The Art of Struggle and the Struggle for Art: Let SCA Stay and the fight against the neoliberal university

Abstract

Student movements are popularly considered as phenomena of the past. The history of Let SCA Stay, 2016, lays waste to this pessimistic stereotype and announces a developing history of student struggles against neoliberal universities. The campaign’s record-breaking 65-day occupation and associated student strikes at the University of Sydney reveal the reality of radical student movements in a post-Voluntary Student Unionism era. This thesis suggests that students’ embodied learning in the struggle elucidated potentialities for education beyond neoliberal universities. This history behoves historians to understand emerging student movements and involve themselves directly in the development of liberation struggles.