University Teachers and Resistance in the Neoliberal University

Abstract

This study of Canadian university teacher militancy explores the dynamics and strategies of resistance in the neoliberal university. While responses to the neoliberal reorientation of higher education are complex, uneven, and sometimes contradictory, the authors demonstrate how neoliberalization has fostered greater conflict, more militancy, more strikes, and greater politicization of unions representing university teachers. The authors argue that these expressions of university teacher militancy are primarily driven by external pressures rather than internal forces and are further complicated by divisions between workers within the context of established university hierarchies.