System Failure: How to Survive and Thrive in Today’s Art and Design Higher Education

A system failure, an internet search tells us, refers to “a situation where a ...system or network is unable to perform its intended functions or experiences a significant disruption in its operation.” This aptly describes the twenty-first century Euro-American liberal or, more accurately, neoliberal order. The cultural and educational realms so central to maintaining this order (including universities) now focus on branding, avoiding lawsuits, and data-driven “outcomes” rather than serious thinking, teaching, creating, and research pursued with integrity. Higher education institutions are currently being attacked from the right (via transphobic and racist campaigns against “wokeism”) and critiqued from the left (pointing out that freedom of speech is not being supported and “safe spaces” are not being provided). Given that institutions of higher learning are based on neoliberal values and organizational logics, it is imperative for those working in them to address what these institutions are facing and what they might become. This panel seeks contributions (whether academic papers or alternative performative presentations) addressing the “system failure” that marks institutions that function in ways that specifically counter the progressive values that drive most of us in our work. We are especially interested in contributions that address the structural racism and classism of the university (as well as associated art institutions), which have arguably become premiere sites for the development of neoliberalism and primary structures for obscuring neoliberalism’s mechanisms through cultural forms (“culture washing”).