Unileaks: Uni’s Critical, Independent and Robust or Market Fundamentalism?

I was interested to see it called Unileaks, make me think of Wikileaks.  I found myself pondering why leaks happen.  The answer that came to mind was that democracy is not functioning in openness and visibility.  I found this on the internet and it appears to reach beyond Australia.  Thus it appears to be a concern around the world. 

Here is information as a open letter to Australian Vice-Chancellors and introducing their website.  A clear protest regarding neoliberalism in universities.

For those unaware of neoliberalism, here is the definition courtesy of wikipedia.

The Chicago school of economics describes a neoclassical school of thought within the academic community of economists, with a strong focus around the faculty of University of Chicago.

The school emphasizes non-intervention from government and generally rejects regulation in markets as inefficient with the exception of central bank regulation of the money supply (i.e. monetarism). It is associated with neoclassical price theory and libertarianism and the rejection of Keynesianism in favor of monetarism until the 1980s, when it turned to rational expectations. The school has impacted the field of finance by the development of the efficient market hypothesis. In terms of methodology the stress is on “positive economics”– that is, empirically based studies using statistics to prove theory.

http://www.unileaks.org/node/Latrobe.htm

Open Letter: Australian Vice- Chancellors.

Dear Vice Chancellor,

This is an open letter addressed to the University Vice-Chancellors of Australia. Its purpose is to inform you of the establishment of a new website, titled Unileaks. As its name might suggest, Unileaks will publish leaked documents regarding the higher education sector in Australia, including of course its Universities: the institutions for which you serve as chief executive.

Our primary reason for establishing Unileaks is to shed greater light on the neoliberal restructuring of the higher education sector. Among other things this restructuring has resulted, in the course of the last few decades, in the reduction in the status of students to mere customers or clients of the University, the abolition of non-profitable courses and a steady increase in casualisation among employees.

In summary, the increased exploitation of citizens, whether considered as being workers or consumers.

Despite the general unpopularity of these changes, it has met with relatively little opposition, whether on the part of students or higher education sector workers. In this respect, the situation in Australia is quite unlike that in the UK, where the imposition of austerity measures has recently witnessed widespread resistance.

We expect the Australian higher education sector to undergo similar developments in the years to come.

One of the primary techniques by which dissent is managed is through the control of information. Corporatist administrative practices frequently include the isolation and the penalisation of those who speak out against market fundamentalism and its distorting effects upon scholarly work and study. Within the higher education system, managerial prerogatives are thereby allowed to undermine the theoretical commitment of Universities to being sources of critical, independent and robust discussion on key questions concerning Australian society.

We believe that the establishment of a site such as Unileaks will provide a means by which the thousands of workers in the sector might circumvent such control. Further, that it will function as a source of information for the general public.

We invite your response.

Sincerely,

Unileaks.