Monday, March 29, 2010

Debate: Student Fees and UC Construction Projects

The Meister Controversy
How Student Fees are Connected to UC Construction Projects
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Fourth in the series of open forums by
the Faculty Seminar on UC's Financial Future
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Tuesday March 30, 5-6:30 PM
Room 489, Minor Hall (just west of the Haas School of Business)
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Presentation: Professor Emeritus Charles Schwartz,  
Professors Robert Jacobsen and Stanley Klein

Response: CFO, University of California, Peter Taylor

Moderator: Professor Alan Schoenfeld
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Materials related to this presentation are available in the resources folder on the bSpace site of the Faculty Seminar on UC’s financial future, https://bspace.berkeley.edu/portal/site/1bf87f62-ad26-4ca1-9858-ee88d7be4928

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Letter for Regents' Meeting on Recent Campus Events


March 1, 2010


To:  UC President Mark G. Yudof and Chancellors of the ten UC campuses, and the Chair and Vice Chair of the University-wide Academic Senate

From:  California Scholars for Academic Freedom***

Re: These administrators’ statement of February 26, 2010, on recent UC campus events

In your statement to the University of California community, you express your “deep disturbance” at recent events on a few UC campuses.  You condemn “all acts of racism, intolerance and incivility.”  Although you do not name the specific events to which you allude it is clear that you are referring to the disruption of Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren’s speech at Irvine on February 8, 2010, and the recent racist actions at UCSD, including a fraternity’s “Compton Cookout” event, the encouraging of students to come dressed as racist caricatures, a comment made on student television calling black students “ungrateful n—-s,” and the hanging of a noose in the library.

Your conflation of these two incidents is profoundly disturbing, and could easily be construed as a deeper indicator of the structured racism that pervades the UC system.  The students who interrupted Ambassador Oren’s speech were exercising their right of non-violent protest at the representative of a nation that has been charged with war crimes by the United Nations’ special investigator, Richard Goldstone, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch.  The students’ interruptions were directed at these facts and at the ongoing destruction of Palestinian culture and national life. They caused no threat or harm to the speaker or the audience. Indeed, they left the hall quietly after delivering their prepared remarks.  One may or may not agree that the charges they made are accurate, but the protesters certainly made no reference to the race of the speaker, and were at no point anti-Semitic in tone or content.  In this country, and on UC’s own campuses, the space for effective critique of Israeli policies is often gravely hampered or silenced, leaving few avenues for protest of its actions or of the one-sided presentations of its representatives that would not be deemed disruptive. While campus events that present Palestinian viewpoints do frequently take place on UC campuses, there have been several instances wherein such events were pressured to include counter-speakers or were subject to strident and threatening criticisms when they did not.  Historically and more recently such pressure has been exerted at UCLA.

The current threat of draconian sanctions against UCI students, sanctions that have not been applied to those who have frequently disrupted Muslim speakers or pro-Palestinian speakers, and the imputation of guilt by association against the Muslim Student Union, suggest a remarkably biased application of disciplinary procedures – as does the failure to discipline those faculty and students who have issued academic and personal threats to the students who protested Oren’s talk.

We also want to make clear that we condemn any acts of intimidation against Jewish students such as the repugnance of the appearance of a swastika drawn on a student’s private property at UC Davis.  We urge the university to denounce all acts of discrimination or bias against students based on their racial, ethnic, religious, sexual, or gender identities.  We feel that it is particularly important to underscore this condemnation, in light of recent efforts to link our legitimate criticism of Israeli policies with anti-Semitism.  In this vein, we reject the endeavor to equate our support for Palestinian self-determination and security with any kind of support for bigotry, intolerance, or discrimination against Jewish people or culture.

