Universities function as state entities in four structural senses

Evidence

As an institution, academia is a state entity in at least four senses. First, despite by-laws and internal regulations, the university, as just intimated, is ultimately regulated by, and thus subject to, state law, largely subsidized by state and corporate funds that often come attached to political and other conditions (think of the Title VI phenomenon in the United States, or the creation of so-called area studies during the Cold War). The second is its nearly unqualified and unquestioning adoption of the positivism of the state; indeed, the scholarly thrust of academia remains thoroughly, if not entirely, positivist, reflecting, as we have seen, the unqualified adoption of the Distinction in its full effects. The third is the overwhelming acceptance within academia of the state as a taken-for-granted phenomenon, this having overshadowed and continuing to govern mainstream discourses in the social sciences and the humanities. On the whole, academia thinks the state, and the world, through the state. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 202

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Foucault’s governmentality and to the broader critique of area studies and Cold War academic funding that Shapiro and others have developed.
• QUESTION: The Title VI / area studies claim suggests a concrete research thread: tracing how specific academic fields were literally legislated into existence to serve state interests.