Newfield's lecture will outline some of the current struggles of public universities, including one directly related to the question Newfield asks in his 2008 article in the Chronicle of Higher Education: "Why is public education the poor pupil of public investment?"



The lecture will discuss how privatization, market measures, and the import of social value over and above cultural knowledge have continued to discredit the cultural conditions of mass-middle-class development, resulting in the downsizing of the university. Tackling solutions for rebuilding the public university, Newfield argues for strategies whereby faculty might change or lead academic markets rather than merely adapt to them, advocating "a cross-disciplinary craft education that re-links liberal [arts] to practical arts."