Anti-Universities, Archives and Abolitionism: Alternative Models to the University
The current crisis in higher education – marked by defunding, marketization, privatization, corporate governance, and the devaluation of the humanities – demands a radical rethinking not just of institutions, but of the social purpose of education itself. In this context we can revisit the founding principles of the Anti-University of London, as articulated by Joe Berke in 1968: “The […] universities are dead. They must be destroyed and rebuilt in our own terms.” This sentiment resonates today, as scholars and activists seek ways to sustain critical inquiry and public engagement beyond the increasingly commodified university.
Whilst the student movement of the late 1960s failed to remake the university, it drew attention to the fact that the university was already being remade – by and for managerialism. As early as 1914 Walter Benjamin had opined that ‘for the vast majority of students, academic study is nothing more than vocational training.’ So, what does it mean to say the university is ‘in crisis’—when has it not been?
In 1969, John Cowley’s article The Strange Death of the Liberal University revealed how the idea of the university as a space of open inquiry was giving way to technocratic and market imperatives. He identified four resulting contradictions: (1) a growing vocational emphasis often masked by an implicitly one-dimension ideological content; (2) elitist ‘character training’ in the autonomous sector (e.g. Oxbridge); (3) restructuring to serve economic rather than egalitarian goals; and (4) the chronic under-resourcing of educational expansion. These dynamics have only deepened in the interim. Today, we can see: (1) a prioritization of STEM and ‘skills-based’ learning over the humanities; (2) enduring cross-class and racial inequalities masked as meritocracy; (3) university funding tied to labor market outcomes, not public good; and (4) worsening conditions for students in terms of mental health, housing, and debt.
Yet neoliberalism is no longer the sole threat. Under pressure from global crises, we are seeing a shift toward authoritarianism. The forced exile of the Central European University (CEU) from Hungary is illustrative. With minimal EU resistance, a respected institution was expelled for political reasons. Similar patterns have emerged in Turkey, India, and beyond, where universities are not only defunded but ideologically targeted. In this environment, the university finds itself squeezed between market discipline and authoritarian control.
In this context, institutions like the Blinken OSA Archivum become especially significant. Founded in 1995 as the archival wing of the CEU, the Archivum preserves records on Cold-War era human rights and political dissidence while engaging the public through exhibitions, digitisation, and initiatives like the Verzio International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival. Its contributions to the Erasmus Mundus-funded History in the Public Sphere (HIPS) programme, as well as its internships and mentoring prioritise collaboration, transnationalism, and critical historical engagement. Though CEU was exiled to Vienna in 2018, OSA continues operating in Budapest, representing a counter-public space in a hostile political climate.
Is the dominant university model irretrievably broken? Should it be fixed—or dismantled entirely? American scholar Christopher Newfield has outlined four possible futures for higher education, which I have mapped here against Raymond Williams’ cultural categories of dominant, residual, and emergent:
- Fragmented Decline (Dominant): Deepens neoliberal trends—platform-driven, hyper-competitive, with growing managerialism.
- Debt-Free College (Dominant/Residual): Ends tuition fees but doesn’t alter structural inequalities.
- Funding Equalised (Residual): Rebalances public resources to promote equity, drawing on social-democratic traditions.
- Abolitionist Future (Residual/Emergent): Severs ties to both market and state; draws on Indigenous, non-Western, cooperative, and peer-to-peer knowledge systems.
Newfield’s abolitionist future is bold, but any implementation would face serious structural and political challenges. However, examples of alternative models already exist.
The Ecoversities network provides a compelling case study in this context – a global, trans-local network (established circa 2015) of over 400 learning initiatives across approximately 40 countries, collaborating to reimagine higher education in service of ecological, social, and human flourishing. This network aligns closely with abolitionist ideals yet tends to emphasize personal transformation over systemic overhaul. In anthropologist David Aberle’s terms, their approach is perhaps better described as alterative – focused on individual change, such as spiritual growth – rather than revolutionary. Ecoversities aims to ‘unlearn colonial mindsets,’ ‘challenge institutionalized knowledge,’ and ‘decolonize minds,’ incorporating Indigenous cosmologies, languages, and epistemologies, such as Seven Generation sustainability. Their critique of ‘extractive industries,’ “modern-colonial addictions,’ ‘industrial thinking,’ and ‘consumerism,’ however, reflects a rejection of fossil-fuel-driven academic capitalism. In the face of the climate crisis, education will need to guide us toward ways of life not defined by work and consumption—and Ecoversities seek to lead that shift.
A second case study is the Invisible University for Ukraine (IUFU), a certificate programme for Ukrainian undergraduate and graduate students whose studies have been disrupted by the war. Inspired by the ‘flying universities’ of Communist-era Poland and the ‘Invisible Colleges’ formed after 1989 in Eastern Europe, IUFU is a decentralized, largely online learning space operating outside formal institutions. It draws on infrastructure developed during the COVID-19 pandemic to support students across borders and builds new networks of solidarity and radically democratic academic cooperation. Using Raymond Williams’ cultural categories, IUFU cleverly straddles the residual (samizdat traditions) and the emergent (crisis-responsive experimentation). While it is not abolitionist in ideology or fully anti-capitalist in funding – being part of the Open Society University Network – IUFU nonetheless seeks to carve out a space beyond both state control and market imperatives. We might therefore see it as a radical and emergent variant of Newfield’s Funding Equalised path.
At a time when the dominant university model seems increasingly unsustainable, these initiatives suggest what might come next. Whether through the preservation and pedagogy of ‘spaces of memory’ at Blinken OSA, the experimental and transnational pedagogy of the Invisible University for Ukraine, or the grounded, decolonial praxis of the Ecoversities network, we can witness new forms of learning emerging from the crises of authoritarianism, war, and environmental collapse. These initiatives do not yet constitute a wholesale replacement for the university, but perhaps the contours of a participatory, and justice-oriented educational future. If abolition is not merely an endpoint but a process, then these counter-institutional models remind us that the work of building otherwise is already underway – outside the academy’s walls.
