Charlie Eaton—Class Struggles: The Elite War on Universities

Elites from big finance and big tech have supported an attempted hostile takeover of universities by a US president. This is strange on its surface. Many of these same economic elites are alumni of and donors to elite universities. Some even have university buildings named for them.

Drawing on his book, Bankers in the Ivory Tower: The Troubling Rise of Financiers in US Higher Education (University of Chicago Press, 2022), Eaton will discuss how this war on universities may be understood as a power struggle over the knowledge and status that universities produce and legitimate. On one side, fragmented left-liberal cultural elites (including academics) have advanced ideas about inequality and diversity. These ideas have been embraced by a demographically changing professional, managerial class (PMC), parts of which are beset by economic precarity. On the other side, financiers and tech elites have allied with right wing political and cultural elites to fight these ideas as an existential threat to their legitimacy. The outcome of this struggle may depend in part on which side can win the allegiance of a working class that has other things to worry about. The implications will be explored for defending and rebuilding universities as more popular institutions in the broad public interest.

Charlie Eaton is Associate Professor of Sociology at University of California, Merced, where he co-founded the Higher Education, Race, and the Economy Lab. His research investigates the role of politics, organizations, and race in the interplay between economic elites and insurgent social groups, asking questions like: What forms of organization support elite efforts to consolidate power in politics and the economy? What are effective organizational strategies by which non-elites can achieve more equitable distributions of power, wealth, and status?

This lecture is presented as part of 3CT's ongoing Corporate University project.

This event is free and open to the public, and registration is recommended. Please email us at ccct@uchicago.edu if you require any accommodations to enable your full participation.