The COVID Wars Continue at Penn State--A Tale of Two Senate Resolutions. . . and the Administration's Counternarrative

 

 

I have been following the sadly patched up disaster that has been the lurching progress toward what passes for policy at Penn State relating to the COVID pandemic (Pandemic and the University: "An Open Letter from Penn State faculty to the Penn State Administration and the Board of Trustees").  Not that any of this could be helped.  All of the actors in this drama have been prisoners (and happily so) of the logic of the positions they occupy since the start of this pandemic, and they frankly know no better than what they are are doing.  But a century from now that will be the epitaph of the first part of this century: here lies homo adminstratus incapable of agency other than to perpetuate the structures of power and culture into which they were willingly thrust. But administrators are not the only university actors trapped within the logic of the structures that they populate.  University faculty also perform to type. That is especially the case for the faculty representatives in its University Senate.  All people of good will--to be sure.  But also all necessarily trapped within the logic of their position and discourses of power and legitimacy which binds each to the other. Faculty also may merit an epitaph of their own: here lies homo complicitus who is trapped by the logic of Esau, famished and willing to sell his birthright to the administrator Jacob for a pot of stew (Gen 25-34).  

The Penn State Administration's choice to privilege the un-vaccinated using the discursive tropes of contemporary anti-discrimination for atmospherics, has produced something of a backlash. That backlash has been strengthened in part because Penn State leadership choices (unlike their usual cautious efforts to fall somewhere hidden in the middle of bench marked decision making) put them somewhere on the right side of the outlier curve. 

That has provided an opening for the University Senate, which to some extent has been formally marginally in the process of developing administratively "sound" policy, within the meaning universe of the university administrative community. The Senate has rushed through that opening.  It has called a special meeting of that body to vote on two resolutions, aptly named Resolution A and Resolution B--offering up of two related versions of a counter narrative, and plan of action, to that marketed by the university administration. 

Resolution A offers a counter approach to the administration's COVID planning for the Fall 20201 Semester. It calls for  an immediate vaccination mandate for eligible Penn State students, faculty, and staff and and demands that, until full vaccination can occur, that the university impose rules for universal mask mandates; twice weekly COVID-19 testing for individuals without proof of vaccination; and adherence to CDC recommendations.  

Resolution B serves the purpose of condemning the current administrative approach. It os based on the obvious--the faculty was cut out of the process of decision making. It then seeks an affirmative vote of NO CONFIDENCE  in the University’s COVID-19 Plan for Fall 2021. That s followed by a more meek request to be included in whatever revised decision making process might be triggered as a result of the vote.

That the university's leadership core takes this serious might be evidenced by a last minute appeal to the faculty in the form of an "open letter" signed by the University's president. It s a marvelous statement of its kind.  At the same time its discursive allegiance to the forms and sensibilities of the administrative milieu evidences both the increasing gap that is now apparent in the way that faculty and administration approach an issue, and as well the differences in the way that risk is valued by those who bear the risk but have no control over risk versus those who control the risk but effectively can avoid bearing the risk. 

The Presidents narrative is detached (though the words are meant to suggest caring, at least form a distance)  and Olympian.  It speaks from above conveying the sense of those burdened with the balancing of factors in a "greater game" of which the productive forces of the university (faculty, staff, buildings, services) play a role. The Senate narrative is risk based as well, but from the perspective of risk bearers the discursive form is more personal and more immediate. The Senate balances risk on their bodies; the administration bases its risk calculus on abstractions--important abstractions to be sure, but bloodless, ledger entries within ideological structures of compliance and accountability regimes.  That remoteness, of course, diminishes the micro risks of those who must bear responsibility for the operation of the ecologies of principles that the administration seeks to advance.  And it ignores the anger of a professional caste once central to the running of the university that increasingly is recast in hyper technical functionaries and transformed into live ingots that serve as one factor in the production of university welfare. 

But decide for yourselves. In the immediate term the issue is simple enough--what and how does the university value most among the factors the university administrators balance, ad whose voices count (and how) in that balancing. 

The text of the two Senate Resolutions. along with the text of the Presidential Open Letter follow.

