The only way to meaningfully fight against such measures and threats is through collective struggle with tenured, tenure-track, adjunct, and graduate faculty, as well as with students and workers, something which individualized and atomized careerism precludes. 14/

Given all of the above, I made the decision to search for and pursue projects outside of the context of the university in places where solidarity, generosity, and collaboration were not only still possible, but collectively desired, defended, and fought for. 15/

I'm certainly disheartened to leave a tenure-track job, something I worked quite hard for and that so few ever obtain, but in the end it was not a place that supported the kind of intellectual, political, and creative practices that brought me to academia in the first place. 16/

With the pandemic and the rush to move everything online, I genuinely worry about the future of the university as a place of learning and teaching, of critique, and of solidarity. In its place, we may have to invent new forms that will be able to support these practices. 17/

I hope at the very least that faculty (particularly tenured and tenure-track) rediscover the necessity of fighting alongside all who study, work, and teach in the university, and refuse to participate in the individuating, precaritizing, and depoliticizing logic of austerity. 18/

All of this is my way of saying goodbye to this particular period of my life, but I continue to remain invested in education as a liberatory and emancipatory practice that has the potential to make us all, students and teachers alike, more free. 19/

If solidarity is able to overtake the logic of austerity, the university may well continue to be a place worth defending. If the logic of austerity effectively precludes solidarity, we must undertake the task of constituting new places/modes of learning beyond the university. 20/