In Print: ‘Smart University: Student Surveillance in the Digital Age’

Publication title

Smart University: Student Surveillance in the Digital Age

Purdue author

Lindsay Weinberg

Publisher

John Hopkins University Press

Publication date

October 8, 2024

About the book (from the publisher)

Higher education increasingly relies on digital surveillance in the United States. Administrators, consulting firms and education technology vendors are celebrating digital tools as a means of ushering in the age of “smart universities.” By digitally monitoring and managing campus life, institutions can supposedly run their services more efficiently, strengthen the quality of higher education and better prepare students for future roles in the digital economy. Yet in practice, these initiatives often perpetuate austerity, structural racism and privatization at public universities under the guise of solving higher education’s most intractable problems.

In “Smart University,” Lindsay Weinberg evaluates how this latest era of tech solutions and systems in our schools impacts students’ abilities to access opportunities and exercise autonomy on their campuses. Using historical and textual analysis of administrative discourses, university policies, conference proceedings, grant solicitations, news reports, tech industry marketing materials and product demonstrations, Weinberg argues that these more recent transformations are best understood as part of a longer history of universities supporting the development of technologies that reproduce racial and economic injustice on their campuses and in their communities.

About the Purdue author

Lindsay Weinberg is a clinical associate professor in the John Martinson Honors College and the director of the Tech Justice Lab. Her research combines studies of science, technology, media and feminism, with an emphasis on the social and ethical impacts of digital technology. Weinberg has been the recipient of internal and external grants to support research, seminars and workshops concerning the justice-related implications of digital technology, including from the National Science Foundation, the Indiana Humanities and the Susan Bulkeley Butler Center for Leadership Excellence.

About the In Print series

To celebrate our faculty’s excellence in scholarship, Purdue Today’s weekly book series highlights faculty expertise across diverse subjects and disciplines. Find out more about the Purdue University Books Initiative and how to suggest a book for the In Print series on the Office of the Provost website.