Pandemic and the University: "An Open Letter from Penn State faculty to the Penn State Administration and the Board of Trustees "

Pix Credit HERE

 

 The COVID-19 Pandemic has brought out the best and worst among key institutional stakeholders.  It has accelerated trends that had been slowly working toward transformations of work, social, political, and cultural environments.  Most importantly COVID-19 brought into sharp focus the oppositions inherent in the organization of society and the way in which societal principles and objectives are privileged, weighed, and balanced against each other.

That balancing of principles, which are assumed to always be aligned, but which more often than not cannot be adequately reconciled, is more sharply drawn when health (individual, economic, and societal health) is affected by the weighing and balancing.  Less equitably, it appears to accelerate a trend  in which control of risk and risk bearing are increasingly detached. In the case of the university it manifests as a shift in the authority to control risk migrating to institutional administrators who bear little risk (for example in the context of health risks brought on by conditions of pandemic) but can impose risk on faculty, students, and staff whose exposure to risk for themselves and their families are essentially out of their hands. 

The Administrators at Penn State University provide a somewhat ordinary example of the sort of balancing that is being undertaken by the institutional governance apparatus of state and state affiliated universities, the way they value health risks that they do not bear, and the resulting allocation of risk and reward within university structures that privilege some actors in ways denied others.

 
Health guidelines



​As of June 28, masks are optional inside University buildings for individuals who are fully vaccinated. Unvaccinated individuals must continue to wear masks indoors at all times. If you want someone to wear a mask when interacting with you in your private office, you can request they do so, but cannot require it. It is important to note that those who are visiting designated health care environments must continue to wear masks indoors and maintain physical distancing regardless of vaccination status.

In individual offices, staff members may post this sign if they wish to request that people entering wear a mask.




Yes, unvaccinated individuals who have been in close contact with someone who is COVID-19 positive or suspected of having COVID-19 must quarantine for 7 to 10 days. They must quarantine for 10 days without testing if no symptoms have been reported during daily monitoring, or after seven days with a negative test on or after day five of quarantine and if they have no symptoms.




No. According to the CDC, fully vaccinated individuals do not have to be tested or quarantine but should monitor themselves for symptoms for 14 days. If symptoms develop, employees should contact their personal health care provider.




Employees can find detailed information and guidance on the Health Guidelines, Contact Tracing, and Quarantine and Isolation pages.




At this time, masking outdoors and physical distancing are not required. Fully vaccinated individuals are not required to wear face masks indoors, however, individuals who are not fully vaccinated are expected to wear face masks inside University buildings. Additionally, all individuals must wear a face mask while using public transportation, in accordance with CDC guidance, and in some additional settings such as when visiting on-campus health care facilities and when conducting in-person research involving human subjects.

Additional information about masking and physical distancing is available on the Health Guidelines page.

Not all schools similarly situated have chosen to balance the needs for operations (and its derivative outcome), the psycho-social imperatives of physical presence, religious convictions, political choices, and health in the peculiar way chosen by Penn State. See, e.g., Indiana University, whose decision to mandate vaccination (with limited exceptions for medical or religious reasons) was recently upheld by the courts).

Faculty have essentially been cut out of the process of policymaking.  They have been free to express their views of course.  And their organs of governance, reduced to rgans of expressions of opinion, have done just that.  But the University, like other administrative organs throughout liberal democratic collectives, like the United States, have chosen to treat this as a matter for which technical expertise is solicited (by invitation) from staff (in this case faculty), but it remains for the "grown-ups" (the administrator class to gather together to discuss and make decisions. This is not unusual post COVID.  But it nicely expresses the transformation of governance and the greater transformation of the university from a collective of professionals to a learning factory with overseers.  

