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DIGITAL
EDUCATION
AND LEARNING

CONCEPTUALISING
THE DIGITAL
UNIVERSITY
THE INTERSECTION OF POLICY,
PEDAGOGY AND PRACTICE

BILL JOHNSTON,
SHEILA MACNEILL
AND KEITH SMYTH
Digital Education and Learning

Series Editors
Michael Thomas
University of Central Lancashire
Preston, UK

John Palfrey
Phillips Academy
Andover, MA, USA

Mark Warschauer
University of California
Irvine, USA
Much has been written during the first decade of the new millennium
about the potential of digital technologies to produce a transformation of
education. Digital technologies are portrayed as tools that will enhance
learner collaboration and motivation and develop new multimodal liter-
acy skills. Accompanying this has been the move from understanding
literacy on the cognitive level to an appreciation of the sociocultural
forces shaping learner development. Responding to these claims, the
Digital Education and Learning Series explores the pedagogical potential
and realities of digital technologies in a wide range of disciplinary con-
texts across the educational spectrum both in and outside of class.
Focusing on local and global perspectives, the series responds to the shift-
ing landscape of education, the way digital technologies are being used in
different educational and cultural contexts, and examines the differences
that lie behind the generalizations of the digital age. Incorporating cut-
ting edge volumes with theoretical perspectives and case studies (single
authored and edited collections), the series provides an accessible and
valuable resource for academic researchers, teacher trainers, administra-
tors and students interested in interdisciplinary studies of education and
new and emerging technologies.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14952
 Bill Johnston • Sheila MacNeill
Keith Smyth

Conceptualising the
Digital University
The Intersection of Policy, Pedagogy
and Practice
Bill Johnston Sheila MacNeill
School of Psychological Science and Health Academic Quality and Development
University of Strathclyde Glasgow Caledonian University
Glasgow, UK Glasgow, UK

Keith Smyth
Learning and Teaching Academy
University of the Highlands and Islands
Inverness, UK

Digital Education and Learning

ISBN 978-3-319-99159-7    ISBN 978-3-319-99160-3 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99160-3

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018957460

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature
Switzerland AG 2018
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of
illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and trans-
mission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or
dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or
the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any
errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional
claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Front cover image © Rainer Mook / Getty

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 Foreword

Today’s permanent and increasingly accelerated revolution of technology, the

main bastion of capitalism against socialism, alters socioeconomic reality and
requires a new comprehension of the facts upon which new political action must
be founded. (Paulo Freire 1997)1

Although Paulo Freire penned these words more than twenty year ago,
they actually ring truer today than ever. At a breakneck speed, new tech-
nological gadgets are introduced to the marketplace, as the great societal
panacea of our generation. Technology is touted in even redemptive
terms, akin to religious fervour. The consumerist values of capitalism are
well-embedded into marketing discourses framed around issues of relent-
less competition, heightened productivity, innovation, instrumentalism,
and marketisation. Nowhere has neoliberal technological discourse
become more fierce than in the context of university life. And although
the corrupting force of neoliberalism on universities has been well-docu-
mented over the last three decades, the discourse of economic globalisa-
tion continues to move internationally like hellfire across the reaches of
university life.
With the fallacious promise of time-saving efficiency, our labour
within the university was systematically increased and accelerated by the

1
Freire, P. (1997). Pedagogy of the Heart. New York: Continuum (p. 56).

v
vi Foreword

arbitrary and commonsensical introduction of technological tools that

have held faculty and staff captive. In the midst of this phenomenon, few
critiques or alternatives have been able to interrupt the burgeoning and
disproportionately skewed myths that have deepened managerial and
technicist university practices, meant primarily to harness digital technol-
ogy in the service of the marketplace. In the process, the culturally oppres-
sive epistemology that undergirds values tied to technological practices
has resulted in, as the authors of Conceptualising the Digital University
well confirm, the impoverishment and reductionist account of the digital
university today. It is, then, precisely a systematic and eloquent rethink-
ing of these values and practices—offering, as Freire insists, a new compre-
hension of the facts—that is at the very heart of this volume.

Rethinking the Culture of the Digital

University
Technologized media themselves now constitute Western culture through and
through, and they have become the primary vehicle for the distribution and
dissemination of culture. (Richard Kahn and Douglas Kellner)2

Within the life of twenty-first-century universities, we would be hard-

pressed to find a cultural milieu where a Western positivist epistemology
of technology, anchored by extension upon scientific hubris, has not all
but supplanted humanist educational values. This represents a central
concern, in that neutral or depoliticised views of the digital university
ignore or fail to contend with the inseparability that exists between cul-
ture and power. Without the tools for critically examining the manner in
which the expansion of technology has shaped the neoliberal culture of
universities, educators cannot effectively fashion academic spaces where
contradictions to emancipatory visions, as well as partial and competing
viewpoints, can be critically interrogated and transformed. The unfortu-

2
Kahn, R. & D. Kellner (2007). Paulo Freire and Ivan Illich: Technology, Politics, and the
Reconstruction of Education in Policy Futures in Education. V. 5, N. 4 (p. 431).
 Foreword vii

nate consequence here is an inability to politically unsettle through our

pedagogical labour those essentialised or carte blanche approaches to
digital technology that negatively impact the social agency and decision-
making of faculty, students, and the larger community—generally
excluding them from genuine participation in decision-making related to
technology and other issues that directly impact their lives.
In response to these concerns, Johnston, MacNeill, and Smyth begin
by acknowledging that our understanding of technology has generally
emerged as a discursive construction—where an ‘idea is brought into the
social world by being talked about or written about without necessarily
being subject to analysis or research’3—in their quest for finding an effec-
tive strategy for exploring the digital university. Through forging a criti-
cally profound lens of investigation, they produce a brilliant analysis of
the historical, political, economic, and pedagogical agendas that have
driven the positivist culture of digital technology in ways that have
betrayed emancipatory and pluralistic visions of university life. What
results is a complex unveiling of the ways in which the cultural underde-
velopment of pedagogical theory and organisation development practice
within the digital university has functioned to reproduce and perpetuate
structures of inequalities that betray our emancipatory efforts.
However, beyond their critique, their sound understanding of discur-
sive construction has also provided them the dialectical basis upon which
to offer a more substantive and nuanced reading of technology, as well as
a set of innovative cultural values that privilege liberatory notions of plu-
ralism, through a perspective of the current context as both a challenge
and an opportunity to transform the digital university. In this way,
Johnston, MacNeill, and Smyth’s perspective revolutionises how we con-
ceptualise the dynamics of academic and organisational development in
the digital university, illuminating key aspects of a matrix for practical
uses in the integration of technology as a liberatory tool for individual
and community empowerment.

3
Jones, C. & R. Goodfellow (2014) The “Digital University”: Discourse, Theory and Evidence in
International Journal of Learning and Media. V. 4; N. 3–4 (p. 60).
viii Foreword

Deconstructing the Political Economy

of Digital Hegemony
Highly capitalized tools require highly capitalized men. (Ivan Illich)4

In centring the political economy of learning in their treatise, Johnston,

MacNeill, and Smyth signal the importance of material conditions to any
critical examination of the digital university and, moreover, any attempts
to transform the digital hegemony that permeates university contexts.
Ivan Illich’s concern, for example, for the tyrannical manner in which
economic policy options unfold under capitalism seems especially perti-
nent to the discussions of digital technology within the neoliberal univer-
sity. It is evident, moreover, that the oppressive and alienating forces of
advanced capitalism have largely shaped the manner in which digital
technology as a tool has been capitalised within the university and soci-
ety. This has required, as Illich rightly argues, highly capitalized men and
women who commonsensically embrace the underlying myths of tech-
nology as neutral and non-obstructive to our labour and, thus, acquiesce
to the changing forms of university work—even when such changes strip
us of conviviality5 or the freedom of choice.
For example, in the early 1990s, university professors were suddenly
mandated to establish email accounts. For the most part, there was little
pushback to the rhetoric of innovation and time-saving promises made to
faculty across universities. In the excitement of the novelty, there was lit-
tle argument against the fact that technology would overnight add two to
three hours of labour daily to our already full workloads and that we
would become enslaved to our email 24/7. As a consequence, our pro-
ductivity did increase without necessarily an increase in our salary, as was
the case across many industries. The result was not only heightened
labour expectations, in which we did not have a voice, but also a loss of
autonomy for our labour that until this day is seldom discussed. It is this
loss of autonomy and infringement into our creative production that

