Christopher Newfield is the Director of Research at the Independent Social Research Foundation in London and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Newfield is a leading scholar of Critical University Studies. He has recently published two books on the metrics of higher education: Metrics that Matter: Counting What’s Really Important to College Students (2023) and The Limits of the Numerical: The Abuses and Uses of Quantification (2022).

In addition, Newfield wrote a trilogy of books on the university as an intellectual and social institution: Ivy and Industry: Business and the Making of the American University, 1880–1980 (2003); Unmaking the Public University: The Forty Year Assault on the Middle Class (2008); and The Great Mistake: How We Wrecked Public Universities and How We Can Fix Them (2016).

He will give a talk titled: “Jobs and Universities: A Tale of Two Futures” on Thursday, May 23 at the University of Oregon as the Oregon Humanities Center’s 2023–2024 Cressman Lecturer. Register: ohc.uoregon.edu