From 1990 to 2020

Abstract

Abstract Thinking about the past thirty years can help readers get a sense of the scale of changes that are possible during the thirty years to come. In 1990, the Soviet Union and the Cold War were in place, computers were a niche business, and the world's leading advocates of deep neoliberalization, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, were out of power. Not many years later, the Cold War had been replaced by a “Global War on Terror,” computers had morphed into a global techno-economic system with names like platform capitalism or surveillance capitalism, and neoliberalization not only outlived these dominant advocates but spread around the world. Simultaneously, work, including the work of university graduates, became increasingly precarious. Racial equality did not come to pass, nationally or globally, and yet even its prospect produced a rising backlash. The post–Cold War “peace dividend” was replaced by continuous local and regional wars. In the past thirty years, the United States in particular became post–middle class, post–civil rights, and postdemocratic. Future universities will need to confront all three legacies if they are to transform themselves.