Abstract
Leadership remains an open sewer of assumptions, ego, platitudes and potential. When contextualized within an international university sector struggling and grasping to find a purpose, leadership becomes toxic and dangerous. This article reactivates, challenges and then transforms Ulrich Beck’s zombie concept and applies it to university leadership, management and administration. I probe the renegotiation of power and identity, with particular attention to recent scandals and appointments of university ‘leaders.’ This article also signals a movement from cosmopolitan sociology to claustropolitan cultural studies, repositioning leadership in universities at the end of the world.
Highlights
I felt the Generation Xer anger – the disgust – in not holding any power and yet being a silent conspirator to the bullying, the lies, the injustices, the foolishness, the incompetence, the short-termism, and the thought bubbles that masquerade as vision statements
When I hold power, it is in a succession of ‘glass cliff’ posts.[1]
The Western Australian Corruption and Crime Commission, after investigating the Vice Chancellorship of Professor Richard Higgott at Murdoch University, a medium sized university based in the southern suburbs of Perth in Western Australia, found an array of irregularities, oddities, and stupidities.[2]
Summary
I put my hand up, I accessed adult sites; mistakes I know. I can’t do anything other than plead stupidity. I want the world to be different. I want our universities to be different. Throughout my life in higher education, I have walked into rooms filled with empowered men twenty, thirty, and forty years older than me. I felt the Generation Xer anger – the disgust – in not holding any power and yet being a silent conspirator to the bullying, the lies, the injustices, the foolishness, the incompetence, the short-termism, and the thought bubbles that masquerade as vision statements. I am a woman and a Generation Xer. When I hold power, it is in a succession of ‘glass cliff’ posts.[1] I had hoped for more. I explore what happens when higher education is foreclosed, and we prepare for the university at the end of the world
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