This might be unpopular: the demand for a department in the intensified neoliberal university is no longer a radical move nor a move that secured or extends anything. It does afford the uni as institution more adminstrative leaverage for what counts as legit knowledge though.

We need new moves, new sets of calls, new ways of undoing the financialized neoliberal university. That undoing will not happen in departments or new departments. Radical organizing across constituencies is needed more than anything else. It has to be the practice of our now.

Which is not to say don’t demand new departments. But the achievement of them in our time is not a radical achievement. It is in part how the uni manages and administers and even disperse more radical and unruly potential coming togethers.

The dept has long not been the site were resources are secured thus making action possible. Neoliberal management has actually cut the uni into nodes governed and shaped by distributions to do the bidding of neoliberal financialization the depts that don’t come into line suffer.