Farewell to the University (without Nostalgia); or, Thoughts on the Relation between the University and the Common

This article argues for a university that would be neither private nor public but common. After providing a definition of the common, this article proposes to counter the current and ongoing processes of privatization and corporatization of the (public) university through a lopsided double-pronged strategy: to work and struggle at once within and against the university as well as outside and beyond the university (where the outside and the beyond consist of alternative institutions for the production at once of common knowledge and of the knowledge of the common); further, more emphasis should be put on the outside and the beyond rather than on the within and against.