The future does not belong to you.   /    This is an epistle   /    which is addressed to you.   /    But it is written   /    for those who will come after us.   /    Why?   /    Because we do not respect your right   /    to occupy the platform this evening.   /    Your name   /    is anathema to us.   /    You are not a welcome guest   /    because you come with a knife   /    concealed beneath your cloak.   /    Behind your toothy smiles,   /    we have already seen   /    the fixed gaze of the hired assassin.   /    You have transgressed   /    against all codes of hospitality.   /    That is why   /    we interrupt your performance tonight,   /    because nothing is up for debate here;   /    your mind is made up;   /    you are not for turning.   /    All your questioners have been planted.   /    So we, too, have planted ourselves   /    in your audience.   /    We stole in quietly,   /    without much fanfare   /   – because we know your tactics -   /    but now that we are here,   /    we will not wait to be told   /    before we speak.   / 

You have professed your commitment   /    to the religion of choice   /    but you leave us with no choice.   /    You are a man   /    who believes in the market   /    and in the power of competition   /    to drive up quality.   /    But look to the world around you:   /    your gods have failed.   /    They were capricious gods   /    and we do not mourn them,   /    nor do we seek new ones.

Fools that we are,   /    we took you at your word:   /    so we are clambering into the driving seat   /    because your steering is uncomfortable to us   /    and your destination   /    is not one of our choosing.

Even the very metaphor betrays you.   /    So let us begin   /    by activating the emergency brake:   /    the University is no motor vehicle,   /    to be souped up,   /    ideologically re-tuned,   /    intellectually re-fitted,   /    cosmetically re-sprayed,   /    and then sent out onto the highway,   /    like some gaudy engine of the ‘knowledge economy’,   /    emitting noxious filth   /    and polluting the air.   /    The road itself is narrow;   /    your eyes are fixed on a vanishing horizon   /    which you will never quite reach.   /    You have picked a route   /    which skirts carefully around   /    all redoubts of human warmth and solidarity.   /    Look elsewhere for your metaphors, David.   /    We have no desire   /    to be put into the driving seat.   /    There are chairs enough in our libraries –   /    would that there were more libraries –   /    and these are the only seats of learning   /    that we would wish to know.   /    We will not used   /    by you.   /    We do not wish to ‘rate’ our teachers;   /    we wish to learn from them.   /    We are not consumers;   /    we are students –   /    and we will stand with our teachers   /    on their picket lines.

Your soulless vision of efficiency;   /    your mechanistic frameworks of ‘excellence’;   /    your chummy invitation   /    to hop on board   /    and serve the needs of the Economy:   /    all of this makes it clear to us   /    that you have set out from a false premise,   /    because guess what, David:   /    you cannot quantify knowledge.   /    Your craven desperation to do so   /    tells us only one thing:   /    you are trying to discipline us,   /    but we will not be disciplined,   /    because we are schooled   /    in a different kind of pedagogy.   /    You cannot steal our honey, David.   /    It will go sour for you.   /   You can process all the information   /    that you wish   /    but your project is doomed to fail.   /    We thought we should let you know –   /    out of kindness, mainly.   /    If you want to make us   /    the processors of the information   /    that is useful to you;   /    if you want to smother   /    the capacity for critical thought:   /    so be it.   /    We understand that you do not like   /    to be told that you are wrong.   /    So we understand   /    that you do not want us to think   /    too rigorously, or too critically.   /    So go on:   /    lobotomise us.   /    Tell us that we are beyond the pale.   /    Make us over   /    into the drones and ciphers   /    of your economy.   /    Your world will be the poorer.   /    We will continue to nourish our traditions   /    in the crevices and dark corners   /    that you forget   /    and that you cannot touch.   /   

It is almost inappropriate   /    to lay out to you   /    the terms of your own wrongness.   /    But has it not occurred to you   /    that the ‘vocation’ of scholarship   /    far from leading to a profession   /    may in fact preclude it?   /    Or is it that you are more of a capital calf   /    than you are letting on?    /    Is it that the Brave New World   /    you are trying to inaugurate   /    will, in fact, preclude scholarship?   /   

We have tasted companionship   /    in a way that you cannot know.   /    We have a singleness of heart.   /    And, unlike you,   /    we none of us believe   /    that any of our possessions are our own.   /    You will not find us   /    in any of your statistical surveys;   /    our ‘student experience’ cannot be measured   /    by your instruments.   /    Woe to every scorner and mocker   /    who collects wealth   /    and counts it.   /    We are both measurably younger   /    and immeasurably older   /    than you.   /    You have already lost.   /    You have lost the initiative.   /    You have lost the debate.   /    You have lost your sense of decorum.   /   

We are closer than you think.   /    So it does not surprise us   /    that you are worried.   /    You can try to intimidate us;   /    you can threaten to shoot us   /    with rubber bullets;   /    you can arrest us;   /    you can imprison us;   /    you can criminalise our dissent;   /    you can blight a hundred thousand lives,   /    slowly, and one-by-one,   /    but you cannot break us   /    because we are more resolute,   /    more numerous,   /    and more determined than you.   /    And we are closer than you think.   /    So it does not surprise us   /    that you are scared.   /    It is not that you lack our confidence –   /    you never had it –   /    the nub of the issue is this:   /    you do not have confidence in yourself.   /   Go home, David.   /    And learn your gods anew.