This reading list brings together texts on higher education, the humanities, and the university’s cultural role today. The aim is to connect intellectual life to institutional design, public value, and educational change—so that “the humanities” is not treated as an abstract ideal, and “the university” is not treated as a neutral container. The selections are for readers who want both historical grounding and a clear view of the debates shaping the university’s future.
The list includes arguments that defend the humanities as a form of public knowledge and critical inquiry, alongside critiques that examine how universities can reproduce inequality, consolidate authority, or align themselves with particular political and economic interests. Holding these strands together matters: the point is not to choose between celebration and indictment, but to read the institution with the same seriousness we bring to texts—attentive to context, power, and consequence.
This list is suitable for faculty, graduate students, and general readers interested in the place of the university in society. Brief notes accompany each entry to indicate the problem it addresses and how it extends the broader conversation.
This list corresponds to the “Universities, Culture, and Public Knowledge” section on the main Reading Lists page. It can be used for courses on higher education, in reading groups, or for personal study. If you would like a customized version—for a specific region, discipline, or set of institutional questions—please reach out via the Contact page.
Universities and the Humanities: A Reading List
Foundations: what a university is for
1. John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University (1852/1858).
A classic statement of liberal education: knowledge as an end in itself, and the university as a distinctive site for forming intellectual judgment—not simply training for a profession.
2. Clark Kerr, The Uses of the University (1963; expanded editions through 2001).
Introduces the “multiversity” and maps the modern research university’s competing missions (teaching, research, service) and constituencies. Useful for naming structural tensions that persist.
3. Stefan Collini, What Are Universities For? (2012).
A clear, public-facing defense of universities as public goods—and a critique of the “business analogy” that reduces value to measurable economic outputs.
The humanities as public knowledge
4. Martha C. Nussbaum, Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities (2010).
A widely taught argument that humanistic education cultivates the capacities (critique, imagination, empathy) needed for democratic life—and that these are threatened by profit-first models of education.
5. Helen Small, The Value of the Humanities (2013).
Probably the most careful account of the major justifications for the humanities (culture, democracy, critique, intrinsic value), with attention to their strengths—and their limits.
6. Stanley Fish, Save the World on Your Own Time (2008).
A deliberately provocative argument for disciplinary responsibility: the university’s job is intellectual work (teaching, inquiry), not moral or political salvation. Useful as a counterpoint in seminar debate.
Neoliberalism, “excellence,” and institutional drift
7. Bill Readings, The University in Ruins (1996).
A canonical diagnosis of the contemporary university’s shift from “culture” to “excellence” as an empty managerial value—essential for thinking about audit culture and institutional language.
8. Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (2015).
Not “about universities” alone, but foundational for understanding how market rationality reshapes institutions, subjects, and public life—background theory that clarifies what’s at stake in higher-ed reforms.
Governance, markets, and the political economy of higher education
9. Derek Bok, Universities in the Marketplace: The Commercialization of Higher Education (2003/2004).
A measured account of commercialization pressures (athletics, fundraising, sponsored research, branding) and how market logics quietly reorganize academic priorities.
10. Louis Menand, The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University (2010).
Short, readable provocations on curricula, disciplines, and institutional inertia—useful for framing “reform” debates without pretending the university is a single coherent machine.
11. Benjamin Ginsberg, The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters (2011).
A blunt account of administrative expansion and governance change—good for discussing who actually sets educational agendas and how authority moves within institutions.
12. Christopher Newfield, The Great Mistake: How We Wrecked Public Universities and How We Can Fix Them (2016).
A detailed analysis of the defunding/tuition spiral and the “cost disease” story, with concrete proposals—excellent for policy-oriented reading groups.
Power, inclusion, and the lived institution
13. Sara Ahmed, On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life (2012).
A sharp account of how “diversity work” operates inside universities—how institutions speak inclusion while reproducing exclusions through routine procedures and documents.
Decolonial and abolitionist reimaginings
14. Achille Mbembe, “Decolonizing the University: New Directions” (2016).
A compact, high-impact essay linking decolonization to the university’s political economy and to the question of knowledge’s institutional form.
15. Gurminder K. Bhambra, Dalia Gebrial, and Kerem Nişancıoğlu (eds.), Decolonising the University (2018).
A multi-author toolkit for thinking about curriculum, canon, discipline, and institutional history through coloniality—and for translating critique into pedagogical practice.
16. Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study (2013).
A radical critique of the university’s governance and logics of professionalization, paired with an invitation to think “study” beyond institutional legitimacy. Best read slowly, in community.
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