Faculty, however, have not been content to lick their wounds--not at Penn State anyway.  A group calling itself the Faculty Coordinating Committee of the Coalition for a Just University have decided to organize themselves to put pressure on the university apparatus in more public and politically traditional ways.  They have drafted an "Open Letter" addressed to the University Administrative organs calling on the university to:

1. Require vaccinations
2. Continue masking and social distancing
3. Continue to conduct random surveillance testing
4. Maintain improved ventilation standards
5. Institute a more reasonable and flexible teaching and learning policy
6. Improve Penn State's mental healthcare resources

To date the letter has amassed over 650 faculty signatures and almost 600 signatures of students, staff, and others. It is not clear whether the Open Letter will produce any change in Administrative decision making.  I suspect that calculus will tend to underweigh faculty concerns but center values based decisions on the risk of liability or loss caused by assessments of COVID impact, along with the political cost of taking a particular decision (and its impacts on budget negotiations with the legislature.  It may also depend on the ideologies and politics of the Board of Trustees--but that is a black box (a subject for another day). More interesting, though, is the way that the Open Letter itself provides evidence of the way that Faculty shared governance has become something like a historical artifact that is retained for the gesture it represents to a historical period that is now receding fast.  

Note that the issue survives whatever one's position is vaccination policy or mask wearing, or physical presence at the university.  One does not have to be either pro or anti vaccination mandates, or pro or anti masking, or pro or anti physical presence to understand that the effective consequence here, evidenced by the process and impact of decision making, has shifted, perhaps permanently the role of faculty in governance, and certainly, has exposed the way and extent to which faculty is valued (in terms of risk to health, and the health of their families who may be affected) as a function of other objectives, goals, and principles, against which these may be weighed.  And in the process, those who are required to bear the risk, no longer actively involved in controlling it, become an object in the governance of an institution and its institutional value maximizing calculus. Even that is not necessarily a bad thing--the effort to hide this, and to pretend that one still lives and operates in accordance with principles and expectations now abandoned (effectively), though, is a bad thing if only because it suggests the cultivation of misperception.

The Call to Sign follows below along with the text of the Request to sign cover note.



 

Now Available Bulletin of the AAUP (Summer 2021)--COVID and the University (and all is not Well)

 

The AAUP's annual Bulletin collects in one place the reports, policy statements, and official AAUP business materials of an academic year—in this case, 2020–21. Most of these documents have already been published on the AAUP website or in Academe, and the parenthetical dates after their titles refer to date of original publication. The Bulletin of the American Association of University Professors is published annually as the summer issue of Academe (or as the July–August issue prior to 2019). This table of contents links to PDFs of that print version. These PDFs will stand as the historical record for 2020–21 and will not be changed. (AAUP Bulletin Announcement)

 It comes as no surprise that the AAUP focuses its reporting this year on the most important event of this generation--COVID19. Thsi issue of Academe does an excellent job of memorializing the perspectives ad analysis of that crisis on the academy.  It also suggests the great tragedy of the faculty voice in crisis.  That tragedy is centered on the irresistible urge to assume a reactionary posture--and the discourse of a "return"--in the face of transformed conditions that will make the possibility of any such return effectively impossible.  It will be left to others, perhaps, to forge forward.  But this reporting provides a glimpse of the way in which that forward might lead backwards in the context of a industry capable of such a return.  That this is not so and that other approaches may well have to be developed may be read between the lines.

COVID-19 has fast forwarded trends that have effectively sidelined traditional faculty governance and shared governance principles.  Shared governance has been reduced effectively to a technocratic exercise.  At its best it has reduced faculty governance structures to an odd form of focus group, or worse, has absorbed  the faculty into the administrative apparatus at a low administrative level. In the process faculties have refused to embrace or neglected any effort to transform themselves into stronger instruments of accountability.  Part of that, of course, is a function of the great transformation of this century--the effective elimination of tenure except as a vestigial condition.  Faculty dependent on the renewal of contracts are hardly in a position to effectively "lean in" without substantial risk. And the technological revolution will reshape teaching and student engagement--and here it is the administration rather than faculty that are driving change.  In the meantime faculty obsession with transforming their function from research to the exercise of a role as public intellectuals--a process abetted by an administration obsessed, in turn, with short term (and quite manipulative) impact measures, has altered the value of faculty as sources of the production of knowledge.  They have become a political instrument, or on the other side, the blue collar producers of "facts" that can be consumed by the policy caste. Still there is much to lear from the orthodox narrative of the effects of COVID-19 on faculty.  Links to the articles follow.