4
Illich, I. (1973). Tools for Conviviality. New York: Harper & Row (p. 66).
5
Ibid.
 Foreword ix

well-illustrates a mechanism by which academic workers became further

capitalised. Similarly, technology in the neoliberal university has also led
to the standardisation and instrumentalisation of curriculum develop-
ment and pedagogical activities within the classroom that have grossly
interfered with the autonomy, fluidity, and creative processes of educa-
tors. In the name of progress, this has led to increasing conditions of
surveillance and control of our labour, often shrouded, once again, by the
distorted rhetoric of efficiency and heightened productivity—a sort of
radical positivist proclamation.
With this in mind, Johnston, MacNeill, and Smyth work meticulously
to reveal the underlying myths behind deceptive transformative claims
and descriptions of the digital university, which function to intensify the
political economic grip of neoliberalism. From this standpoint, the
authors expose the unevenness of digital development over the last three
decades and across multiple levels of university life, unveiling gross dis-
parities related to technological practices and the adoption of technology.
In this way, the reader is moved towards critically exploring the emanci-
patory potential and benefits of digital technologies for teaching and
learning, as well as the possibilities for genuine transformative change to
the digital culture of higher education. Through an eloquent engagement
with notions of porosity, open education practice, and the concept of the
commons, Johnston, MacNeill, and Smyth demonstrate the mounting
need for widening participation from both within and without the uni-
versity. By so doing, the authors counter the oppressive exclusionary cul-
ture of neoliberalism, asserting the power of open, democratic relationships
and participation in building a new political economic ethos for the digi-
tal university.

Critical Literacy and the Digital University

Critical literacy is also necessary to hold to critical scrutiny many of the claims
made by those heralding this brave new world of the 4IR. (Peter Mayo)6

6
Mayo, P. (2018). Personal email correspondence of August 14, discussing the “Fourth Industrial
Revolution” (4IR) phenomenon.
x Foreword

Given the great hoopla that is currently underway among global uni-
versity discussions of the Fourth Industrial Revolution—the nascent
intensification of old neoliberal values now more aggressively twisted by
an economic determinist rhetoric linked to the imminent takeover of
drones, Artificial Intelligence, and other technological forces—never has
there been a timelier moment for this outstanding volume. Countering
the economic opportunism associated with the political priorities and
interests of the few (at the expense of the many) points to the necessary
pedagogical scrutiny of critical literacy for disrupting hegemonic myths
and shattering deceptive arguments. In the overwhelming neoliberal
milieu of the digital university today, Johnston, MacNeill, and Smyth
rightly argue that critical literacy is essential to countering the material
and social conditions of inequality and exclusion within and outside the
digital academy—conditions unequivocally preserved by technologically
driven structures, policies, practices, and relationships that conserve the
status quo.
Towards this end, Conceptualising the Digital University holistically
critically examines a variety of pressing concerns tied to information lit-
eracy and the curriculum, considering themes of digital capability, social
agency, and personhood, as key dimensions of the digital university com-
mitted to social justice. Moreover, by making critical literacy a central
feature of their emancipatory design, Johnston, MacNeill, and Smyth
consistently provide a much-needed critique of marginality at all levels of
university academic development. In this way, a critical view of digital
literacy is presented as a substantive focus in the evolution of curriculum
development, particularly with respect to critiques of neoliberalism, the
globalisation of technology, and struggles for democratic life in higher
education. As would be anticipated, critical pedagogy underpins their
discussions of redesigning technological learning spaces and environ-
ments. Here, a radical understanding of space is effectively deployed to
engage salient questions of digital, pedagogical, and social relations—
whether these exist in or out of the university—in order to expand pos-
sibilities for the democratisation of learning and an understanding of the
digital university as public good.
 Foreword xi

Reinventing the University as Public Good

In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are
more than just ideals to be valued—they may be essential to survival. (Noam
Chomsky)7

Just as Noam Chomsky has often reminded us of the essential need for
freedom and democracy, Johnston, MacNeill, and Smyth also build their
germane arguments for the reinvention of the digital university on a simi-
lar premise. Grounded in a clear recognition of how political economy,
education, and democracy always comingle, the authors insist that criti-
cal pedagogical alternatives of the university as public good must be
founded upon values that unquestionably support the exercise of democ-
racy and freedom, within universities and the larger society. This reinven-
tion encompasses the digital university as a significant site of struggle and
contestation, as well as a potentially democratic space for both educa-
tional and societal transformation.
Here, the values of critical pedagogy, open education, and academic
praxis are significant features connected to knowledge production, intel-
lectual formation, and community participation in the interest of the
common good. Furthermore, an innovative conceptual matrix and digi-
tally distributed curriculum paradigm are presented as critical democratic
tools to guide collective reflection, dialogue, decision-making, and action.
This dynamic design of the university as public good fittingly privileges
digitally enriched learning spaces that reinforce democratic learning and
co-creation, by way of porous boundaries between knowledge, spaces,
and formal organisation. More importantly, these spaces comprise a ped-
agogical and political essential for reinventing how we comprehend the
place and purpose of technology in education and the world today.
In this difficult historical moment, where our very humanity seems at
risk to destructive technological forces linked to political irresponsibility,
social exclusions, and economic greed, Conceptualising the Digital
University constitutes a powerful clarion call for educators of conscience

7
Chomsky, N. (2010). Noam Chomsky in Speaking on Democracy: A Factual Alternative to the
Corporate Media. See: https://speakingofdemocracy.com/quotes/noam_chomsky/
xii Foreword

committed to critical education, democratic political ideals, and eco-

nomic justice. The book issues a critical call to action engendered by what
Paulo Freire called radical hope8 and an emancipatory vision of the digital
university—one that is founded on political and pedagogical actions that
engage the liberatory possibilities of academic leadership, embrace the
democratising value of pluralism, and enact democratic organisational
policies and practices unapologetically committed to the building of a
more just and loving world.

Loyola Marymount University, USA Professor Antonia Darder

International Scholar,
Public Intellectual, Educator,
Writer, Activist and Artist

8
Darder, A. (2015). Freire and Education. New York: Routledge.
 Acknowledgements

The writing of this book has very much been a discursive process and the
culmination of many discussions and dialogues around the vague con-
cept, questionable assumptions, and actual realities of realising any sort
of vision and plan for the ‘digital university’.
Collaboration has been at the heart of this book, and the thinking and
ideas we present within it. A series of blog posts by Bill and Sheila in
2011 prompted Keith to get in contact in 2012 about a project he was
leading, which led in turn to our collective endeavours in further explor-
ing the concept of the digital university, and the place of ‘the digital’ in
Higher Education. Our efforts in doing so have encompassed our own
joint dialogue, reflections, and writing, our further reading and research,
and crucially also the dialogue we have had with colleagues across the
sector, through workshops at a range of universities, and through present-
ing our thinking, as it developed, at a number of conferences, symposia,
and events.
Now, six years later, we have this book.
Finding and developing our shared critical understanding of the con-
cept of the digital university has been a challenging and humbling experi-
ence, and one which saw our own thinking move away from questioning
the concept of the ‘digital university’ to also questioning the purpose of
universities, and Higher Education, in relation to the constraints, pur-
pose, and possibilities of digital technologies, spaces, and practices, and
xiii
xiv Acknowledgements

in relation to the ideas and ideals of critical and public pedagogy, open-
ness, and democracy. As we have contextualised our understandings, we
have given each other hope in a shared critique which we in turn hope
our readers will share and use as a starting point for many more critically
informed discussions, based on a shared recognition of the need for criti-
cal love and hope to challenge the neo-liberal dominance of our age.
There are a number of people we need to thank. Firstly, the team at
Palgrave Macmillan for recognising the potential for a book in our work,
and their continued support throughout the writing process. Our work
draws from many sources and we are continually inspired by all of our
professional networks and the encouragement we have received from our
peers at conferences where we have presented our work, and the oppor-
tunities that we have been given to publish. This has given us the faith to
carry on and develop our thoughts from conversations and debates into
this most tangible of outputs, a book.
We’d like to give special thanks to some key colleagues and friends. We
warmly thank Antonia Darder for her immediate and continued engage-
ment, support, and critical love for our work. We were fortunate to meet
Antonia at a pivotal point in the preparation of our book, and the time
we spent with Antonia, both learning from and being inspired by her, left
an indelible mark on our thinking and across the final version of this text.
We also thank Helen Beetham, Catherine Cronin, Alex Dunedin, and
Martin Weller for taking the time to read the book and for their generous
endorsements of our work. Their own respective work has had a signifi-
cant impact on our thinking and the structure of this book, as has the
work of Mark Johnson, who introduced us to the concept of Value
Pluralism which we explore at several points.
There are almost too many other people to thank, and we realise frus-
tratingly that we cannot put a name to everyone we have had the benefit
of speaking with as we have developed our work. However, we would like
to give a special mention and thanks to a number of colleagues and
friends who have supported and encouraged us as we started to clarify
and structure our ideas into the form in which they are now presented, or
with whom we were fortunate to have important discussions at impor-
tant points of our journey. In addition to those already mentioned above,
we thank Gordon Asher, Linda Creanor, Jim Emery, Julia Fotheringham,
 Acknowledgements xv

