USC Faculty Letter Supporting Sept 24 Day of Action

 We, the undersigned faculty and graduate students of the University of Southern California, write to express our solidarity with the University of California professors, students and employees in their system-wide walk-out, 24 September, 2009.

The walk-out has been called in response to the UC administration’s handling of budget cuts over the summer, which have harmed the university’s mission, disproportionately affected students and lower-paid workers, and compromised the University’s principle of shared governance. The University of California is a cornerstone of social and economic progress, and these cuts reflect a massive failure of our larger economic and political system.  Nonetheless, the cuts have been planned, announced and implemented after minimal consultation with the UC community. They fail to take into consideration numerous alternative budgetary measures that could meet the budget shortfall with greater fairness and less impact upon UC’s capacity to fulfill its core educational tasks.  The upper administration has flouted the traditions of shared governance with faculty, without which no university can achieve or maintain a high quality of research or teaching, and it has imposed furloughs and layoffs upon its lowest-paid workers rather than generating these funds through more substantial reductions to the size of the management and to executive compensation.  We repudiate such measures, no matter which institutions they affect.

But we are not concerned only with the manner through which the cuts have been proposed and implemented and the negative example it presents to academic institutions nationally.  We are concerned that these cuts represent a further downward step towards the irrevocable decline and steady corporatization of the University of California.  We are concerned that the UC’s administration is willing to sacrifice the internationally recognized quality and accessibility of its campuses for increased dependence on down-sizing and private funding.  Rather than engage in a serious reevaluation of budgetary priorities or take up the political fight for the survival and reinvigoration of public education, they have opted for cuts, increased fees, and corporate funding.

In his recent speech to a joint session of Congress, President Obama invoked the example of the role that public universities play in setting a standard and a model for the private universities.  As faculty and students of a private university, we thoroughly concur with that observation.  Public education—free as it has been or should be from the interests that inevitably come attached to private funding, however philanthropic, and free as it can be from the demands of fee-based revenue—has established throughout California and the nation an example of disinterested learning and research.  It has helped to guarantee the autonomy of academic pursuits and the possibility of exploring avenues of research and teaching that do not ultimately depend on their immediately measurable value, either socially or economically.  In doing so, it has set a standard which any private university that lays claims to be a first-rate research university must and should emulate.

We believe that a well-funded and faculty-led system of public education is the cornerstone of all educational quality, private and public, in the state and the nation.  Without a vigorous public university education, available to all at reasonable cost, no academic institutions will thrive as they should. We therefore stand in solidarity with faculty, students and employees of the University of California in their walk-out and in their ongoing campaign against the cuts in California’s historically leading university system. We call on the UC administration, and in particular on President Yudof, to negotiate in good faith with their representatives in order to arrive at a fairer and more far-sighted budgetary solution.  And we call on politicians and policy-makers state-wide to consider the dismal effects of any further decline in UC’s standards and reputation for the state as a whole.


Elinor Accampo
History

Paul Adler
Business

Deborah Alkamano

American Studies and Ethnicity



Lois Banner

History and Gender Studies



Rick Berg

English



Brandon Best

American Studies and Ethnicity



Brent Blair

Theatre



Sheila Briggs

Religion and Gender Studies



Jolie Chea

American Studies and Ethnicity



Jih-Fei Cheng

American Studies and Ethnicity



Araceli Esparza

American Studies and Ethnicity



Vincent Farenga

Classics



Joshua Goldstein

History



Macarena Gomez-Barris

American Studies and Ethnicity and Social Science



Sandy Green

Business



Ariela J. Gross

Law



Larry Gross

Communications



Judith Halberstam

American Studies and Ethnicity and English



William Handley

English



Carol Hofmann

French



Janet Hoskins

Anthropology



Mark Irwin

English



Jane Naomi Iwamura

Religion and American Studies & Ethnicity



David James

Cinema



Peggy Kamuf

Comparative Literature



Colin Keaveney

French and Italian



Robin Kelley

American Studies and Ethnicity and History



Tony Kemp

English



Priscilla Leiva

American Studies and Ethnicity



Akira Lippit

Comparative Literature, CNTV and East Asian Languages



David Lloyd

English



Alvaro Marquez

American Studies and Ethnicity



Tara McPherson

Cinema



Natania Meeker

Comparative Literature



Celeste Menchaca

American Studies and Ethnicity



Claudia Moatti

Classics



Viet Nguyen

English and American Studies and Ethnicity



Laura Pulido

American Studies and Ethnicity



Jessica Quizar

American Studies and Ethnicity



Shana L. Redmond

American Studies and Ethnicity and English



Abigail Rosas

American Studies and Ethnicity



John Carlos Rowe

American Studies and Ethnicity and English



Margaret Salazar

American Studies and Ethnicity



Sriya Shrestha

American Studies and Ethnicity





Bruce Smith

English



Nomi Stolzenberg

Law


Karen Tongson

English and Gender Studies



Yushi Yamazaki

American Studies and Ethnicity