We also maintain that it is critical to underscore the distinction between students who call attention to state militaristic practices and the violence of an occupying force (e.g., UCI), and students who plan an event around racist themes and degrading characterizations of a particular cultural group (e.g., UCSD).  In contrast to the events at UCI, the incidents at UCSD were expressly directed at one racial group, in terms that have historically been used to humiliate and discriminate against African Americans.  In so doing, the UCSD students deployed symbols that have been associated with the worst and most terrorizing racial violence.   It is appalling that until student action forced the university to take definite steps and suspend one student responsible for the most egregious act--the hanging of a noose- these acts of explicit and intimidating racism were met only with a teach-in on racism.  Such tepid responses speak directly to the unbalanced application of disciplinary procedures. The UC’s unequal response to these and other incidents at the UC campuses sends a very strong message to students and the wider community.  It suggests that racism against African American and Muslim students is tolerable, a mere breach of courtesy (or “incivility”), while political protest of a state that has been condemned by impartial observers for war crimes and practices is unacceptable and subject to the severest sanctions.
As we write, additional incidents have come to light which clearly indicate a climate of racial hostility at UCSD, including “a student…[having] trash thrown on her in the residence hall,” “students [being] intimidated in large lecture courses” that count one or two African American students amidst four or five hundred, and “off-campus incidents in restaurants and other public spaces.”  [Reported by Daniel Widener, professor of history at UCSD in a press interview: http://www.democracynow.org/2010/3/1/following_string_of_racist_incidents_uc].  As Widener aptly states, the university has recognized that there [is] a problem, but it has yet to commit itself fully to implementing the kinds of solutions that have been laid out” by repeated efforts of students and faculty.
The racist incidents at UC San Diego took place on a campus where the enrollment of African American students has declined to 1.3% of the student body and in a state-wide university where the total number of African American students amounts to a mere 3.34%.  These numbers are not accidental, but arise from a long-standing failure on the part of the administration to engage in desegregation of California’s higher education.  Thus, in addition to addressing appropriately the aforementioned incidents, we urge the UC system to fulfill its expressed mission of diversity (http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/diversity/diversity.html), and to follow the suggestions provided by Widener and others:  to “commit itself to allocating resources, funding students, scholarships for students, outreach and yield, and the kinds of things that would produce a student body, a population, reflective of our state, reflective of the diversity of our state, and where the students would not feel outnumbered.”
                                                                                                                                                      The replacement of the language of desegregation with “affirmative action” and then “excellence and diversity” has consistently sent the message that it is normal for white students to be at the UC campuses, whereas Black, Latino, and Native students must be there by special permission.  The language of “ungrateful n—-s” merely vocalizes in a more explicit and ugly way the attitude that is in fact materialized in the UC’s admissions policies.  In face of such facts, the attempt to confront such acts of racist intimidation with an appeal to the civilized “principles and values of this University” becomes risible.  By the same token, the imputation that protest against the state of Israel, which maintains a highly segregated society and which has placed all possible obstacles in the way of Palestinian education, is tantamount to anti-Semitism constitutes no less a double standard. The accusation pretends to promote tolerance but in fact discriminates against the feelings, opinions and right to expression not only of Muslim students but equally of many who are outraged by the actions of a state and do not conflate them with an ethnic or religious group.  That the Muslim Student Union at UCI is coming under sustained attack both from within and from without the university again merely vocalizes a set of prejudices that the UC’s own administrative actions and statements implicitly endorse.
California Scholars for Academic Freedom condemn this double standard on the part of the administration of the UC system.   Rather than condemn a handful of students on the prejudicial grounds of “incivility”, the UC’s administration must face up to its own delinquencies on the matter of racial justice and equal access to higher education.  We thus call for the University of California as a whole to investigate the ways in which its recent responses have been complicit with larger forces of structural racism in the state of California and the nation at large.  We believe the UC system must be held accountable as an institution in whose academic cultures racism is erupting precisely because it has not adequately responded to calls for racial and social justice. 

Sincerely yours,

California Scholars for Academic Freedom***

Contact Information: 

George Lakoff, Goldman Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics UC Berkeley lakoff@berkeley.edu

Nancy Gallagher, Chair, Middle East Studies Program, Professor of History, UC Santa Barbara Gallagher@history.ucsb.edu  Phone:  805-893-20991.