Peter Hartley, Jennifer Jones, Ronnie MacIntyre, David McGillivray,

Neil McPherson, Beck Pitt, Frank Rennie, Peter Shukie, John Alexander
Smith, Panos Vlachopoulos, David Walker, Gina Wall, and Nicola
Whitton.
In the above context, we extend a particular thanks to Richard Hall.
Chapter 8 of our book, as indicated in the chapter, incorporates and
extends material published in the paper by Hall, R. and Smyth, K.
‘Dismantling the Curriculum in Higher Education’ (2016), published in
the Open Library of Humanities. We are grateful to Richard and the
Open Library of the Humanities for allowing us to repurpose this mate-
rial in our narrative. Richard also draws upon aspects of the aforemen-
tioned paper in his recent book The Alienated Academic: The Struggle for
Autonomy Inside the University (2018, also published by Palgrave
Macmillan).
To our respective families, thank you for your patience and under-
standing and tolerance of lost weekends over the past year. Thanks also to
colleagues at Glasgow Caledonian University and the University of the
Highlands and Islands for your support and understanding at points
where our work on this book had an impact on other activities. Finally,
we’d like to give a special mention to the Black Isle Bar in Inverness for
providing a welcoming space for warmth, laughter, pizza, and the occa-
sional glass of red wine.
In solidarity, love, and hope.
 Praise for Conceptualising the Digital
University

“I read this book with a sense of both recognition and urgency. This is not a
manifesto about utopian digital futures, but rather a provocative invitation to
re-think higher education and its role in increasingly open, networked, and par-
ticipatory culture. Written in a language of “hope and critique” (Giroux, 2011),
the authors use the lenses of critical pedagogy and praxis to offer a compelling
case for troubling the existing boundaries of universities – and thus for greater
openness and democratic engagement within and beyond higher education. The
questions and analytical frameworks proposed by the authors should stimulate
much dialogue and debate by educators, academic developers, policy makers,
and all interested in the future of higher education. A vital and timely book.”
—Dr Catherine Cronin, Strategic Education Developer, National Forum for
the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, Dublin, Eire

“This is a timely and necessary book. All universities are in some form negotiat-
ing their relationship with the digital context they now operate within – what
does it mean for students, staff, ways of learning, methods of research and the
role of the university in society. What and how should we teach in order to give
students the appropriate skills to operate as effective citizens in a digital world?
These are all questions which the higher education sector seeks answers for. The
issue is that often the answers to such questions are provided by those with a
vested interest – technology vendors or ed tech consultants. What this book
does is place these types of questions within a meaningful and well reasoned
framework. The book addresses this in three sections, looking first at the broadly

xvii
xviii Praise for Conceptualising the Digital University

neo-liberal context within which the digital university operates, and what this
means. In the second part, how the digital university might be conceptualised
and practically implemented is considered. Lastly, the authors address how such
a digital university is situated within a social context. By addressing these ele-
ments, a comprehensive, critical and nuanced picture of the digital university
can be established, rather than one determined by a technological perspective
alone. It is therefore essential reading for anyone with an interest in the digital
evolution of the university.”
—Professor Martin Weller, The Open University, UK

“This timely work examines the power of the digital in context with what is hap-
pening to education today, and in particular to Higher Education. Understanding
education in terms of human development, it is comforting that narratives of
education as a public good are being related through the digital. We live with the
golden promises of technology to emancipate and extend social and intellectual
benefits to the many, however this thinking needs to be matched with the practi-
cal details whilst not shying away from critique of expanding a successful mono-
culture. Just as with the industrial revolution before, our technology industries
are proposing revolutions which lead us round the same circle, down the same
paths of behaviour. Scrutiny of formal education reveals how learning has been
commodified and narrowed; just as we have come to consume the natural world
we have come to consume education. This book provides robust analyses and
alternative envisioning to the consumption of education exploring how technol-
ogy can be used as a tool to open up vital opportunities to everyone, as well as
essential vistas to those in the academy if it is not to atrophy as an intelligent
organ of human society.”
—Alex Dunedin, Ragged University

“We’ve been waiting for this: a book-length critique of the ‘digital university’
that gives full attention to the political context. Johnston, MacNeill and Smyth
explore the role that digital technologies have played in corporatising the acad-
emy, from the curriculum to learning environments, and from business models
to terms of academic employment. They’re hopeful enough and engaged enough
in the wider world to also show how alternative digital pedagogies and strategies
might be pursued, reframing higher education as an open, critical and demo-
cratic project.”
—Helen Beetham, Education Consultant, writer, researcher, commentator
(https://helenbeetham.com/about/)
 Contents

Section I Visioning the Digital University    1

1 Neoliberalism and the Digital University: The Political

Economy of Learning in the Twenty-First Century  3

2 The Digital University: An Impoverished Concept 19

3 Exploring the Digital University: Developing and

Applying Holistic Thinking 39

Section II Deconstructing the Digital University   61

4 The Myth of Digital Transformation 63

5 Digital Participation and Open Communities: From

Widening Access to Porous Boundaries 85

xix
xx Contents

6 Information Literacy, Digital Capability, and Individual

Agency105

7 Digitally Enriched Learning Spaces127

8 The Digitally Distributed Curriculum149

Section III Reimagining the Digital University 177

9 An Extended Conceptual Matrix for the Digital University179

10 Institutional Practice and Praxis203

11 Academic Development for the Digital University217

12 Conclusion: Advancing the Digital and Open Education

Agenda235

Index245
 List of Figures

Fig. 3.1 Work phases to date (MacNeill 2014) 40

Fig. 3.2 Key constructs of the Digital University 41
Fig. 3.3 The Conceptual Matrix for the Digital University (MacNeill
and Johnston 2012) 42
Fig. 3.4 Towards a Digitally Distributed Curriculum (DFWG 2014) 53
Fig. 5.1 Macro, meso, and micro participation. (Adapted from
Buckingham-­Shum 2011) 99
Fig. 8.1 The Digitally Distributed Curriculum 164
Fig. 9.1 The Revised Conceptual Matrix for the Digital University 184
Fig. 9.2 The Revised Conceptual Matrix as the intersection of
open educational practice, critical pedagogy, organisational
development, and praxis 188

xxi
 Section I
Visioning the Digital University
 1
Neoliberalism and the Digital
University: The Political Economy
of Learning in the Twenty-First Century

Introduction: Locating ‘The Digital’

in a Contested Environment
Our aim in this book is to conceptualise ‘The Digital’ as a feature of the
change forces influencing higher education in the twenty-first century.
These forces include (i) neoliberal policies to reposition higher education
as a market of providers and consumers; (ii) the expansion of the number
of institutions and increase in the numbers of students; (iii) overemphasis
on the contribution made by universities to economic growth and com-
petitiveness; (iv) introduction of external mechanisms to measure the
quality of teaching, research, and the performance of staff; (v) digital
technology itself, primarily positioned as a practical means of enhancing
learning and teaching; and (vi) critical responses to negative changes. It is
within this complex nexus of forces that we locate ‘The Digital’ in rela-
tion to the university. However, we also contend that ‘The Digital’ is best
understood as contestable territory in relation to the overall strategic
policy directions universities choose to define their place in society. So it
is in the space of critical approaches to strategic direction that our efforts

