Contemporary critical scholarship on the university firmly places new discursive and curricular formations within a global context of neoliberal, neoimperial, and neocolonial processes. Recently, some focus has been given to last century's institutionalization of the interdisciplines (e.g. Ethnic Studies, Cultural Studies, Women's Studies) and how the invitation to become a part of the university has mapped onto repressive liberal fantasies of tolerance and inclusion. With this history in mind, this paper begins with the current wave of student protests and how the institutionalization of difference has structured university responses to new formations of critique. We argue that, though de-escalating the politics of knowledge production and legitimation, a new moral economy has emerged in which universities trade on 'good' students who adhere to prescribed performances of critique and villainize the student-activists who threaten the status quo as a means to manage current crises while retaining social legitimacy.