You Have the Right to Remain Silent: How Social Work Academics Cope with the Neoliberal University.

This article examines how social work faculty members in Israeli universities experience and respond to the neoliberalisation of higher education, a process characterized by the adoption of market principles such as competition, commodification, and economic efficiency within academia. Drawing on in-depth interviews with thirteen tenured and tenure-track social work academics across five Israeli universities, the study identifies three main themes: faculty perceptions of the university’s societal role, the tension between academic freedom and institutional discipline, and coping strategies within the neoliberal university. Findings reveal that despite social work’s mission to promote social justice, most faculty members show limited resistance to neoliberal pressures, often internalizing market-driven norms and conforming to institutional demands such as securing research funding and meeting publication quotas. The study situates these experiences within Michel Foucault’s concepts of "technologies of domination" and "technologies of the self," highlighting how faculty both endure and reproduce neoliberal academic norms, with collective resistance remaining rare.