© The Author(s) 2018 3

B. Johnston et al., Conceptualising the Digital University, Digital Education and
Learning, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99160-3_1
4 B. Johnston et al.

will converge and focus, particularly on academic and organisational

development in universities.
We will show in Chap. 2 that these change forces elicit contradictory
responses to the idea of the digital university. Some commentators are
extremely positive, whilst others are highly sceptical, voicing concern that
the intrinsic motivations of students and scholars are under threat from a
repositioning of higher education as a market in knowledge and qualifi-
cations. From our perspective the contradictory nature of response is of
most interest, and our approach to the argument and narrative develop-
ment in the book embraces contradiction as the focal point for concep-
tualisation of the digital university. We will seek to answer the question
‘what is the digital university’ by a dialogic process, and it is only through
creating opportunities for critical dialogue that affords opportunities to
all stakeholders that radical digitally enabled transformation can actually
occur. We look to critical pedagogy as a key theoretical focus to create the
appropriate supportive spaces for these dialogues to be instantiated and
evolve. We look to highlight the positive elements of radicalisation, as
something that is based on human values that allows everyone to find
their voice, to be valued, and to question the many illusions of consumer
choice that our neoliberal society and in turn education systems currently
operate. We see this as the way to create a meaningful alternative narra-
tive to that of the increasingly managerialist, education as a service with
customer’s approach that senior managers within universities are
embracing.
Our aim in this introductory chapter is to expose and challenge the
power of neoliberalism to shape higher education and universities. We
contend that neoliberalism impoverishes higher education and in
response introduce an alternative framing of change and educational
transformation. Our values are drawn from notions of critical pedagogy,
public pedagogy, and openness as defining characteristics of university
institutions.
We interpret critical pedagogy as a theory and practice of learning and
teaching derived from radical educators such as Paulo Freire, Henry
Giroux, and Antonia Darder, which engenders critical consciousness of
the oppressive social and economic conditions influencing learners and
teachers. Critical pedagogy in action is often described in relation to the
 Neoliberalism and the Digital University: The Political Economy… 5

term praxis, which denotes collective understandings derived from cycles

of dialogic and experiential learning, and a commitment to challenging
and changing that which needs challenged and changed.
We recognise and explore the challenges of value pluralism, that is “the
view that different values may be fundamentally and defensibly correct in
different contexts, but may also be incommensurable” (Johnson and
Smyth 2011, pp. 211–212) in relation to the place of the digital in our
universities. This expresses our view of organisational tensions between
differing concepts of the digital, pedagogy, curriculum, and the univer-
sity, and we recognise that such tensions will be manifest in the behaviour
of institutional actors on the organisational stage and in the substance of
their decisions about strategy, funding, structures, and daily practice.
We interpret openness as entailing notions of open educational prac-
tice, open pedagogy, open educational resources, and critical and public
pedagogy. We see openness as a way to provide increased opportunities
for participation and knowledge creation, and the sharing of knowledge
created through pedagogic engagements within and through the univer-
sity. As we come on to argue and explore at several points, openness is not
the sole preserve of online or digital environments. There are many ways
in our physical environments where an open ethos can provide alterna-
tive ways to extend our notions of physical learning spaces, and where a
co-location and intersection of the physical and digital can enrich and
extend educational opportunities.
These principles are at the centre of our conceptualisation of the digital
university and interconnect with each other as we consider the politics,
practices, and pedagogies of modern universities and the potential for
radical change.
Our main intellectual strategy is to treat the ‘digital university’ not so
much as a discrete type or kind of university; rather we adopt the notion
of ‘discursive construction’ (Jones and Goodfellow 2012) in relation to
the term ‘digital university’ to express our sense that what is required is
holistic investigation of the concept rather than the establishment of hard
and fast categories of description. We will take the process of discursive
construction further by employing Freire’s sense of praxis as involving not
simply discussion but also challenge and action to change oppressive ele-
ments in our environment. Allied to this is the related notion of public
6 B. Johnston et al.

pedagogy within which we contend that academic work undertaken in a

university should matter in relation to social needs and the wider good
(Giroux 2000). In line with this critical strategy, we will explore both
‘The Digital’ and ‘The University’ as problematic and contestable con-
structs, which are subject to definition and redefinition by powerful
sociocultural forces and political and economic interests. However, we
contend that the agency of staff and student can be interposed to counter
such forces, generate alternative visions of the nature and purpose of uni-
versities, and redraw the boundaries of participation to engage a much
wider and more varied university population.

On the Nature of ‘The Digital’

‘The Digital’ has become a talismanic phrase in general use suggesting a
powerful socio-economic force. In everyday parlance, ‘The Digital’ is
mainly associated with computer technology applications such as data
recording, storage, and transmission, and specific examples including
digital TV. However, a much wider horizon of meaning is evident and
includes terms such as ‘digital age’, ‘digital generation’, and ‘digital revo-
lution’. When espoused by the management consultancy McKinsey
(Dörner and Edelman, 2018) in relation to universities, we find the fol-
lowing assertion:

… we believe that digital should be seen less as a thing and more a way of
doing things. To help make this definition more concrete, we’ve broken it
down into three attributes: creating value at the new frontiers of the busi-
ness world, creating value in the processes that execute a vision of customer
experiences, and building foundational capabilities that support the entire
structure.

Whether the McKinsey copywriter has actually made the definition

‘more concrete’ by invoking high-level management speak, or has simply
appropriated the term to serve corporate interests, is a matter for debate.
It is unsurprising, therefore, that universities are contributing to the
debate by using the phrase ‘digital university’ to attempt a redefinition of
the university in the twenty-first century. However, when it comes to the
 Neoliberalism and the Digital University: The Political Economy… 7

practicalities of what a university ‘being digital’ might look like, different

perspectives are being embedded in the policy, provision, and futures
planning of higher education institutions. We suggest that development
is hampered by the term being used in narrow contexts, mainly relating
to digital technology and infrastructure, or to developing student digital
skills and/or digital literacies. Equally we are concerned that a corporate
style of top-down management is determining the nature of digital devel-
opments in universities and constraining staff and student capacity to
shape their learning and teaching experiences.
These different, often competing, understandings are informed by the
responsibilities that different individuals or departments have for specific
aspects of digital practice within the institution. This variety represents a
form of what we described above as value pluralism (Johnson and Smyth
2011), in university organisation, and we will elaborate this important
concept in later chapters in concert with our advocacy of critical peda-
gogy. Hereafter we will use the form—the digital—and express the vari-
ous connotations in the particular context of our discussion at given
points in our narrative. Also we will expand our consideration of the
nature of the digital in Chap. 2 in the context of a number of key com-
mentators on the digital university.

Neoliberalism and the Neoliberalisation

of the University: The Architecture
of the Digital University
We see neoliberalism as the primary shaping influence on contemporary
universities, exemplified by notions of higher education as a market com-
prising universities as providers and students as consumers. Consequently,
it is essential to preface any discussion of what a digital university might
be, with a discussion of what a neoliberal university is and what alterna-
tives can be adduced.
Headline features of neoliberal political economy include (i) valu-
ing private property over public ownership; (ii) appropriation of pub-
lic resources through government policy of privatisation; and (iii)
8 B. Johnston et al.

introduction of corporate management styles to public sector organ-

isation. As an intellectual construct, neoliberalism has been carefully
analysed (Mirowski and Plehwe 2009; Birch 2017) and critiqued
(Harvey 2005; Streek 2014; Maclean 2017). As both economic doc-
trine and political practice, neoliberalism has dominated state policy
in the UK, the EU, North America, and many other nations, since at
least the 1970s, and has come to dominate contemporary cultural
frameworks. At the time of writing, it is strongly associated with the
austerity policies enacted in response to the 2008–2009 financial crash.
We describe neoliberalism from three perspectives:

• Philosophy of economic and social dominance by the rich and power-

ful at the expense of socialist and social democratic values; a long-term
economic project to prize market values and ensure corporate power.
• Practice: shrink the state, suppress organised labour, accept wage stag-
nation, deregulate enterprise, use zero-hour contracts and other
employment mechanisms to increase precariousness of work, minimise
welfare systems, sanction welfare claimants, install austerity.
• Presentation: there is no alternative; negative attitudes to workers, wel-
fare claimants, immigrants and ‘experts’; control of media messages to
grab attention, shape public opinion and voting behaviour; stifle criti-
cal thinking.

