A guest post from Sinead Murphy, author of Zombie University. It was written to support the current UCU strike.

We were horrified at Trump’s great wall and indulged ourselves in an oh-so-liberal outrage. Again and again we were directed to loathe it, by the media and their politician-puppets. And we did loathe it, again and again. And all the while, a real wall continued to rise, far higher than Trump’s folly ever could. Britain, among other countries, is cut through by this real wall. On one side are those with access to the trillions ‘printed’ by ‘quantitative easing’, at zero percent, or even ‘negative percent’, interest-rates. On the other side is everyone else, who continue to suffer the ‘credit crunch’ and who sometimes pay interest-rates equivalent to one-thousand percent or more for loans from ‘pay-day’ providers. On one side, lots of cash at no cost. On the other side, very little cash at high cost. The result is neo-Feudal Britain, founded upon a drastically unequal distribution of money and risk allied with the very sinister principle that where the money goes the risk does not. How paltry Trump’s mere bricks and mortar, next to this financial engineering.

But what of the University in neo-Feudal Britain? Does it take issue with the accumulation-by-dispossession that has so surely impoverished all but the few? Does it put all its left-liberal posturing to work in defence of the right-to-livelihood of those it employs? On the contrary. The supposed institution of ideas accepts that there-is-no-alternative idea, and duly plays its part in the British horror show: the low interest-rates that have made such a playground for the elites on the other side of the wall have suppressed yield on investments on both sides of the wall, with the result that pension funds have to engage in more ‘imaginative’ speculation, where increased risk comes with increased potential return; and, on that sinister principle that risk must now be borne by the most vulnerable, the University has ruled that the worker take on the risk of her pension contributions doing badly in a market entirely rigged in favour of those who are paid money to borrow it and speculate with it –   ‘Defined Contribution,’ not ‘Defined Benefit.’

My Zombie University makes and argues for the claim that, as the Bank now does nothing more or less than steal our money, so the University now does nothing more or less than suppress our thoughts. But it turns out that, given half a chance, the University will steal our money too.