References to ‘excellence’ are pervasive in academia today.

Academics are constantly under pressure to be and show ourselves to be excellent. But we can’t all be excellent or the word loses its meaning. As such a quest for excellence is inherently divisive.

During a period in which universities and academics are under attack by governments, acceptance of excellence as a goal reinforces competition between individuals, departments and institutions. As such it undermines academic study as a collective project, weakens our resistance to proposed neoliberal reform and aids privatisation.

This site:

1. Highlights the problems with excellence, providing background, critiquing the measurement of excellence and building a gallery of excellence snapshots from across academia.
2. Includes an Academic Pledge. This pledge is a way of thinking about how a critique of excellence should impact our behaviour as individual academics. Because, surely it is time to move beyond critique, to action.