University strikes in Cambridge were, until recently, barely noticeable, wrote a Trinity College don earlier this month.

In the words of John Marenbon¡¯s memorable Times Higher Education blog (¡°USS strike: academics are wrong to walk out¡±, 2 March), ¡°life went on for the most part as usual¡± in the face of industrial action.

While I disagree with so much of what Marenbon said, I concur with him on this point. However, the ongoing industrial action that University and College Union members are engaging in at the UK¡¯s universities have changed all that.

Dons, rarely concerned with the affairs of the lesser mortals, are now up in arms. They are picketing, in the wind and the snow; marching; shouting slogans. Some, for heaven¡¯s sake, are even .

91ÇÑ×Ó

This is possibly the best thing that has happened to UK higher education, at least since the end of the 1990s.

Not that there¡¯s much competition: this period, after all, brought us the introduction, then removal, of tuition fee caps; the abolishment of maintenance grants; the research excellence framework and the?teaching excellence framework; and as crowning (though short-lived) glory, the appointment of Toby Young to the board of the Office for Students.

91ÇÑ×Ó

Yet, for most of this period, academics¡¯ opposition to these reforms conformed to ¡°civilised¡± ways of protest: writing a book, giving a lecture, publishing a blog post or an article in 91ÇÑ×Ó?or, at best, complaining on Twitter.

While most would agree that British universities have been under threat for decades, concerted effort to counter these reforms ¨C with a few notable exceptions ¨C remained the provenance of the people Marenbon calls ¡°amiable but over-ideological eccentrics¡±.

This is how we have truly let down our students. Resistance?was left to student protests and occupations. Longer-lasting, trans-generational solidarity was all but absent: at the end of the day, professors retreated to their ivory towers, precarious academics engaged in activism on the side of ever-increasing competition and pressure to land a permanent job.

Students picked up the tab: not only when it came to tuition fees, which were used to finance expensive accommodation blocks designed to attract more (fee-paying) students, but also when it came to the quality of teaching and learning, increasingly delivered by an underpaid, overworked and precarious labour force.

This is why the charge that teach-outs of dubious quality are replacing lectures comes across as particularly disingenuous. We are told by Marenbon that ¡°although students are denied lectures on philosophy, history or mathematics, the union wants them to show up to ¡®teach-outs¡¯ on vital topics such as ¡®How UK policy fuels war and repression in the Middle East¡¯ and ¡®Neoliberal capitalism versus collective imaginaries¡¯¡±. Although this is but one snippet of Cambridge UCU¡¯s , the choice is illustrative.

91ÇÑ×Ó

The link between history and UK¡¯s foreign policy in the Middle East strikes me as obvious. Students in philosophy, politics or economics could, however, do worse than a seminar on the development of neoliberal ideology (the event was initially scheduled as part of the Cambridge seminar in political thought).

As for mathematics ¨C anybody who, over the past weeks, has had to engage with the details of actuarial calculation and projections tied to the USS pension scheme has had more than a crash refresher course: I dare say they learned more than they ever hoped they would.

Teach-outs, in this sense, are not a replacement for education ¡°as usual¡±. They are a way to begin bridging the infamous divide between ¡°town and gown¡±, both by being held in more open spaces and by, for instance, discussing how the university¡¯s lucrative development projects are impacting on the regional economy.

91ÇÑ×Ó

They are also interdisciplinary, in ways that go beyond colleagues congratulating each other on published papers over a glass of port. They are not meant to make up for the shortcomings of higher education: if anything, they render them more visible.

This is not the studied depoliticisation that allowed the marketisation of higher education to continue.

Teach-outs, and industrial action in general, are a way to recognise our responsibility to protect the university from undue incursions of political power, while acknowledging that such responsibility is itself political. I can think of no greater service to scholarship.

is a sociologist and postdoctoral fellow at the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge. She tweets at @jana_bacevic.

91ÇÑ×Ó