Madrid's universities are facing one of the worst crises in their history following the structural restructuring that followed the Transition to democracy. This meeting aimed to offer analyses and diagnoses of the causes behind many of the threats looming over the public university model, stemming from regulatory and budgetary changes that have radically weakened the capacity of Madrid's public universities to fulfill their dual role in teaching and research, not to mention the essential function they have played as a social elevator in recent decades. 

Program:

February 10:

Clara Ramas – The university and the savage powers of neoliberalism

Diego Garrocho – What is a university?

The university is a centuries-old institution whose mission and purpose have been the subject of debate throughout history. In the contemporary context, marked by profound technological transformations and the reconfiguration of social, economic, and epistemological interests, the very definition of the university acquires renewed relevance. These changes are having a decisive impact on teaching and research models. The proliferation of private institutions, the precariousness of public funding, the absence of a responsible and sustainable science policy, as well as the growing competition from formal and informal educational spaces, call into question the classical categories from which the university was conceived. All of this threatens the historical role of this institution as a fundamental agent in the democratization of knowledge and in the construction of critical and educated societies. This paper proposes to reflect on some of the most immediate challenges facing the university today, the resolution of which will ultimately depend on the definition we adopt of the university institution itself.

Moderator: Clara Navarro

February 12:

Rodrigo Castro – The destruction of the public university as a project

The underfunding of public universities in Madrid is not due to a temporary government decision by the European authorities. It is necessary to place this higher education policy within a much more complex and long-term context. The economic strangulation of university institutions is part of a neoliberal governance program that seeks to maximize the deterioration of public education in order to justify the promotion of private education as an alternative. This strategy, theorized by neoliberal doctrine, consists of the progressive destruction of public structures (lack of resources, reduced service quality, outsourcing, etc.) with the aim of instilling new perceptions and values ​​in individuals and in reality itself, thus universalizing the realm of the market and individual initiative. We are, therefore, facing a societal project that deems it necessary to dismantle the democratic ideal and social justice that have constituted the true vocation of the public university.

Antonio Sánchez – The University between time, acceleration and freedom

Contemplation, slowness, waiting, patience, and love—love of truth. The University was born as a slow institution, as reason made architecture, and as time suspended by the demands of the object of study, an object never inclined to conform to the times dictated by society, the State, or the Church, the world, or capital. We have believed we witnessed the birth—perhaps frustrated, perhaps possible—of a place where thinking freely is always thinking without the pressure of time, much less the pressure of spirally accelerated time, monetized and financialized time, time indebted to a future that seems beyond the grasp of any sense of belonging for those who inhabit this present of ours. Where should we question this state of affairs? Does it still make sense to think? Do we still owe it to ourselves to build spaces in which to question all those words that fall into crisis when time becomes a capricious sovereign and a corporate sovereign? Do we still owe it to ourselves to build spaces in which to question these words in crisis—work, art, research, science, humanity, man, world, nature, carefully, beauty o Justice, right o standard– without the pressure of economic gain, in a democratic and institutionalized way? If the answer is yes: what is it called UniversityAnd if the answer is also yes, what would it mean to live up to that? yes in the second half of the third decade of the third millennium?

Moderator: Clara Navarro