COVID and the University from the American Association of University Professors

What’s New with Academe?

This month’s newsletter offers a preview of selected articles from our forthcoming fall issue on the COVID-19 crisis in higher education. Follow the links below or visit https://www.aaup.org/academe to read a new series of reflections on faculty life during the pandemic and other highlights from Academe and the Academe Blog.

Links to the articles follow below.

---

Diversity in Silence: A Look Back To Diversity Reform Now Forgotten at Penn State University

I have not commented on the recent, and potentially quite profoundly transformative, movements to center diversity generally, and the African American experience in particular, in the American University. Penn State University, like many other similarly situated university institutions, has now sought to intensely engage with the issues that have become once again passionately current in the United States.  On 10 June 2020, "Penn State President Eric Barron issued a statement . . . outlining steps the university will take to address instances of racism, bias, and religious intolerance within its community." (President Barron Outlines Penn State’s Actions Against Racism, Hate Speech).

Given the nature of events, and the very short time cohorts of students have an intense engagement with the university, for many this may seem new and long overdue.  For faculty, many of whom have been insulated from events increasingly shunted behind the closed doors of "leadership teams" and the closed cultures of emerging university bureaucratic practices, the extent of university efforts to confront issues of inclusion may well seem somewhat removed fro their lives--and certainly from the center of their shared governance experiences.  

For the ever growing administrative superstructure, and its increasingly distinct and remote operational ideologues, the issue of diversity has been treated as one of many on a large platter of issues , the importance of which might have been measured by the risk it poses.  The reason for that, of course, is that at the heart of emerging ideologies of university governance is the framing principle of risk avoidance, implemented through the application of the secondary principles of prevention, mitigation, and remedy. Every challenge to the university (that is to the stability of the governance of the institution, and the avoidance of threats as those are understood by university administrators) is understood only within the parameters of risk, and the riskiness of choices among prevention, mitigation, or remedial measures. Diversity issues--like campus drinking, the registration system, the allocation of student fees, and the smooth running of dormitories, parking spaces, and events--are conceptualized first as a normative challenge (goal) but one that must be assessed for the risk it poses and the value of adopting policies that focus on prevention, rather tan on mitigation and remedy.  It has been, in that sense, nothing special.

And yet, it would be a mistake to believe that there have not been efforts to change the way that senior officials approached the application of these governance parameters, even within the logic of what they perceive their operational function to be. 

One such effort to bring greater focus on diversity started in January 2013  under my leadership of the Penn State University Faculty Senate when at my invitation students addressed the Penn State University Faculty Senate about the issue. (Diversity Awareness Task Force: Statement to the University Faculty Senate January 29, 2013). Following that intervention a Joint Diversity Awareness Task Force was constituted including elements from the major stakeholders of the University. Its charge included:

· Bring a diverse group of administrators, faculty and students together to work collaboratively to engage in dialogue and provide recommendations to the University Faculty Senate and Administration to enhance diversity awareness in the University Community.
· Thoroughly investigate practices that will be most effective to increase diversity understanding among the student body.
· Provide recommendations to the Faculty Senate Committee charged with reforming the general education curriculum as a whole.

This post chronicles both the achievement of that remarkable committee over the course of several years--and the ultimate marginalization of its work--now so long forgotten that it is not even a memory within the administrative organs of the university, much less among its stakeholders. Those efforts are worth remembering if only as a cautionary take for the current group of individuals and institutional representatives now bent on a similar task. The principal lesson was one that I pointed out in 2014, even before the full set of Joint Diversity Awareness Task Force Reports was produced:

This response provides an excellent illustration of the approach to diversity at many institutions--engagement and oblivion.  This is all the more important because of it collateral result--Marginalization.  Even as the University devotes a tremendous amount of resources to its reconstruction of General Education, even as it focuses substantial public time to experiential learning and other important elements of a public education--the education and practice of diversity is buried and marginalized. . . . The expectations appear simple enough--provide a formally responsive forum for meeting, produce a report well received but avoid robust interconnection to the vital life of the university, and then move on with a sense of satisfaction of having engaged with diversity. (Diversity in Silence--The Joint Diversity Task Force Report at Penn State University Becomes Less Visible).