Neoliberalism is claimed by some to be an economic and political

structure in crisis (Mason 2015; Srnicek and Williams 2016) exemplified
by the economic shocks post the 2008 financial crash including stagnant
wages, low interest rates, low productivity, precarious employment, and a
weakening of public services. Both sets of authors make out cases for
radical alternatives involving digital technology and new ways of collab-
orative working. Nevertheless, neoliberalism remains the primary influ-
ence of the strategic direction on higher education and management of
universities.
In essence the neoliberal approach to higher education is as an indus-
try ‘producing’ degrees, to be ‘purchased’ by student customers with
the intention of career benefit to the consumer and the economy as a
whole. The strong tendency, therefore, is to curtail ideas of an educa-
 Neoliberalism and the Digital University: The Political Economy… 9

tion with wider personal, social, and democratic purposes. In addition,

neoliberal thinking influences staff and student consciousness, arguably
in the direction of purely economic goals and away from notions of
holistic development and critical citizenship. Commenting from a
North American perspective, the radical educator Antonia Darder is
unequivocal:

As the liberal democratic purpose of higher education became more and

more obfuscated, universities across the country become more deeply
aligned with the narrow rationality of neoliberal objectives. (Darder 2011,
p. 420)

In universities established perspectives and practices are threatened by

neoliberal managerialism, and new more radical propositions such as the
Entrepreneurial University (Gibbs et al. 2012) are being promoted in the
spirit of neoliberal thinking. This approach has driven change in UK
higher education since the late twentieth century and has been enshrined
in national policy over several decades to constitute a project of neoliber-
alisation of the idea, nature, and practice of universities.
Within a neoliberal ideological architecture, education and pedagogy
are constrained by the policy imperative of student employability as the
primary learning outcome and control of pedagogical practice as a key
underpinning strategy in achieving that outcome. These outcomes are
directly linked to the economic success of the nation as well as individual
graduates, and in both cases there is a powerful narrative favouring
STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Maths) subjects and work-­
related skills. In this formulation value for money is presented as a key
determinant of student experience, and institutions are required to pro-
vide tangible evidence of the value for money they represent to students.
The review of higher education in England and Wales announced by the
Prime Minister, Theresa May, in February 2018 underlines the point that
the UK Government is still determined to treat higher education as a
market. In effect there is no alternative to continued neoliberalisation of
UK higher education in the eyes of the present UK Government.
Institutional management in turn is predicated on norms and practices
derived from the corporate sector. In terms of institutional practice, this
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
kissing the cardinal’s ring! I don’t care a damn for your religion, but I
do care for the Protestant vote; they’ll have this in the papers!”
She laughed a tormenting laugh. “I’m thinking of becoming a
Romanist!” she said.
He stared at her,—words were inadequate but his face whitened.
The slim elegance of her figure in its splendid dress, her dusky hair,
the dazzling white of her forehead, all seemed to him so many
additional reasons to hate her. He had bought her for these things,
for her charm, her wit, her daring, and she had turned every weapon
against him and defied him. He felt a shiver of rage sweep through
him, controlled it and turned away at last with clenched hands.
She remained standing, one hand on the balustrade, the other lightly
holding her cloak which was slipping from her bare shoulders, and
her eyes followed him with ineffable scorn and mockery.
 VII
MEANWHILE William Fox was plunged deeply into the vortex of a
busy session. The holidays were over and Congress had settled
down to its task; it was the short session year, and the bulk of the
large supply bills were being pushed steadily through the House,—
the routine of business being constantly interrupted by the
fanfaronnade of noisy members and the agitation of tariff revision
which hung like a nightmare over the party in power, and was a
delightful fetich for the minority to drag out of its hiding-place and
dangle before the eyes of their opponents. Fox, who was a leader,
besides being a great orator, was constantly employed in holding
down his followers, stamping out any sparks of rebellion and
silencing the enemy.
He was sharply conscious, too, of the tongues which were busily
engaged in circulating rumors about him, for there was more than
the proverbial mustard seed of truth in the story which Mrs. Allestree
had heard. He had indeed been on the point of entering the Cabinet,
but White’s double dealing and not his voluntary surrender had been
the cause of the exchange. There had been an agreement between
the two men who were both from the same state; White had been
allowed to come to the Senate to serve out an unexpired term of two
years under a pledge to keep out of Fox’s way in the matter of
Cabinet changes. He had broken his word at every point and had
succeeded in a shrewd manœuvre to prejudice the Administration
against the more clever man, no difficult matter where jealousy of
Fox already existed. Moreover White had the inevitable prestige of
great wealth, powerful connections and an easy conscience.
Fox had known many of these things when White received his
portfolio, but his later discoveries had placed him in a position where
he no longer cared to be so frequent a guest in White’s house; to
break bread with the man who had wilfully maligned him was an
offence to his coldly scrupulous pride. Fox was careless of public
opinion, fond of indulging his own whims and fancies, and easy in his
tolerance of offenders against himself, but when a man transgressed
the laws that he laid down in matters of personal honor and integrity
he could be uncompromisingly severe and contemptuous. Of late,
therefore, Fox had absented himself from White’s table and from
those evenings—famous among the favored few who obtained
invitations—when Margaret entertained the brains and the talent of
the capital. Literary men were always there, artists, musicians,
scientists; it was said of Mrs. White that she would entertain a
famous thief if he had wit. But there had been another and a more
potent attraction for Fox; he had found the seclusion of Judge
Temple’s library, the old judge’s slow and studious speech, the
magnificent voice of Rose, more potent charms than the
conversation and music of Margaret’s salon. Having discovered the
temperamental sympathy and ingenuous friendship in this young and
beautiful girl, Fox had begun to pursue that interesting study of
character which leads to but one result—whether it be tragic or
happy.
At this stage, too, of the matter, Fox ignored the feelings and the
possible claims of his less brilliant cousin; he was aware that
Allestree loved Rose, but he considered it as an affair of little
moment because he perceived clearly that Rose did not love him,
that not even the most scrupulous adjuration on his own part could
convert her indifference into a more tender feeling toward the
painter. At first he had entertained very little serious thought of the
matter, but the charm of Rose’s personality, both spiritual and
physical, had very soon begun to take hold of his imagination, and if
he secretly compared her fresh, sweet immaturity with Margaret’s
worldliness and finish it was to plunge the thought instantly into
oblivion. The girl was so young, so fresh, so easily responsive to his
wit and his eloquence, that it was like discovering a pure and
beautiful flower in a hedge of thorns. Between his work, therefore,
and his study of Rose he had managed to refuse more than one
invitation to the Whites’, and his absence was beginning to be
sharply observed.
There was a rumor that White had quarrelled with him about
Margaret, that Margaret had herself openly dismissed him, that he
was vexed at the loss of the Cabinet place; in short, the usual crop of
idle ingenious stories which spring up in the height of a winter
season, like a growth of noxious weeds, were in full bloom and
strength.
Fox was watching the slow progress of an important bill through the
lower House, and busily engaged at the same moment on the Naval
Appropriation Bill in which White was intimately concerned, and
which offered a wide scope for the surmises of those who were
watching the two men. It was an open question whether Fox
intended to thwart the Secretary of the Navy or to support his effort
to get a larger appropriation. Conscious of the scrutiny to which he
was subjected, Fox worked on, with an enigmatical smile, and
betrayed nothing of his thoughts or his position.
It was late one Thursday afternoon and he had been speaking on an
important matter for more than an hour, endeavoring to close up a
question which threatened to be of international significance, and,
thoroughly fagged, he finally left the floor of the House amid a
