• Aetzel Griffioen, Erasmus Universiteit, Economics on the Border,  
Rotterdam
	• Wessel de Boer, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Universitaire Activisten
	• Kyra Weaver, Universiteit Utrecht, Kritische Studenten Utrecht

Many voices have risen to defend the integrity of the University from  
the recent interventions of the European governments. They say that  
universities are threatened by public expenditures cuttings, the  
privatization of education and the commoditization of knowledge. The  
implementation of the ‘Bologna Process’ is taken as one of the most  
dangerous threats to the university as we are used to know it.

But should the university ‘as we are used to know it’ become the  
object of a rescue operation?

The time has come to question the very concept of University, as the  
factory of universally valid and authoritative knowledge. It is clear  
that the university, which is said to be at risk in Europe, has being  
an instrument of destruction rather than of production of knowledge in  
Asia, Africa and the Americas.

This university is about to be destroyed. The only question is: who  
will destroy this university? Those academic managers who under the  
disguise of ‘necessary cuts’ and ‘efficiency targets’ are basically  
enlarging their own profitable/parasitical positions? Or those who are  
seeking to construct common knowledge: those capable of inventing  
different ways of learning, using different languages, inside and  
outside the academia?

The old university as an ivory tower is about to disappear. Will it  
all end in an ecological disaster where no knowledge can ever be  
developed or will it be something different that we do not yet fully  
know but that for sure has to be constructed in common?

Further reading:

- Amit Basole, ‘Eurocentrism, the University and multiplicity of  
knowledge production sites‘, in Edu-factory mailing list, April 2007
- Amit Basole, ‘Some reflections on knowledge hierarchies and the  
autonomous university‘, in Edu-factory mailing list, January 2008
- The Double Crisis, zero issue of the Edu-factory web journal

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This event is organised by The Common Seminar.