That chronicling was set out in a series of Reports produced by the JDATF over the course of several years.  Now long forgotten (and effectively inaccessible except by university faculty senators "For agendas or records prior to 2016-2017, please contact the Senate office. Faculty Senators may access Agendas and Records through the Senate Archives.") they are reproduced below.

Academic Salaries on the Eve of Pandemic: Data From the AAUP

(Pix credit here) 

The AAUP has provided some interesting salary data for the US academy.  It has no surprises.  De professionalization and the shifting of prestige from the academic to the administrative side of the house are nicely reinforced by the shift of salary increases from faculty to administrators.  As long as the academy continues to indulge the fantasy that administrators are worth more than faculty (presumably because they are fewer and hold more (and increasing authority) there is nothing that will change these trajectories.  

These valuations,. of course, are constructs, grounded in ancient societal presumptions about the value of work and its alignment with authority.  And of course as the authority and autonomy of faculty decrease, a diminution of salary (as the way one expresses value) is also to be expected. Tied to this is the premise that the lower the value of a worker the more likely she is expendable--high value (salaried) administrators, under this premise, are far less expendable (and less likely to be reduced in numbers in the case of financial difficulties, than are lower value (and more plentiful) teaching "staff. But that is exactly how the market has been solidifying for more than a generation. Data and links follow.

From the American Association of University Professors--A Rich Collection of Articles and Reports from its Summer 2019 Bulletin

The Bulletin of the American Association of University Professors is published annually as the summer issue of Academe. This year's Bulletin features academic freedom and tenure investigative reports, college and university governance investigative reports, a report on the assault on gender and gender studies, a statement on dual enrollment, and annual reports and other business documents. Follow the links in this email or read the entire issue at https://www.aaup.org/issue/summer-2019-bulletin.

 

Links follow: 

 

New From Academe--The Magazione of the AAUP; Academic Freedom and Free Speech

I am happy to pass along the table of contents of the features in the latest issue of Academe--the Journal of the American Association of University Professors. 

FEATURES

Knowledge for the Common Good
A plenary presentation from the AAUP’s 2019 annual conference.
By Joan W. Scott

Political Interference with Academic Freedom and Free Speech at Public Universities
The threat of governmental suppression of academic inquiry.By Gene Nichol

Rebuilding "Iowa Nice" in Shared Governance: From Sanction to Collaboration
A faculty senate committee works to address governance concerns.
By Sandra Daack-Hirsch, Frank Durham, Russell Ganim, Edward Gillan, and Justine Kolker

Of particular interestare the remarks of Jopan Scott, which are reproduced below.  Joan W. Scott is professor emerita in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. She is a long-standing member and former chair of the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure.

New Issue of Journal of Legal Education: On the Relationship Between American Legal Education, Globalization, and Internationalism

The American Legal academy continues to consider its relationship to the rest of the world. That consideration takes two quite distinct forms. The first involves the reception of the "foreign" within the United States--and that requires combating a parochialism and legal-centrism long embedded in American legal education. The second involves the projection of Americanism in law and legal education outward. This is something that the American academy has been quite eager to participate in, especially after 1989. It reflects the notions of the central role of American sensibilities in the technical assistance required for other states to "catch up" under the guidance of a more mature system with good (and perhaps universal) principles. 

I have considered these issues from time to time. See e.g., 'Internationalizing the American Law School Curriculum (in Light of the Carnegie Foundation’s Report),' in The Internationalization of Law and Legal Education 49-112 (Jan Klabbers and Mortimer Sellers, Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer Science + Business Media B.V., 2008); 'Global Law Schools on U.S. Models: Emerging Models of Consensus-Based Internationalization or Markets-Based Americanization Models of Global Legal Education,' 2 Revista de Educación y Derecho/Education and Law Review (España) 4:1-53 (April-Sept. 2011) (with Bret Stancil); 'Human Rights and Legal Education in the Western Hemisphere: Legal Parochialism and Hollow Universalism,' 21(1) Penn State International Law Review 115-155 (2002); and 'General Principles of Academic Specialization By Means of Certificate or Concentration Programs: Creating a Certificate Program in International, Comparative and Foreign Law at Penn State,' 20 Penn. State International Law Review 67 (2001).

