Responses to the Big Man on Campus Interview: Excerpts

1. The timing of the interview couldn't be more disastrous; what I don't understand is how what is basically a corporate CEO was allowed to be interviewed without his staff of communications people and lawyers\ present to guide the questions and answers.

It is his Larry Summers moment in the fullest sense of the comparison?

Or a Bush-era public expression of private contempt without the fear of repercussions for blowing off faculty, students, parents, and Californians.

I also think there is a weird generational/Oedipal thing going on about this member of the Baby Boom generation that enjoyed the best of Cold War public education in the US, and now that it is retiring has declared  public education no longer a priority but that rather health care is (for the aging pop as well as others).
***
2. Dear UCMeP Faithful,

If you haven't yet heard, yesterday (Thursday) our illustrious leader, President Mark Yudof, gave an interview to the New York Times on the very day of the UC-wide Walkout. As always, his timing was impeccable and his comments, well, UCMeP could not have offered a better interview. We wish we could say this was written by UCMeP, but even we are not that gifted.

Please be aware, this is the person who is defending public education in front of the state of California. He is the public face of the UC.

For all of you who value public education, these facts should probably scare the sh*t out of you. We at the UC Movement for Efficient Privatization, on the other hand, are proud of his flippant attitude toward public education.
***
3. Don't know if you all have seen this but worth blogging about. The man is like a soviet commissar, he even looks the part.

***
4. The NY Times interview with Yudof just shows how little he cares about a one day walkout. It basically doesn't affect him.
 . . . We must face the fact that the time for pointless negotiations is over. Appeals to the UC administration and Sacramento are futile; instead, we appeal to each other, to the people with whom we are struggling, and not to those whom we struggle against...
Occupation is a tactic for escalating struggles, a tactic recently used at the Chicago Windows and Doors factory and at the New School in New York City. It can happen throughout California too. As undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, and staff, we call on everyone at the UC to support this occupation by continuing the walkouts and strikes into tomorrow, the next day, and for the indefinite future. We call on the people of California to occupy and escalate."
***
5. Sample draft to Deborah Solomon, NYT: As faculty here at the University of California, we are grateful that you brought out with your incisive questions the lack of vision, integrity, and even intelligence in the lamentable current administration of UC.  As his less than clever quips indicate, Mr. Yudof, a lawyer, obviously has an apres moi, le deluge attitude about education: he got HIS education, and can now make cavalier statements of a kind one would expec from Fox News, to the tune of  'education is a low priority'.
It certainly is a low priority for him and his cohorts who now, alas, direct the course of UC.  UC , for so many years a top university in this country, will be no longer not only because of "secular" tendencies of the lamentable state/legislature in California, but, more significantly, because the corporate types and bankers who have in essence commandeered the university and are steering it according to their investment interests.

***
6. In addition to contacting the regents, this interview should also be part of any literature we put out, any discussion of the no-confidence vote and all future recruitments to action....it is shameful and offensive . . . What a disgrace....

***
7. Granted, we are all fighting against the corporativization of the UC system and we are enraged at our CEO's insulting remarks on the NYT, but maybe we should also think about challenging the very legitimacy of this corporate leadership. We have grown accustomed to despise the idea that students are 'customers' but maybe we should begin to argue that students are not customers at all because they have primarily become 'shareholders' with a higher percentage of investment through their fees in the UC Corporation than the state. Hence, they have a collective right to elect Regents and President more than the Governor.
***
8. Dear so-called Regents of UC,

I am one of the cadavers in the UC cemetery that so-called President Yudof referred to in his recent interview to the NYT. I am writing to you because I am concerned with the state of President Yudof's health, and in particular with his hearing. He declared in that interview that he "listens" to the voices of us cadavers but is not heard by us. I am here to tell you that we have shouted very loud for months but neither he nor you have heard a thing. So, I am trying email because I trust his and your vision to be in better shape than your hearing. The message I and many other faculty, staff and students have been sending you is clear: with your actions this Summer and your recent announcement of new fee hikes you have lost whatever shred of legitimacy you have ever had. I no longer recognize any of you as "Regents" of anything, and I am therefore not asking you to reprimand so-called President Yudof for his insulting statements in that interview, but to simply step down collectively from the corporate positions you are occupying without legitimacy.
***
9. Yudof's insensitivity and callousness speak for themselves- We need a  President who uses shared governance and public education to enhance,  diminish UC despite the real problems we face
***
10. Deborah Solomon has given us a great gift. Let's make sure it is a gift that keeps on giving. As bad as what Larry Summers said, the BMOC is glibly and arrogantly dumping (and dumping on) the whole idea of public higher education. It is also profoundly and shockingly anti-intellectual.
***
11. (from a UC alumni and internationally recognized artist)
ok, serious question.
yudof, who does not look in these photos anything like the sobersided fellow in the messages he has been sending me . . . obviously is a happy go lucky clown impersonating a Catskills social director (though of rotting corpses, alas), very proud of himself, his humor, his anti intellectual shallowness and his rude origins.
So how come he feels so secure in his job that he can say shit like this without having his ass shoved out the door by slightly less than totally craven democratic politicians?
Is it that by now the fiscal structure of science (the only thing that matters, I guess, aside from poli sci and law, and those don't figure in this equation) is so dependent on corporate rather than state money that there is NO elected rep who considers the professoriate and student body to be constituents with clout?
And how DID he get that job?
help me help me i am drowwwning...