Undermining resilience: how the modern UK university manufactures heightened vulnerability in legal academics and what is to be done

Abstract

ABSTRACT Legal academics are vulnerable and the contemporary law school is eroding their resilience. Using vulnerability theory, as developed by Professor Martha Fineman, this article analyses the reasons for the loss of assets that could provide resilience in the modern university and the modern law school. Audit culture, the economics of resourcing higher education, the growth of mass higher education, the ideology of neoliberalism, and managerialism as a feature of that ideology, are all factors that play a role in degrading the resilience of academics. The growth of precarious labour, overwork, attacks upon educational and disciplinary values, attacks upon academic freedom, and pressure on academic identity are all consequences of these factors. Disengagement, feelings of failure, ill health and low wellbeing are the embodiments of these consequences. Vulnerability theory is used to carry out a synthesis of materials drawn from literatures on education, legal education, higher education, health and safety at work, self-determination theory, and professional vocation. This synthesis highlights value conflicts between neoliberal managerialism and educational values that risk undermining academic existential resources. Vulnerability theory is then used to identify potential means of resistance and potential places for resistance within and beyond the law school.