Universities, imperialism and the collective work ahead

Universities in North America were sculpted by corporate capital via philanthrocapitalist foundations in the late 1880s. The Rockefeller, Ford, and Carnegie foundations were particularly important to this process which aimed to coordinate the work of universities in the service of the economic needs of the capitalist nation state. The foundations set the research and curricular agenda of what later came to be termed “the ivy league” universities with graduate schools serving a research function coordinated nationally. Of course, special attention was paid to technological training and what came to be known as the biomedical complex. U.S. philanthrocapitalism had a reach into the development of Canadian higher education as well as other nation states. The history of higher education in Canada, as in the U.S. and other European states such as the U.K., Germany, and so on, was therefore similarly shaped through the economic interests of capitalism. The scholarly literature on this topic burgeoned in the 1990s and beyond during the period of neoliberal restructuring and financialization. This literature, along with extensive writings on anti-Blackness, racism, and colonialism problematize the notion that the university was ever ‘public’ in the sense of serving local communities that had input into shaping institutions of higher learning as a site of participatory democracy. The interesting question on the table is “Given its historical development, can higher education be reclaimed as a public, radical democratic project?” In tackling this question, I follow the lead of Mojab et al. (2011) who argues that transforming higher education as a collective, radical project entails understanding the history of universities as sites for producing knowledge and capabilities in service of capitalist imperialism. She argues that extensive literature now exists examining universities and corporatization and neoliberal restructuring; but very little attention has been devoted to understanding the historical process by which universities are essential to organizing capitalist imperialism. In fact, Canadian universities are critical sites for organizing capitalist imperialism and global racial capitalism (Mojab et al., 2011; Thobani, 2022). In this paper, I outline two emergent trends for coordinating knowledge production in service of imperialist racialized capitalism. The first trend works at the level of the nation state, coordinating the knowledge production of research intensive universities to serve nationalist interests which in turn support the agenda of the G7 and the G20. The second trend encourages knowledge production in service of ‘managing’ global cities using militarized surveillance and policing thereby producing global cities as sites of imperialist struggle (Goonewardena & Kipfer, 2006; Kaldor & Sassen, 2020). Too often overlooked in public discourse on higher education, understanding these two trends informs the collective work ahead, for those of us committed to the university as a space for life-making by and for Black, Indigenous, racialized queer and trans and 2-spirited communities. I conclude that the universities must disinvest from militarized securitization, and instead align their work with abolitionist organizing and world-building. I present examples for how this might be done. The U7+ is an international alliance of university presidents who have committed to meeting yearly to ‘discuss and take concrete action to structure and advance their role as global actors’ (paraphrasing the website statement of purpose https://www.u7alliance.org/about/). The first U7 summit was held in France in 2019, sponsored by Emmanuel Macron, and included university presidents representing the G7 nations. Special invitations were extended to universities in 14 additional nations, including Morocco, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, Australia, India, South Korea, Singapore, Mexico and Argentina. By the conclusion of the U7+ Summit a consensus of actionable commitments was voted on and presented to Macron in consideration of the G7 discussions taking place in Biarritz. Presidents from the following Canadian universities who were in attendance at the first summit include: University of British Columbia, McGill University, Université de Montréal, University of Ottawa, University of Toronto. Each of these selected Canadian universities play a critical role in what is known as the Canadian U15, to be explained later. The emergence of the U7+, with yearly summits coordinated with the G7, is of course very problematic. First, it constructs the work of universities within a (neo-colonial) capitalist nation state imaginary, coordinating that work internationally under the agenda of an imperialist cluster of western capitalist powers, namely, the U.S., France, U.K, Italy, Japan, Germany and Canada. By having global south universities sign-on to an agreement to support the G7 is an insidious move to align the work of these universities with imperial capitalist states. This is a hierarchized arrangement not unlike Meiksins’ (2005) analysis of ‘new imperialism’, to which we will return later. This arrangement works to steer the work of the university to the needs of imperial capital. Second, within Canada, the research function of universities is increasingly nationalist. For example, the 2022 HESA document on the state of Canadian Universities reports that funding for research began during WW1 but only became a significant source of institutional funding in the 1970′s. Beginning in 1990′s funding has increasingly been at the institutional level through the Networks of Centres of Excellence, the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, with Ottawa the primary source of funding (Usher, 2022, Appendix A). Canadian universities have historically