**CALIFORNIA SCHOLARS FOR ACADEMIC FREEDOM is a three-year-old group of  more than 150 academics who teach in over 20 California educational institutions. The group formed as a response to a rash of violations of academic freedom that were arising from both the post-9/11/2001 climate of  civil rights violations and to the increasing attacks on progressive educators by neo-conservatives. Many attacks were aimed at scholars of Arab, Muslim or Middle Eastern descent or at scholars researching  and teaching about the Middle East, Arab and Muslim communities. Our goal of protecting California Scholars based mainly in institutions of higher education has grown broader in scope. We recognize that violations of academic freedom anywhere are threats to academic  freedom everywhere.
P.S.  Below we have included only a few websites which contain articulate and thoughtful statements about the recent UC campus events.  We invite you to read them.****

****http://stopracismucsd.wordpress.com/2010/02/23/open-letter-from-prof-yang/ [UCI’s  Henry Yang]
http://utotherescue.blogspot.com/2010/02/administrations-time-place-and-manner.html  [UCLA’s Michael Meranze]
January 27, 2010, when students disrupted the talk of Lord Goldstone at Yale, they were not arrested or expelled.  And they even followed him to the wine and cheese reception and were allowed to keep hounding him to his face.
See article:

http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/group.php?gid=296764351034 [letter by UCI’s Rei Terada]

http://occupyuci.wordpress.com/2010/02/26/the-hypocrisy-of-the-uc/  [The analysis in this piece keenly diagnoses the institutional problem]


The UC Center for New Racial Studies has posted a statement about UC racism and educational justice:

http://newracialstudies.wordpress.com/2010/03/01/cnrs-statement-racism-in-the-uc-system/

L.A. Times Editorial:  latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-ucsd2-2010mar02,0,4102439.story

 









Thursday, March 18, 2010

Continuation of "Whom Do You Tolerate"

But what does it mean to paint all these incidents as expressions of “intolerance”? And by extension to call for “tolerance” of and by all members of the University community?  Better for the most part to be tolerant than not, to be sure, though is it really, always, better to be tolerated? If this is the way the University is seeking to manage its diversity--for that’s what tolerance is really, a managerial modality--we may be in deeper trouble than we perhaps realize.

To say that the racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, and homophobic incidents at UCSD, at Davis and UCSC are cases of intolerance is to imply that that those engaged in these expressions are saying awful things to and about people they reject.  To call for tolerance is to address only the awful things they are saying, not the underlying and implicit rejection. It addresses the symptom, not the underlying condition of which the individual utterances are merely the manifestation. We should not say such things, it implies, even about people we find or whose behavior or culture we find unacceptable.

We may not want certain folks around, for whatever reason, but we should put up with them, or at least not express our dislike or distaste for their presence. That’s what it means to tolerate.  To be intolerant is to violate the injunction to accept about one people with whom one disagrees, to prevent them from expressing themselves, to exclude those one finds abhorrent for whatever reason, or ridiculous, or unacceptable. That’s what the language of tolerance amounts to. It leaves in place the lack of understanding, the insensitivities, the set stereotypes and prejudices, the total lack of understanding or worse yet the couldn’t-care-less attitude about others. I don’t have to, I don’t want to know you. Or I know you all too well. But I am willing to have you around because tolerance suggests we’d be better for it, better that is more for having the largesse than any actual benefits from your actually being around. Tolerance, then, is more about me, the one tolerating, than about you, the tolerated. Tolerance, in short, is self-centrist more than it is openness to others because one is curious about them or genuinely committed to the virtues of heterogeneity.

But there is another context to which we must remain attentive. Tolerance, the attitude and indeed culture that the administration seems to be calling for, is one expressed always from a position of relative power. I don’t like you, I don’t like your culture, but I’ll put up with you because I’m in a position to do so. You can come in here, to what is presumptively my place but not yours, because I am big enough to have you around. Just don’t get too comfortable because you are here at our (or at least my) largesse. 

Too strong?  Well ask the tolerated—those repeatedly reminded that they are “minorities,” in power as much as in brute numbers—if they are cool with “being tolerated”. Please tolerate me, even while you think I don’t belong here? As opposed to what? Having equal standing? Being taken seriously for what one is, stands for, has been through? Having an unquestioned equal place, having one’s views as accepted or as critically assessed as anyone else’s on their own terms, not on the basis of who the majority may think is expressing them? Curious, isn’t it, revealing that the only ones calling for tolerance in such circumstances are those who are in power in any case. Those excluded, those lacking power or standing never ask for tolerance; they demand rights, recognition, equality, empowerment.

