Neoliberalism and Depoliticisation in the Academy: Understanding the ‘New Student Rebellions’

Since 2009 there has been an upsurge in political activity in and around the UK, as well as in some European and American universities. These ‘new student rebellions’ have displayed levels of radicalism and po- litical activism seemingly unprecedented among recent generations of students. Broadly speaking, the intensification of this activity can be understood as being directly related to ongoing neoliberal reforms of education, a process intensified by the global financial crisis. In this article we seek to consider some of the detail of the emergence of these rebellions, and argue that they can be interpreted as part of resistance to the neoliberal tendencies in contemporary social life. As such, we argue that a depoliticised tendency accompanies the introduc- tion of, and resistance to, neoliberal mechanisms in Higher Education (HE). As activists in groups who have adopted more creative and ex- plicitly politically antagonistic forms of activism, we suggest that such forms might be more productive arenas for our energies if we want to challenge the neoliberal and depoliticised root causes of these con- flicts