been regarded as under provincial jurisdiction because of the system of federal transfer funds. Nevertheless, we can see that the research function of Canadian universities is increasingly organized nationally. The national framework for university research is further cemented by the development of the U15 universities. The U15 describes itself as a ‘collective’ of Canada's top research-intensive universities that has joined the Global Network—an international group of networks of research-intensive universities. The U15 is comprised of: UBC, Alberta, Calgary, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Western, Waterloo, Ottawa, Montreal, Laval, McMaster, Toronto, Queens, McGill, Dalhousie. Not surprisingly, the U15 universities capture 80% of competitive funding nationally, and produce 75% of all Ph.D.’s. An important function of this nationalist framework is to participate in the Global Network, consisting of institutional organizations such as the German 15, the Russel Group, the Association of East Asian Research Universities and so on (see the complete list here https://u15.ca/about-us/partner-organizations/). These national and international configurations drive the research agenda of individual universities in Canada, thereby aligning knowledge production with the hegemonic imperialist interests of international groups of nation states, finance ministers, militaries, surveillance and security. One might argue that the G7's role in global economic policy has receded, giving way to the G20. Indeed, the U15 feeds into both the G7, as argued above, and the G20, as evidenced by the U15 list of partners, and the various international networks of research-intensive universities feeding into the G20. The G20 aims to coordinate the member states’ economic policies with the major international finance institutions, including the IMF, World Bank and WTO. This is an imperial arrangement in the sense of “new imperialism” or “empire of capital” as discussed by Meiksins’ (2005): hierarchical arrangements of imperial and subordinate states that reproduce military and political supremacy of both global and regional hegemons. The G20 represents the interests of supremacist capitalist nations that, as argued by Meiksins, require extra-economic, military force to “keep subordinate states vulnerable to exploitation” (pp. xi). The role of research-intensive universities in supporting the imperialist work of the G20 is further advanced through the emergence of the Urban 20 – or U20. This development is the second trend mentioned earlier, and to which I now turn my attention. The U20 was founded in 2017 under the leadership of Beunos Aires Mayor Laretta and Paris Mayor Hildago to centre the role of cities in the G20 discussions. Indeed, global cities networks are critical for global finance capitals. Following the work of Sassen (2016) and Kaldor and Sassen (2020) global city networks emerged via highly sophisticated communications with new networking capabilities and organizational innovations. As Sassen argues, finance could not become complex and innovative without global cities. In a global economy, the social-political relations organizing finance have emerged as fundamental to global racial capitalism, in the sense that entire nation states, as argued by Patniak (e.g., 2010), must “kowtow” to the whims of a global finance oligarchy. Similar to states, municipal governance of Global Cities such as Toronto or Montreal, must “kowtow” to the whims of global finance. Global cities are where leading sectors are concentrated, including legal, regulated banking and finance sectors but also the shadow and rogue sectors. These dialectically formed sectors are simply one totality that we call imperial capitalism and its extractive logics, including carceral capitalism (Wang, 2018). For example, white supremacist banking in the imperial north also represents the sites or intermediaries of money laundering and unregulated tax havens, producing a class of white elite rogues occupying the highest offices of both states and cities in the global north (Yang et al., 2020). Global racial capitalism has produced cities as sites for migration due to forced dislocations because of capitalist-induced disasters, political crises, genocides, debt crises, and petro-wars. Neoliberal and austerity policies contribute to urbanization characterized by ever increasing disparities and hierarchized segregation. As such, global cities, as networked hubs of financial flows, are assets that must be securitized. Securitization technologies are broad, ranging from block chain innovations to all manner of algorithmic innovations, to securitize and extract from everything: a low-grade debt, a block of buildings, municipal debt, health management and therefore entire life systems and social services. They work in the service of financializing relative surplus populations. These are securitized and brought into financial circuits where, as Sassen (2016) explains, it ‘can be bought and sold over and over’. The pandemic served as a further catalyst to bio-securitize cities using policy discourses such as resilience and public safety. Securitization logics are at once complex – algorithmic, AI, big data – but also inextricably tied to brutality, terror and urbicide (e.g., McNally, 2020). Algorithmic securitization focused on assets and derivatives fail to be extractive in the absence of extra-economic, extra-legal state brutality or extractive logics (Wang, 2018). Hence, like every other Global City, Canadian cities such as Toronto or Montreal continue to inflate policing and surveillance budgets that are hyperfocused on guns and gangs, organized crime, encampment clearances and a very obtuse war against ‘human trafficking’ that succeeds in further criminalizing sex workers, queer and trans lives, and racialized youth (Magnusson & Bain, 2022). The ‘financialized’ city is produced as hierarchized and racially segregated, highly securitized and militarized and as such are sites of Black, Indigenous and racialized, queer and trans urbicide (Brown, 2015; McKittrick, 2013). The same technologies, communications, organizational innovations constituting financialized globally networked cities make possible what I have come to refer to as ‘complex security capitalism’. Complex security capitalism is characterized by the promise of full spectrum militarized containment/surveillance of life spaces, evidenced by intensification of the carceral state, imperialist borders and creating ‘the city’ as internationally securitized zones. Another characteristic of complex security capitalism is that, rather than an enemy state, security threats can be webs of events: pandemics, encampments for the unhoused, counter-neoliberal rebellions, ecological catastrophes, food crises, Indigenous insurgencies, money crises, criminal networks, terrorists (activists), protracted humanitarian crises, and forced migrations. Not surprisingly, then, significant funding has become available for universities to establish research hubs centring ‘cities’ and ‘resiliency’ and ‘security’. For example, the Canada Excellence Chairs Program and the Canada First Research Excellence Program include an application theme for ‘smart cities’ under ‘Innovative and Resilient Communities’, for which the description is “Building thriving communities that are inclusive, liveable, smart and safe”. The focus on ‘Cities’ as an emerging international concern is evidenced by ‘Centre for Cities’ kinds of institutions and research hubs appearing at major universities world-wide. Many of these centres have become a hub for innovating “smart cities” and “city shield”. … the concept of CityShield has been innovated in jurisdictions such as France where the state owns 26% of shares in Thales, a company with international subsidiaries in Africa, Asia, Europe, Oceana, North America and South America. Thales was formed as a joint venture with Raytheon in 2001 and is currently the 8th largest defense contractor in the world. The cities of Nice and Mexico City have been set up as model cities showcasing a ‘successful’ implementation of Thales’ ‘Innovate Safe City’ as a smart city urban design. ICE (U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement) has its own version which is called ‘Operation Community Shield’ that has a focus on gangs, drugs and guns – and of course ‘illegal’ immigrants (https://www.ice.gov/features/community-shield). Rather than ask the question “What kind of universities do we want?”, we need to begin with the question “What kind of world do we want?”. Moments of optimism arise when the work of higher education is grounded in social movements that envision new forms of collective life. The two trends outlined above reveal the critical importance of abolition work that challenges the carceral logics required to securitize global racial capitalism. I will describe two examples that illustrate how this work can be connected to a project to transform universities. The first is illustrated by the work of the No Pride in Policing Coalition (NPPC). NPPC is a multiracial queer and trans abolitionist group based in Toronto. We have formed solidarities and working relationships with Black, Indigenous, sex worker, harm reduction, prisoner rights, encampment support, labour organizations and international struggles including Woman, Life, Freedom. Several of us are academic activists who view our NPPC organizing as academic work that is the basis for our scholarship and teaching. In my own case, my graduate course entitled “Urban Poverty and Rebel Cities” is grounded in NPPC work and features guest speakers from the organizing community, including sex worker and harm reduction organizers. The inspiration for the course is drawn from the pedagogies of collective world-building available from “wayward communities” (Hartman, 2019) and international social movements. The second is illustrated by the work of Scholar Strike Canada (SSC). Co-founded by Beverly Bain and Min-Sook Lee, SSC is a new space for “bold conversations and critiques of the white supremacist neoliberal university and its subjugation of radical, Black, Indigenous, and decolonial knowledges and practices” that is simultaneously linked to labour action. The first SSC action was in solidarity with the global political insurgence “led by Black, Indigenous, racialized, queer, trans, and two-spirited youth and students” that combined a labour action with teach-ins on anti-black racism and settler colonial violence. Faculty participating in the strike encouraged students to attend the teach-ins. The SSC in fact grew out of the work of the NPPC. The SSC has since then organized several actions and public pedagogy events, including with Kristen Bosand and Mik Migwams, 3 days of teach-ins on abolitionist world-building representing the collective work of many amazing queer, trans and 2-spirited Indigenous, Black and Racialized activists, artists, and scholars. In short, SSC, as its founders state “is a space committed to insurgent knowledges and practices that foster abolition, Indigenous self-determination, and de-colonization. It is a space where scholars can boldly critique and refuse the destructive global racist, settler colonial, anti-Black, corporatized, capitalist and carceral university” (Bain & Lee, 2022). We can begin from where we are and build informal networks across different kinds of transnational spaces of learning in the service of collective struggle: online reading groups, summer institutes, de-centralized but allied networks of studies, freedom schools, and social movement learning. As Ruth Wilson–Gilmore explains, “Abolition requires that we change one thing: Everything” (2023).

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