Considered against this background, we can question also the all too quick insistence on the part of President Yudof and other University administrators that the case of the Irvine 11 belongs in the same category as the racist expressions on the San Diego, Davis, Santa Cruz and UCLA campuses. Here, the dominant view would have it, the Irvine 11 were intolerant of the Israeli ambassador when he spoke on campus, refusing to allow him to speak unhindered.  If speech is sacrosanct—well, clearly not all speech but speech properly expressed at a time, in a place and in a manner appropriate—then disrupting such speech is intolerant. And, paradoxically, we should be intolerant of this intolerance.

Surely, however, there are deeply relevant distinctions to be drawn between the  expressions of the Irvine 11, on the one hand, and the racist, anti-Semitic, and homophobic expressions of students on the other campuses, by contrast.  In the latter case, judgment was being passed on having the objects of the expression around. We don’t want you here, the racists et al are saying; you don’t belong here, you are not welcome. And you are not welcome for who we take you by nature to be, because you are not one of, not like “us”.  The Irvine 11, by contrast, were not making any claim about the nature of people, they expressed no view about all Jews, say, or even about Israelis. They were trying to call attention to the deadly practices of the Israeli state for which the speaker of the day, Ambassador Oren, stands and speaks. The attempt may have been bungling; in the end, it has been profoundly ineffective, making the “appropriateness” of their intervention the focus rather than the  practices of the Israeli state to which they were wanting to call attention.  But they were precisely not expressing a judgment about a group on the basis of its supposed nature; they were admonishing a state for practices of indiscriminate killing of people, including relatives of some of those protesting. They were not, in short, being intolerant; they were being political.

The indiscriminate charges of “intolerance” obscure these pressing distinctions. Moreover they obscure, with deeply unfortunate effect, the state, social, and institutional relations of power that abject the most vulnerable groups. Thus, to date, only the Irvine 11 have been arrested and likely charged, ironically for disturbing the peace (how intolerant can you get?), while protesting Israeli violations of human rights and international law. While the history of discrimination against Muslim students and those subject to discriminatory attack on the San Diego, Davis, and Santa Cruz campuses warrant their institutional protection, University administrators seem incapable of extending the very tolerance for which they call generously to the students they find least tolerable. It turns out that the power to tolerate is also the power not to.

Though UCSD’s Chancellor Fox may have been slow and far too cautious in initially responding to the racist expressions on her campus, perhaps those UC  administrators less generous towards the Irvine 11 would do well to take their lead  from her in calling not for tolerance but for a commitment to “mutual respect”. Respect predicates itself  on a presumption of equality, of recognizing the standing of others.  If we start from that premise rather than from one of tolerance, what follows is the figuring out of what sort of knowledge about others, about other histories and cultures, ways of being and struggles is needed for full respect to be recognized. That would entail a significant set of changes across the entire curriculum, profound shifts in pedagogical practice and content, as the multiracial coalition of UCSD students, staff, and faculty courageously committed to transforming the climate have so insightfully insisted. It entails reversing the drumbeat march to a technocratic professionalism and a much more centralized role for the social sciences, humanities, and arts in addressing civic literacies for all students than has been the recent trend. Not ethics by the numbers or mandatory tolerance training by some silly time-wasting online program one can click through just to satisfy state mandates. The coalitional challenge is a very different register than the power, and the powerlessness, of tolerance. It’s one we’d do well  to take up across the entire University system.

Irvine, California

Friday, March 12, 2010

Schwartz--Pitts Exchange on Lack of Open Discussion At UCOF

Knocking on the Door of the UC Commission on the Future
by Charles Schwartz, UC Berkeley, March 12, 2010

Email correspondence with Lawrence Pitts
Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs
University of California, Office of the President

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December 4, 2009
Larry;

In an earlier conversation you mentioned that many people come before the University leadership to complain, but have no proposals to offer.

Attached is my latest work, A Better PLAN for the Future of the University of California, which was formally submitted to the Commission Working Groups yesterday. I hope you will find it worthy of serious consideration.

