I find that the discourse on debt and higher education that proliferate the public sphere often pertains to student loans. Seldom do such discussion venture toward the relationship between debt, globalization and (higher) education. Thus, this workshop’s aim is to engage in that discussion. Influenced by a reading of Moten and Harney’s chapter on Debt and Study in The Undercommons, a chapter that addresses the necessity of formulating debt in abject “others” in the (re)production and legitimacy of institutions and institutional power/authority, I want to engage in a discussion on the dependency of debt (of people, of countries, etc.) in the construction of institutions, nation-states, (higher) education, etc.,. One of my aims is to explore the language of debt (or how Moten and Harney use the language of debt in their text), which can come to mean, the “poor in debt” and/or those privileged students who receive a higher education who are not (perhaps unconsciously) (in)debted to those forced into debt. Those whose debts fund the privileged students’ education.

            This workshop also relates to our seminar discussion revolving around how the construction of whiteness and white supremacy, should be the central focus of many of the issues in academia that Katina Rogers’ Putting the PhD in Humanities to Work and Brier and Fabricant’s Austerity Blues raise. These texts, which proport to be invested in trying to impart some sort of understanding (or knowledge) on race, gender, and class inequalities (re)produced in higher education (perhaps to get the reader, whoever that reader is, politically engaged?) do not strike at the heart of the debt in which such oppressive authority and power is invested. They do not strike at the ways in which imperial powers, like the United States, invest in the debts of non-white, colonized “others.”

            Thus, my workshop will focus on two text in an attempt to engage in a more concrete conversation about the role of debt in higher education. The first text is from American sociologist Charles Lemert’s entitled, “Mysterious Power of Social Structures,” which addresses the role of social structures in (re)producing oppressive hierarchies of power. The second text entitled, “Yale and the Puerto Rican Debt Crisis: Are Yale’s Puerto Rican Profits Ethical?” is an article published in the Yale Daily, by student reporter, Nick Tabio. The article relates Yale University’s investment in Puerto Rico’s debt, which came to light in the aftermath of student protest over the US response to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria in 2017.

Ultimately, my hope in this workshop is to engage in a constructive discussion on the role of debt in higher education and the important role of student protest in “unveiling” the “mysterious” power of social structures.

Reading Materials:

Yale and the Puerto Rican Debt Crisis

Lemert, Charles. “Mysterious Power of Social Structures.” (Will post this article soon.)