Solidarity with UNSW colleagues. A quick note: the university sector is not ‘shedding excess staff’. It is being subjected to a concerted political effort to shift its organising values away from public education and toward economic growth.

The cost is not just to academic livelihoods. The cost is to the capacity of the public to access independent research and civic-oriented education, and to make rigorously informed decisions for ourselves about the world we’re living in. A website is not equivalent to a degree.

The politics of these changes, in other words, are not confined to the level of labour rights. At stake is the remaining shreds of an ideal of the public sphere not captured by the logic of the market, and of a community with values beyond cultivating competitive advantage.

I have no problem with economic logic. It’s an excellent tool - when kept in its place. But if we continue to let it corrode our public institutions, at a time of accelerating inequality and environmental crisis, we are all going to end up, excuse my French, in even deeper shit.

I’m not content to see the default defences of our unis be made on the basis of a) keeping jobs or b) curing cancer. Both arguments miss the real point: a public university system is integral to the idea of a public itself. And I for one do think there’s such a thing as society.