Best,

Charlie
----------------------------------
December 14, 2009
Lawrence Pitts,
Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs
University of California Office of the President

Dear Larry;

With the previous email (below) I sent you a copy of my proposal submitted to the Gould Commission: "A Better PLAN for the Future of the University of California." I would now like to request that this be posted on the Commission's web site at www.ucop.edu for all interested people to find and read.

There is now a page for "Presentations", where it might fit in; or you could create a new page for "Proposals Received". In any case I do not ask this as a singular privilege but rather as a proper means of fulfilling the stated purpose of that Commission - namely, to solicit creative ideas from all across the University.

Sincerely,

Charlie
Charles Schwartz
Professor Emeritus
UC Berkeley
--------------------------------
December 14, 2009
Charlie - thanks for sending me the proposal previously - I've shared it with some of the staff of the working groups to put before their chairs, and the whole working groups if they choose.

And I agree that we need a place for proposals such as yours - and think a new spot would be better than adding it to "presentations". I'll work on that and let you know.

Thanks for keeping me in the loop.

Happy Holidays. Larry
---------------------------------------
January 22, 2010
Larry;

A little while ago I asked whether substantial proposals submitted to the UC Commission on the Future (such as my own "A Better Plan..") might be posted on the Commission's ucop web site, for all to see. You replied that you would look into this idea. Has there been a decision?

Charlie
--------------
January 28, 2010
Charlie - thanks for reminding me. Your earlier query got lost in the murk of past e-mails, and my memory is limited. We are indeed creating a place on the Commission website for "external submissions" (for lack of a better name) and will be pleased to put on that site. So please send me what you'd like to have put there.

Best wishes. Larry
-------------------------
January 28, 2010
Larry;

Attached is the piece you asked about.

Regards,

Charlie
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January 28, 2010
Charlie - thanks. We'll post it as soon as the Communications people get the web site addition active. Larry
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Subject: Re: the Commission
Date: Tue, 16 Feb 2010 15:19:00 -0800
From: Charles Schwartz
To: Lawrence Pitts
CC: gshafir@ucsd.edu, lmlowe@ucsd.edu

Provost Lawrence Pitts
Dear Larry;

I hope you will be able, soon, to implement the idea of posting significant independent contributions on the web site of the UC Commission on the Future.

There has recently appeared a paper by two faculty members at UCSD (G. Shafir and L. Lowe) which is undoubtedly worthy of being placed up there, too.

Best,

Charlie Schwartz
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March 11, 2010
Larry;

Is it still your plan to have these other papers posted on the
Commission's web site, or has that idea been squashed?

Charlie
----------------------------
March 11, 2010
Charlie - I think the plan is for any submissions that someone (you) wants to send to the "Commission web site" will be sent on to the appropriate workgroup(s). Larry
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March 11, 2010
Larry;

Thank you for clarifying that there will be NO posting of such external submissions on the Commission's web site.

That is indeed a change from your earlier responses. It shows that the Commission is much more tightly controlled from above than was implied in the earlier pronouncements (from Yudof and Gould) about openness and welcoming of broad discourse.

Regards,

Charlie
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Monday, March 8, 2010

Students Disrupt Washington Legislature with Song

Students disrupt Washington State Legislature with song to protest budget cuts on March 4th.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ojNkOPkftw

"College students took to the state Capitol on Thursday to protest against deep cuts in education funding.The students from Evergreen State College went into the Capitol building and sang, interrupting legislators on the floor.
Sen. Mike Carrell was speaking was speaking on the floor, discussing House Joint Resolution 4220, when he was gaveled quiet amid the noise from the gallery. The students were warned and the Sergeant at Arms began escorting some of the students out. Marches, strikes, teach-ins and walkouts were planned nationwide in what was being called the March 4th National Day of Action for Public Education."

LYRICS:

Amazing Grace no longer flows,
Dammed up by greed so crude.
I once could eat, but now I find
I cant afford the food.

The bright young minds of our country
Now wake to meet their doom;
So why should we apply to school,
When close ahead lies gloom?

What will we say in years ahead
When strewn across the land
Are wretches poor in heart and soul,
By greedy robbers damned?

Remember, Aristocracy
Made bank from others toil.
I say we have the right to fruits
We've grown on Natures soil.