tremendous outburst of applause. As usual the galleries had been
packed to hear him, and he managed to make his way out with many
delays, stopped on all sides by members and personal friends, eager
to congratulate him on another great speech.
Once out of the lobby, he was crossing the corridor on his way to a
committee-room when he heard his name spoken, and turned, to
see Margaret detach herself from a party of fashionables who had
been in the Diplomatic Gallery, and come toward him. As they met
he was immediately aware of the change in her that a few weeks of
absence had made sharply apparent. She was extremely pale and
her eyes seemed abnormally large and shining under the brim of her
immense picture hat, her elaborate dress only accentuating the
slightness of her figure. She held out her hand without smiling. “I
want to speak to you,” she said, almost with an air of command,
“where can we go?”
He turned, hesitating a moment as to some suitable spot, arrested
by the thought that Margaret’s presence there or anywhere, alone
with him, would be so much fuel to the fire.
But she solved the problem for him. “Come outside,” she said; “it’s
heavenly on the terrace, the sun is setting. Besides, I can’t breathe
here in these corridors—heavens, where do they get their tobacco?”
“Not where you buy your Egyptians,” Fox laughed.
She shrugged her shoulders. “The doctor says I mustn’t smoke any
more,” she said, “but I shall.”
“The doctor?” Fox cast a startled glance at her white face; “what’s
the matter, Margaret?”
“A cigarette heart, I suppose!” she replied laughing, and then as the
smile died on her lips an expression of dull misery fell like a veil over
her features.
They had crossed the Rotunda together and gone out by the same
door where Allestree had waited months before. As they emerged
upon the terrace they were enfolded in a radiant atmosphere, the
sun was setting, and the whole western façade of the Capitol, the
fluted columns of the loggia before the old library rooms, the long
rows of shining windows, the magnificent arch of the dome, were
bathed in the glowing light which seemed to flood the world. There
was still a little snow on the sheltered slopes of the terrace and
under the trees, but the promise of spring was in the air and in the
deep blue of the sky above them. Margaret stopped abruptly and
stood looking down at the panorama at their feet; absorbed in her
own emotions, she did not immediately perceive the expression of
her companion’s face; it was one of extreme reluctance, of reserve,
almost of resentment. He had a man’s hatred of a scene, of being
“talked about,” and he knew that such a circumstance as their tête-à-
tête at such a time could scarcely escape unnoticed. He was
annoyed and disturbed, but for once she was blind to those potent
signs.
Keen as Margaret’s perceptions were, she shared with other women
the passionate blindness to change in another when her own heart
was clamoring to be satisfied; her vision was warped by one aspect
of it all; she remembered those moments, long past, of comradeship
and sympathy and passion on his part; she remembered and she
refused to believe that change was even possible.
The silence for a moment was almost oppressive, then she spoke
without trusting herself to meet his eyes. “You have refused two
invitations to dinner, and you have quite deserted my evenings and
my Sundays,” she said in a low voice.
Slightly embarrassed he began some conventional excuse, but she
lifted her hand with a peremptory little gesture. “I know—I quite
understand,” she said; “Wicklow has behaved abominably but—am I
to suffer, too?”
“My dear Margaret,” he replied, without too deep emotion, “such a
possibility is absurd!”
She looked up, searching his face, and her smile was the shadow of
itself, pale and suddenly controlled. “You do not mean to accept his
hospitality again?” she said, with an effort.
He was deeply annoyed; why must she force this issue upon him?
He was capable, at times, of extreme hardness toward others. To-
day she was unfortunate enough to jar upon him, to recall too
sharply White’s conduct. “I’m not prepared to say,” he replied with
some impatience; “can’t we avoid the subject? Tell me of yourself,
Margaret, you look tired and pale.”
She bit her lip, a sudden color refuting his charge. “I am very well,”
she replied coldly; “I danced until two o’clock this morning; at eleven
I received a delegation of Wicklow’s jackdaws; at two I lunched with
Madame de Caillou—she is so diplomatic that she only discusses
generalities and parrots; she has three—M. de Caillou not included;
he belongs to the poodle class. At four I came here with Mrs. O’Neal
and Lily Osborne; I give a dinner to-night and then go to the opera. It
is much the same to-morrow. Have you a cigarette, William?”
He opened his case and she selected one and lit it; Fox was not
smoking. “I presume that it will be in the newspapers to-morrow that I
was seen with a cigarette on the terrace talking to the next
President,” she remarked dryly; “I mean you to be the candidate,”
she added, “Wicklow is playing for it but—” she laughed, blowing the
cigarette smoke into rings before her face.
“He will probably be nominated,” Fox rejoined easily; “he has a large
following; I shall like to see you in that rôle, Margaret.”
“To see me?” she shrugged her shoulders; “my dear William, do you
happen to know what Lily Osborne is doing?”
He laughed. “Ask me something easier!”
Margaret stopped in her promenade and looked out over the city; it
seemed to float in a golden mirage, all commonplaceness, all
familiarity lost in the radiance of the western sky, against which, here
and there, a cross-crowned spire thrust its slender, tapering height,
or a campanile rose, dark and sharply pictured, above shining roofs.
Far off the bells were ringing, sweetly and insistently, an evening
chime.
“She is using Wicklow to attain her ends,” Margaret said, a little
mocking smile on her pale face; “he is dull and infatuated. I am told
she’s in Russian employ and there is information, plenty of it, in his
reach. You mark my words, she’ll ruin him—he’ll never be a
candidate.”
Fox frowned. “Pardon me,” he said abruptly; “I cannot listen.”
She tossed her cigarette over the terrace and watched it descend, a
mere spark in the dusk below, where evening lay in purple shadows.
“Forgive me,” she returned lightly, “I forgot—men are such
conscientious creatures and I—I’m an unscrupulous wretch, but I’m
not cruel, William!”
“Nor I!” he replied, with a slight change of color, “but, Margaret, can’t
you see how impossible—”
She laughed bitterly. “I’m very dull,” she remarked.
A shuddering recognition of some new, terrible barrier between them
tore her heart. She held out her hand. “Good-by,” she said in a low
voice, “I’m going to ask you to dine again—will you come?” her
feverishly glowing eyes fixed themselves on his face.
Fox colored again, conscious that he must seem an ill-mannered
brute. “Of course I’ll come,” he assented, vexed at himself and
touched by the sudden sweetness of her manner.
But her smile was wan; she felt as if the universe moved beneath her
feet; as yet the moment was delayed when her wounded heart would
refuse to submit, and her whole passionate, sensuous nature rise up
to battle for life and love.
 VIII
ROSE let the bridle lie loosely on her horse’s neck as they halted at
the elbow of the path. Rock Creek, leaping over its gray boulders
and flowing between them with little swirls of foam, comes rushing
madly past, slips under the trailing branches of a weeping birch and
suddenly widening, hushes its tumult and drops placidly below the
ford, where, in summer, in a wide shallow basin, the swan and the
little white ducks lie. The scene was wild; the untouched forest rose
behind them, its bare gray limbs against the sky, the black green of
an occasional spruce or cedar breaking the monotony above the
brown-leafed earth and closing the long vistas of stripped tree trunks
which stand on the shoulder of the hill in serried ranks in the teeth of
the north wind, like soldiers, with their faces to the foe. Below, the
stream gurgled and murmured; on the farther bank the dense growth
of young maples showed here and there a scarlet bud. The air was
sweet, redolent with fresh pine and the promise of the spring;
overhead the crows were flying by twos and tens and twenties, lost
at last in the soft blue distance.
Fox, who was riding with Rose, dismounted and turning back the
dead leaves on a sunny slope found a single spray of arbutus. She
uttered a little exclamation of pleasure, holding out her hand.
He laughed. “When I was a boy I always found the first wild flowers,”
he said; “I knew just where the blood-root grew and the anemone.
Since then I’ve been making speeches at the primaries and getting
votes for my party. There’s no comparison between the two pursuits!”
She had the arbutus in her hand and gave him a challenging glance;
she began to understand him better, but her convictions were too
strong to be subdued. “You mean that you’ve given up your life for
politics, just to be a part of a machine?”
He assented, still smiling as he remounted, and the horses moved
on at a walk.
“I can’t see why you think it noble to be merely a politician,” she
persisted.
“Am I?” his amused eyes met hers.
“Yes!” she retorted, “a statesman is above his party, before it; he
guides, moves, sways it. You like to call yourself part of a machine!
