Might not too much investment in teaching Shelley mean falling behind our economic competitors? But there is no university without humane inquiry, which means that universities and advanced capitalism are fundamentally incompatible. And the political implications of that run far deeper than the question of student fees.

~ Terry Eagleton

Terry Eagleton 2010 Uk Student Protest Capitalism Competition Humanities Percy Bysshe Shelley Politics Tuition Fees Uk University

What we have witnessed in our own time is the death of universities as centres of critique. Since Margaret Thatcher, the role of academia has been to service the status quo, not challenge it in the name of justice, tradition, imagination, human welfare, the free play of the mind or alternative visions of the future. We will not change this simply by increasing state funding of the humanities as opposed to slashing it to nothing. We will change it by insisting that a critical reflection on human values and principles should be central to everything that goes on in universities, not just to the study of Rembrandt or Rimbaud.

~ Terry Eagleton

Terry Eagleton 2010 2010 Uk Student Protests Academia Arthur Rimbaud Humanities Imagination Justice Margaret Thatcher Public University Radical Politics Radicalism Reactionary Politics Rembrandt Tradition Tuition Fees Uk University