Aloud, lament all ye who hope
To have a better life;
If our priorities don't change
We all will end in strife.

Awaken Creativity,
and doom we may waylay!
Lets make a plan while we still can
And birth a better day!

Friday, March 5, 2010

South Africa Education Protests March 4th

Student protests erupt at university
"Water cannons, rocks, burning tyres and running battles between rioting students and the police occurred on Thursday at the University of Johannesburg's Bunting Road campus...."


Students march for free varsity education

Police use force against protesting S.Africa students

More March 4 Protest Coverage

Angry US students protest cuts to higher education--Associated Press

Coverage of education protests in US--Al Jazeera
Rowdy protests target funding cuts at US campuses--Associated Press
   
Day Of Action: TOP MOMENTS--Huffington Post

Campus Activism across CA (March 4)--Daily Cal


Editorial Daily Cal: Seeing Beyond UC

Daily Cal Slide shows 

Berkeley/Oakland

Sacramento

San Francisco

Thursday, March 4, 2010

The paleographer and the managers: a tale of modern times

by Iain Pears

Is a novelist, historian and has studied the rise of management since his days as a financial correspondent for Reuters.


Proposals for draconian cuts of academic staff at King's College London -- including the dismissal of David Ganz, Britain's last professor of Palaeography --  have justly aroused condemnation from the world of academia and beyond, not only for their savagery, but for the way they are being implemented.

The cuts themselves do not offer much room for manoeuvre. Protesting too much would be counter-productive, as it could too easily be characterised as the special pleading of the ivory tower brigade, unwilling to live in the real world. Universities in general are going to have to put up with hard times over the next few years.

But how those cuts are made and where they fall is another matter entirely. In this area not only is a fight justifiable, it is vital. King's is among the first, and is certainly the most prominent, to wield the axe. It may become the model for others if it proceeds unchallenged.

The powers that be there seem to taking their cues from a chapter on bullying in the Modern Manager's Handbook. Staff are being required to reapply for their own jobs -- the unspoken (but obvious) concern being that any who protest unduly may find that their reapplication is viewed with disfavour.

They will be reappointed not because of the importance of their subject, but more because of how much money they earn for King's and according to their "confirmed future output" and "esteem indicators."  At no stage so far has anyone outside a narrow band of managers and the most senior academics been consulted; decisions were presented with no alternatives and little real chance of serious amendment.

These are the distasteful tactics normally associated with the call centre or sweat-shop. They are surprising, to say the least, when they come from an institution which is supposed to be a bastion of free and independent critical thought.

Why does it matter? Because it represents a surrender at the highest level (and you don't get much higher than King's) to the powers of management in a sector once known for its reliance on co-operation, goodwill and institutional accountability. 

This transformation of Higher Education has been going on for some while, beginning with the reforms of Margaret Thatcher (taking away of tenure, institution of assessment exercises  that stressed quantity rather than quality, the erosion of the powers of university senates). These changes, and the target-based culture of Labour, resulted in the emergence of a new and powerful managerial elite whose success at moving into the universities and taking them over has been extraordinary.

Certainly the managers have been as efficient as MPs and BBC Talent (and much more discreet) at finding ways of diverting public money into their own hands.

Whereas academic salaries have risen slowly in the last couple of decades (although much less than the number of students), pay at the top has rocketed.

The average vice-chancellor now earns nearly three times as much as a professor, much more than the prime minister and more than the average private sector chief executive. The Principal of King's, Rick Trainor, had a pay package which rose to £312,000 in 2008/9 from £292,000 the year before and £250,000 in 2006/7. His predecessor made do on £186,000 in 2002. While one person at King's earned more than £150,000 in 2001/2, this had risen to 79 in 2009.

Keeping palaeography alive by cutting back on the generosity to senior staff does not appear to be an option for discussion, although reducing Professor Trainor's package to a mere quarter of a million would help out, and a 5 per cent cut in take-home pay for the top 79 earners would produce more than a million pounds, enough for several departments of palaeographers.

Equally, there has also been a massive increase in the resources consumed by the administration.

