Lindsay WeinbergIn this author talk, I'll share some of the main arguments from “Smart University: Student Surveillance in the Digital Age” (2024) as a way of opening up a conversation about how digital technologies are being used in US higher education for surveillance, censorship, and the repression of student and faculty activism. I would also share concrete strategies for how participants can use tactics including open letter writing campaigns, public records requests, and unionization to push back against the repressive digitization of universities. This talk is of relevance not only to those who live, work, or study at universities, but also those who live near universities, given the ways universities directly impact the material conditions of those who live near them, including through the expansion of campus real estate and digitally enhanced campus policing techniques. Furthermore, universities can be sites for either the reproduction or critique of dominant class ideology, which is why all who oppose autocracy should struggle for their independence from far-right regimes. I would plan to speak for 15 minutes about the book’s arguments, 15 minutes sharing concrete strategies participants might make use of, and the remainder of the time facilitating conversation about participants’ own experiences navigating authoritarian attacks on higher education.