You don’t vote against a bill which concerns the party—that’s being a
politician!”
“But I can’t betray my party,” he objected, unmoved.
“You should be independent of it.”
“You can’t judge,” he argued, with his teasing laugh, “your coat is of
another color.”
“Well, at least it isn’t Joseph’s!” she exclaimed vexed.
“You think I can’t be trusted?” He pursued the subject with a boyish
enjoyment of her red cheek and kindling eye.
“I didn’t mean that—of course party men can be honest, but I don’t
call it the highest honesty to vote against your own convictions for
any party.”
“Yet that is what I did on a bill the other day,” mused Fox, “because
the party opposed it.”
“Was it a good bill?”
“Excellent.”
“And you voted against it when you believed in it?” indignantly.
“I’m the guilty creature,” he replied, laughter in his eyes but his face
sober.
Rose bit her lip.
“You see it’s a bad moment to make a split in the party; next year is
the Presidential campaign,” he continued provokingly.
She could not restrain her indignation. “Aren’t you ashamed to go
against your own conscience for that?” she cried; “it isn’t worthy of
you.”
“Then you think better things of me?” he argued softly, “you see a
chance for my redemption?”
She looked up and met his glance fully but with a sudden feeling of
confusion. “It is because you are meant for so much greater things
that I speak,” she said finally; “I think you will be a greater man than
you are now at last.”
His manner softened at once, with that subtle gentleness which no
man knew better how to use. “Your belief should make me so!” he
said gravely; “a man might accomplish much to justify your belief in
him!”
She averted her face, her lip trembling. Around her the woodland
seemed suddenly transfigured, the tumult of the stream, breaking
here in little cataracts, scarcely leaped more wildly than her pulses;
before them the long road narrowed in a beautiful perspective where
trailing branches locked their spectral arms and the evergreen
honeysuckle hung on gray rocks.
Fox leaned forward in his saddle, trying to meet her eyes, but seeing
only the soft curve of her cheek and throat. “Will you try to believe in
me?” he asked, with that new sweetness of tone which took the sting
out of his jests.
But she had touched her horse lightly and he shot ahead, trotting
down the long road, his rider swaying and bending slightly to avoid
an occasional sweeping bough. Fox followed quickly, and overtaking
her, the two horses galloped together while their riders relapsed for a
while into a significant silence.
“Did you know that my portrait is nearly finished?” Rose said at last;
“I think that Robert has painted it out and in again just five times.”
“It isn’t in the least like you,” retorted Fox sharply, “he has made a
failure.”
“Oh, no, every one likes it!” protested Rose.
“Not at all,” said Fox; more calmly; “I don’t—neither does Allestree.”
“He has too high a standard for his work,” she replied laughing, “but I
hoped you liked it.”
“No picture of you could ever please me,” he retorted significantly;
“when I shut my eyes I can still see your face. Allestree’s wits have
been wool-gathering; he has made an image, nothing more—he—”
Rose interrupted laughing. “Please don’t tell father; he likes it, and
Mrs. Vermilion was so pleased that she and Mr. Vermilion have
ordered life-sized portraits of the entire family, en masse and singly;
Robert’s fortune is made.”
“The Vermilions are parvenus,” said Fox, with a shrug; “poor Bob!”
“And why poor Bob?” she objected lightly; “it seems to me the
greatest good fortune.”
“Does it?” Fox looked down at the creek musingly; “and yet I say,
‘poor Bob.’”
She colored, scarcely conscious of the cause of her blush, unless
Fox’s dreamy sympathy for Allestree touched a responsive chord in
her own bosom when she remembered how lightly she had thought
of him and his unspoken but candid devotion to her; a little thing, a
word, a gesture reproached her with ingratitude, for how easily she
had passed over all those years and forgotten Allestree in the charm
of his cousin’s presence! Then she remembered all the stories she
had heard of Fox’s love for Margaret Ward before she married White;
steadily as she had tried to forget them, to cease to think of his past
where it touched another woman’s life, the stories suddenly took
tangible shape and it seemed to her that Margaret was concerned
with his existence and she—a mere intruder. Rose, whose heart had
been hitherto as untouched as a child’s, shrank with infinite shyness
and reluctance from those old dead leaves of passion which had
never yet sullied the whiteness of her soul.
Some intuition, perhaps, of her feeling warned him, for he began to
tell her stories of his boyhood and gradually spoke of his home, his
dead mother, his father who had been a distinguished jurist, and so,
little by little, won her from her mood. His gentleness, his kindling
speech, the tenderness of his eyes thrilled her again with that
wonderful attraction which was part of the man’s genius and which
even his enemies found incontrovertible.
He told her of his mother’s gentleness, her profound religion, her
meekness compared with his father’s fierce severity, an Old
Testament Christian who beat his boys if they did not go to church
three times on Sunday and also to meeting on Thursday nights. “And
out of that home I grew up a heathen and a publican,” he said with a
smile.
Rose looked steadily before her; far off the road dwindled, and she
saw Sandy racing a squirrel to a tree. “How can you?” she said at
last, in a low voice.
“Confess it?” He leaned forward and touched her hand; “will you
convert me?”
She looked up, their eyes met with the shock of sudden feeling. Her
lip trembled like a child’s. “I’m not wise enough,” she replied simply;
“you would end by laughing at me!”
His face sobered. “Am I so utterly unworthy?” he demanded.
She was silent; the water rushed and murmured beside them, and
the still bright atmosphere seemed to palpitate with some great
mystery; were all barriers really disappearing and a new sweet
understanding emerging from the challenge of their two opposing
temperaments? Her heart trembled and beat fast at the thought; it
was so wild, so improbable, so dangerously sweet. Then she made
one great effort to master her emotions, to be herself. She schooled
herself to meet his eyes again, with that new subtle sweetness of
expression in them, that delicate understanding of her mood which
frightened her!
“Who am I that I should judge?” she said tremulously, with a
charming smile, full of youth, simplicity, unconscious confession.
Something in the very girlishness and purity of her face, and her
unguarded mood smote Fox with sudden humility; he felt himself the
veriest worldling and sinner compared with her. What right had he to
thrust his life into hers? His hand closed over hers with unconscious
force. “Who are you?” he repeated passionately, “my guardian
angel.”
Rose smiled; there were tears in her eyes but his emotion had the
effect of crystallizing hers, she understood her own heart at last, and
with a woman’s intuition began to hide it; she withdrew her hand
gently and the horses went on.
Neither spoke; both had been deeply moved and there was a new
happiness in mere companionship. It was one of those rare
moments, in the higher relations between man and woman, when a
new situation emerges from the old, a more beautiful understanding
is established, and the exquisite gentleness of his mood was a
revelation to her of a phase of his character which she had only
dimly perceived.
The road had left the creek now and following the rising ground lay
through a growth of stunted cedars; the stillness was broken
suddenly by the full sweet note of a robin.
Rose turned with kindling eyes. “Hark!” she exclaimed softly;
“doesn’t that make you think of apple-blossoms? There must be
periwinkles somewhere!”
The spell was broken and he smiled, turning to look back for the
singer. At the same moment Sandy stopped and pricked his ears.
There was a full sound in the air, a throbbing and buzz of some
machine and a big motor-car swung suddenly around the curve and
bore down upon them. The road was narrow and both riders had to
turn out on to the short turf beside the cedars. The car came on, and
then abruptly slackening its speed it stopped a few yards beyond
them and some one called to them.
Rose looked back startled and met Margaret’s eyes. Mrs. White was
leaning on the door of the car and beckoning to them, her great
crimson hat flaming against the dark background. Meanwhile Louis
Berkman had slipped down from the farther side and came up to
Rose smiling, hat in hand.
“I feel myself as fortunate as Balaam’s ass,” he said gayly, “since I,
too, have met an angel in the way!”
“Never mind, Rose,” interposed Margaret laughing; “Louis is a poet
and he’s had a terrible experience, he isn’t quite himself!”
“I don’t in the least mind being called an angel; I rather like it,” Rose
retorted with amusement; “it is only a little startling. What has
happened, Mr. Berkman?”
“Nothing of the least importance,” he answered, a trifle stiffly; “only
Mrs. White is laughing at me.”
Margaret still leaned on the door of the motor-car, her face as white
as paper against her flame-colored hat, but her laugh was light and
careless; the fierce pain tugging at her heart demanded a mask and
she wore it gayly and well. “He went to the White House last night,”
