February 10, 2015
The Education Project, conducted by Matthew Jacobson, took shape at the crossroads of his documentary work for Historian’s Eye and his participation in the American Studies Association’s ad hoc committee on the future of higher education. In this gallery, educators from many walks of academic life–professors, deans, presidents, staff members–reflect on the tattered and contested state of the academic mission in an age of scarcity, neoliberal austerity, mounting student debt, corporate management and administrative structures, and amid the ever-increasing power and influence of non-educators in the halls of university administration. Begun in summer 2014 (and ongoing), this collection is meant both as an archive that documents a very particular moment in the history of US education and as a resource for the vexed and necessary discussions to come regarding the fate of the American university and the frayed dream of democratized education.