This month the flagship journal of the Association of American Law Schools, the Journal of Legal Education, has devoted a substantial amount its Issue 67-4 to the relationship between American legal education and globalization and internationalism, through an examination of international and comparative law. Special thanks to the editors of this issue, American University's Camille A. Nelson and Anthony E. Varona for putting together a group of quite thought provoking articles.

Links to the articles follow.

The Language of Bureaucracy: Rostam J. Neuwirth, "Law in the Time of Oxymora A Synaesthesia of Language, Logic and Law"

I am happy to pass along news of the publication of Rostam J. Neuwirth, Law in the Time of Oxymora: A Synaesthesia of Language, Logic and Law (Routledge 2018). A rich work, it addresses the fundamental challenges to legal reasoning and legal logic and also open a broad debate on the consequences that these linguistic changes are likely to trigger. The relation of the project of reasoning to the transformation of the meaning and structures of communication within enterprises, and especially universities, may be quite useful. 

This from the publication materials (the abstract follows).

In the time of “alternative facts”, “Yanny and Laurel” or other oxymoronic phenomena, the “law and society” debate faces a plethora of serious challenges that are often framed in individual “law and … pairs”, like those of “law and technology”, “law and language” or “law and the senses” to mention but three. However, such dichotomous thinking underlying law at large is increasingly facing pressure from so-called “essentially oxymoronic concepts” and may no longer be able to deal with the pace of change and complexity in the real world.

Hollowing Out Governance--Thoughts on the Emerging Structures of Governance at the Unit Level: Bureaucratization, Information Asymmetries and Control

(Px © Larry Catá Backer 2018)

One of the most interesting trends of the last decade or so has been the way in which the edifice of robust shared governance has been carved out.  What was once a structure vibrant with engagement (although always to some extent asymmetrical) now appears as magnificent as before, though hollowed out of any real content. 

One gets  areal sense of this not at the university level--where the grand strategies of bureaucratization have already become a normal element of operation, whose premises appear unremarkable even to those most deeply and adversely affected by them.  Rather it appears in its most acute forms in the operation of sub-units of the university--colleges and large departments--whose governance structures remain outwardly a shining beacon of shared effort, but which have effectively been hollowed out. 

This post includes some thoughts on the nature of that process of hollowing out and its consequences.  A future post considers the effects. The view is pessimistic; it is not clear that the antique model on which these structures once operated well can be saved except as echoes of themselves now most useful as a veil behind which real power is exercised through increasingly bureaucratized administrative apparatus with no real connection to faculty other than to understand them as factors in the production data useful to the assessment machinery of the university as a whole.  Yet what emerges as well is the certain knowledge that faculties will adjust to changing conditions, at least in order to survive.  And they will thrive, if only by changing the meaning and methods of that term. Still, it is worth chronically the transformation of a governance order that once was fully embraced by a dynamic culture and that now is quickly losing even status as a memory. Still, there may be something distasteful in using antique terms, rich in history and practice, to describe the new realities to which they have little functional connection.

Recommended Reading: Marco Ferretti, Salvatore Ferretti, Raffaele Fiorentino, Adele Parmentola, and Alessandro Sapio, "What drives the growth of academic spin-offs? Matching academics, universities, and non-research organizations," International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal (March 2018)

Universities (whatever the incarnation of that abstraction means) sometimes believe that they serve as a positive force in bringing the knowledge produced by their faculty to market, and thus contributing (again it is hard to understand how a collection of administrative officials can be credited here except for doing the job for which they receive lavish (market based of course) compensation) to social progress.  And indeed, the practice and fostering of university spin offs has been all the rage recently (here, here, here, here, and here). 