she exclaimed maliciously.
“What new form of insanity overtook you, Berkman?” asked Fox;
“went to a crush?—and it wasn’t compulsory either!”
“Oh, I’ve repented,” Berkman retorted, with a harsh laugh; “I’ll never
be taken alive again!”
“What happened?” Rose asked, laughing softly, her hand on her
saddle and the reins hanging loose while the horse cropped the dry
turf and dead leaves.
Margaret’s laugh interrupted again. “Let me tell them, Louis,” she
said.
Berkman shrugged his shoulders with a gesture of assent, coloring a
little in spite of himself.
“He got an invitation without the cabalistic sign,” Margaret began, her
eyes dancing, “and, in the ignorance of his soul, he went. He was an
hour and a half getting in,—you know how they come—two and two
—like the couples that left the ark. They had to keep on the carpet;
he says one of the ushers kept shouting: ‘move on—keep on the
carpet, don’t scratch the floors!’ Louis, did you wear hobnails or
sabots?”
“I wish I’d worn overshoes!” he retorted disgustedly; “fancy it—I’ve
been received at Buckingham Palace and in Berlin and Vienna; it’s
the first time I was ever told ‘to keep off the grass!’”
“Your own fault!” laughed Margaret, “you should have come to me.
He never got into the Blue Room at all! Tell us what you saw in the
East Room, Louis?” she mocked.
“What I saw?” Berkman drew a deep breath of indignation; “a
damned lot of goats like myself; the sheep were figuratively roped off
in sacred precincts—I saw you going to supper.”
“Served you right!” laughed Fox; “no sane person goes without the
open sesame—unless forced to. What will happen when your
personality is revealed? You can trust Margaret for that. You’ll be
invited to lunch.”
“Sha’n’t go!” said Berkman angrily.
“Hoity-toity! you’ll have to!” cried Margaret teasingly, “it’s in the
nature of a police summons, you know!”
“I’ll get out of jurisdiction! I’ll go hang myself,” Berkman retorted, with
a reluctant laugh; and then to Rose: “I’ve just seen your portrait, Miss
Temple, and it seems Allestree has established his fame; it is
beautiful, as it should be.”
“I’m so glad you like it,” she replied; “Mr. Fox has just been abusing
it.”
“He’s a notorious unbeliever!” said Berkman; “don’t mind him; it’s
inspired. Mrs. Vermilion hopes to look like it!”
“With the immortal bonnet?” said Fox laughing, but with a glance
which perceived every detail of Rose’s beautiful young face and
figure radiant in the sunshine.
Margaret saw it; a shudder of perception passed over her and she
drew back into her corner of the motor-car with a little sigh of agony,
dragged from her very heart, but happily unnoticed. Her whole being
rebelled against fate, against submission, against loss!
Berkman was still laughing, uncovered, at Rose’s bridle, and Fox sat
listening, idly amused. The clear atmosphere cut every detail out,—
the low growth of cedars, the sweeping slope of the dun colored hill
behind it, the dark ribbon of woods in the hollow where the creek
flowed unseen, the long vista of the road which seemed to meet the
sky.
Margaret called to them. “Good-bye,” she said, “I’m engaged to
receive the canaille—as Madame de Caillou calls it—at five. Come,
Louis, or else we’ll send you to the East Room again.”
“The gods forbid!” he exclaimed, and ran to the motor amid more gay
laughter.
A moment later Margaret’s white face smiled at them as she was
whirled away.
 IX
MARGARET leaned over the glass show-counter in Daddy Lerwick’s
curiosity-shop and looked down at the pathetic medley within.
Her figure, in its usual elaborate elegance, was in sharp contrast to
the dingy surroundings. The fine camel’s-hair shawls hung up behind
her, the old velvet curtain with its tapestry border, the moth-eaten
furs, the tarnished Mexican sombrero, the ancient horse-pistols, the
innumerable curious articles which heaped every corner of the room,
down to the chintz curtain, screening the rear end of the shop in a
weak-minded and fluttering way, formed a patchwork background.
In the case was an ivory fan of antique workmanship which had
drifted here at last, carrying with it a history which might frame many
a tale, and with it a tortoise-shell comb, with a top eight inches high,
some gold link cuff buttons, a string of pearls that had clasped the
throat of a beauty in 1776, but lay now, pale and lustreless and
forgotten, the price, perhaps, of a week’s lodging or of a grave, God
knows!
But Margaret was interested in a bracelet set with topaz, still
beautiful, still radiant, still warm with a life’s history. She passed the
stones to and fro between her slender fingers, pricing them with
careless indifference. The romance and the sorrow of it would have
touched Rose Temple and sent her shuddering from the purchase.
To Margaret they signified nothing but jewels and the value of jewels,
for her life of selfish ease, of social prominence, her endless quest
for pleasure, had nearly atrophied those finer and more tender
emotions of sympathy and love for her fellow creatures.
Daddy Lerwick himself waited on her. He was a short, thickset man
with the face of an underdone pudding, his gray whiskers attached
like wings below the ears. His small dull eyes seemed to observe
little, but he was notorious for driving a shrewd bargain and nothing
really escaped him.
“The stones are good stones,” he commented, clasping his fat
creased hands on the case in an attitude which displayed the
solitaire on his little finger, “and the price very low, madam.”
Margaret laughed, her eyes haggard again. “You get them second-
hand,” she observed carelessly; “who brought these?”
He looked at her without surprise and unclasped his hands. “I have
the name,” he said; “the law requires that we take the name, but I
don’t think they ever give the right one, and we don’t tell it—usually.
It was a young girl, madam, quite a young girl.”
“Never mind!” Margaret dropped the chain, her mood changing. “I
really didn’t want to know,” she said with a shrug, “why should I? I
don’t know why I asked. I’ll take the gold cigarette-case, if you can
get the monogram off, and the tea-pot. Bring them over and I’ll send
the check.”
The man bowed and rubbed his hands. He knew Margaret very well
and profited largely by her careless and profuse use of money.
Knowing the world too, as he did, and the people in it, he thought her
more wretched than the girl who had traded the bracelet, or the
owner of the gold cigarette-case who, he happened to know, had
since shot himself and now lay in an unmarked grave. Daddy
Lerwick, indeed, knew more than was good for him but, perhaps, not
more than many others who stand thus at the gateway between the
upper stratum of gilded pleasure and the lower stratum of sordid
misery, and receive the tolls!
Meanwhile, unconscious of his eyes and certainly proudly disdainful
of his thoughts, the society beauty, the Cabinet minister’s wife,
trailed through the dingy shop and passed out by the side door,
which Lerwick opened for her, to the stairs of Allestree’s studio. As
she ascended, the cloud which had rested on her face slightly
cleared and her expression grew more decisive; the desolate misery
of her heart had taken a more concrete form, she had arrived at last
at a resolution. She had reached a point where she must resist or
die. Her bruised heart throbbed with continuous pain and she was
proudly aware that she was losing all—losing it, too, without an
apparent struggle. She, Margaret, who had always borne herself
proudly and defiantly to the world, was she to be a mendicant asking
the alms of love and asking it in vain?
She swept on, crossed the landing under Aunt Hannah’s
accustomed window, and thrusting aside the portière entered upon a
tableau of the artist and his two new clients, Mrs. and Miss Vermilion,
and her enemy, Mrs. Wingfield. The two older women stout, tightly
laced, gorgeously over-dressed, the younger, slender and well done
by the best French art and with that indescribable air of disdain
which, commonly assumed by the parvenu to be the sign manual of
birth and breeding, might be called the bar sinister of society. At the
sight of Margaret, however, she unbent with an alacrity which was as
amazing as it was sudden.
“Dear Mrs. White,” she chirped, “do come and advise me; mamma
wants me painted, and really I can’t choose a pose! I saw a picture
of the Duchess of Leinster which was lovely, but Mr. Allestree says
he never copies even attitudes! Isn’t it confusing?”
Margaret shrugged one shoulder and held out two fingers to the
elder women. “Try Aphrodite rising from the sea,” she suggested with
a provoking drawl, “I dare say Bobby can do waves, he’s admirable
on flesh tints.”
The girl colored furiously and bit her lip. It was impossible to know
where to meet Mrs. White, she reflected, without daring to provoke
another catastrophe by retaliation.
But Mrs. Wingfield had felt the sting of Margaret’s rudeness too
often. She moved to the door with the rustle of silk draperies. “I hear
Mr. Fox is to marry Miss Temple,” she said pointedly, looking
Margaret full in the face.
“And I heard that Mr. Wingfield was to get the mission to Brazil,”
retorted Margaret unmoved.
Mrs. Wingfield’s cheek crimsoned and the feathers on her bonnet
trembled. “Nothing of the sort! You don’t mean to tell me you heard
that?”
Margaret shrugged her shoulders again. “One hears everything, you
know!” she said, with a dangerous smile.
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