 Public officials in universities and ministries throughout the industrial countries are currently extremely interested in fostering the creation of spin-offs from the public research base. The reason is simple. Research-based spin-offs are generally understood to be small, new technology-based firms whose intellectual capital originated in universities or other public research organisations. These firms are thought to contribute to innovation, growth, employment and revenues. They are perceived to be flexible and dynamic, giving rise to novel fields and markets, and playing a critical role in the development of high-technology clusters. However, despite the promise of new-firm generation from cutting-edge research, a recent survey carried out by the OECD shows that in most countries, spin-offs remain rare and their economic impact is poorly documented. (here; and see also here).

But where might credit be better due?

To consider that question, those interested might want to have a look at an intriguing artocle just published:    Marco Ferretti, Salvatore Ferri, Raffaele Fiorentino, Adele Parmentola, and Alessandro Sapio, "What drives the growth of academic spin-offs? Matching academics, universities, and non-research organizations," International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal 14:1-27 (electronic publication 6 March 2018), which considers whether the combination of academic and non-academic individuals and organizations on the board and in the shareholder base can foster academic spin offs' (ASOs') early growth performance. They find that "academic individuals’ ownership shares do not exercise any significant impact on sales growth, and the effect of the parent university is negative, whereas non-academic organizations foster ASO sales growth in an inverse U-shaped fashion." (Ferretti, M., Ferri, S., Fiorentino, R. et al. Int Entrep Manag J (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11365-018-0497-4). 

The abstract follows.

Flora Sapio: "Thoughts on the Globalized University and the Logic of the Nation-State as an Ideal Form"

(By Laurentius de Voltolina - The Yorck Project: 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei. DVD-ROM, 2002. ISBN 3936122202. Distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=160060)

In The Globalization of University Education and Interference in the Domestic Social and Political Orders of States: Considering Chinese and Australian Approaches, I explored some of the political ramifications  in China and Australia relating in large measure to the management and use of higher education and the projection of ideologies of knowledge and to control of interpretation abroad. Some reference was made to Chinese efforts and to Australia's National Security Legislation Amendment (Espionage and Foreign Interference (Bill 2017). I suggested the way that these sorts of engagements "move quickly, then, from a "thing" (knowledge and learning) to values, interpretation, management and ideology.  We move from the collection and deployment of data bits to (1) power (who determines what may be learned; and what is taboo),  and (2) form (what may be learned; the form does this knowledge take)."

Flora Sapio has been kind enough to offer further reflections on the themes raised.  Her essay, Scattered Thoughts on the Globalized University and the Logic of the Nation-State as an Ideal Form, follows below.

The Globalization of University Education and Interference in the Domestic Social and Political Orders of States: Considering Chinese and Australian Approaches

(By Laurentius de Voltolina - The Yorck Project: 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei. DVD-ROM, 2002. ISBN 3936122202. Distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=160060)

Globalization happily came to the university with the establishment of strong globalist principles at the end of the 20th Century. But the "Globalization Revolution" (like the Marxist Revolution that preceded it by a century) did not immediately result in the withering away of the state. That has produced a contradiction and a controversy, generally for the advancement of a coherent global system of norms and more specifically for the evolution of education. The contradiction arises because global values might at times conflict with traditional and national customs, norms and ways of seeing (explaining) the world in a context in which the state must effectively contradict itself in the training of its youth. The controversy arises from the use of the avenues of globalized education as an avenue for the extraterritorial projection of the education vision/mission of a state outbound into other states. Thus education globalization can serve to develop its own values consonant with the developing of norms, mores and outlooks at the international public and private spheres, it can be used to displace, challenge or develop national and traditional ways of understanding and explaining the world on which national societies are ordered, and it serves as a means to project national values outward.  Each has manifested itself simultaneously in the operation of university education systems globally. 

But now these three trends are beginning to have political effects.  This post briefly considers the glimmerings of those effects in China, and then considers the way that Australia is now contemplating regulation grounded in the protection of its sovereignty against foreign manipulation. These suggest the contradictions between a growing sentiment at international levels that education is an essential tool for managing the substantial interplay between the construction of law-based legitimacy and the control and management of the substance, and mechanisms for the development, of social and cultural norms (2017 Report of the Special Rapporteur (A/72/523), ¶ 92), the use by states of education to perpetuate their own customs, traditions and values, and the use of globalization by states to project their national values abroad through education projects.