While King's is proposing to cut 22 jobs from the Humanities, it is simultaneously advertising for two senior management positions (salary up to £85,000) to administer a "strategic plan to deliver a world class Asset Management Programme of Campus based services." And an applications analyst ("results oriented") to support the College's "enterprise business applications." And a Distance Learning Administrator. And a head of Principal Gift Development who must also, of course, be "target-driven and ambitious."

Professor Trainor has an executive team with all the managerial bling of a fully-fledged multi-national, complete with two executive officers and a Chief information officer.  There is also a public relations department, an external relations directorate, a marketing department, a quality assurance unit, a corporate design unit (which "protects the brand"), a corporate services section, and on, and on.

According to the College's own accounts, administrative costs rose to £33.5 million in 2009 from £28.5 million the year before -- a rise of 17.5 per cent and more than twice as fast as the rise in cost of academic departments. In 2003, administration cost £16.5 million -- making a 103 per cent rise over the six years.

To give a comparison, King's is now proposing to decimate the Humanities to save £2.4 million. This will claw back less than half of the increase in administrative expenses for 2009 alone.

Anyone who finds it surprising that King's should be getting rid of teachers while simultaneously recruiting administrators does not understand that universities (in the eyes of both vice-chancellors and ministers) are no longer institutions of learning. They are part of a nationalised industry, and increasingly behave like one.

They have, moreover, become vehicles for a bureaucratic technocracy to advance its own interests, in the way described by Milovan Djilas in 1957 when he analysed the rise of the "New Class" in communist states.

In this new set-up, everything -- and particularly the idea of the university, a place where all knowledge should be promoted in a place of mutual esteem, and where association of differing disciplines can stimulate fruitful new ideas, where knowledge is to be protected as well as advanced --  can be jettisoned whenever necessary.

In its place comes the short-term vision of the speculator. Along with palaeography, all the humanities (and even subjects like theoretical physics) are now being nationally targetted as unproductive; indeed anything which does not have a measurable pay-off in the short-term is under threat.

Curiously, this is not something which necessarily meets great approval in the business community. The best businessman are those who can think widely and critically, who value independence of thought.

The senior managers of universities often do not possess such breadth or imagination. Rather, they have rushed to adopt the horizons and language of the mediocre manager. Take this extract from the 2006 King's Strategy: "As part of the new performance culture within King's, the administration has been re-badged Professional Services... we understand the importance of professionally delivered enabling services in realising our vision..."

Many of the people writing this nonsense are ex-academics, who often behave with the zeal of the converted, using ever more inpenentrable jargon to signal their new allegiance.

But the jargon has its own meaning. The internal paper on the cuts states its wish to "create financially viable academic activity by disinvesting from areas that are at sub-critical level."

Although it seems to have been written by a semi-literate, the sentence is telling in that it reveals a total absence of desire to protect areas of expertise which might be vulnerable. Instead, that vulnerability is the justification for destruction.

If academics accept such premises, and try to argue back in terms of economic relevance, they are doomed. There is no way to demonstrate that the study of Voltaire or Milton or palaeography is of any use whatsoever once the argument is defined by such language, any more than you can justify curiosity or imagination or the ability to think and argue.

In the past couple of decades many have learnt to parrot out the language of efficiency and transparency, of output and relevance, of competitive bidding and market share, of metrics and impact, without seeming to realise that it meant accepting also the assumptions underlying these terms.

Modern managerial practice, after all, was developed in the US army in the Second World War, then adapted by think-tanks for civilian life.  What its wholesale adoption amounted to was a militarisation of the organisations it invaded -- with its hierarchies, chains of command and line managers.

It was by definition incompatible with non-hierarchical institutions like universities, (and has been generally rejected by companies like Google, which value a more egalitarian ethos). So the universities had to be forced to change. They were reshaped to fit management doctrine, not the other way around.

This process is now well-advanced. But if these proposed cuts are challenged -- if palaeographers are defended by social scientists, scientists, as well as teachers in the humanities; if lecturers from other institutions protest as well -- if, in sum, academics rally to defend the integrity of their profession as a whole, rather than looking only to their own position and advantage -- then some good might come out of it all.

They might even remember that once the administrators were there to serve the institution, not to be its masters, and insist on taking that responsibility back into their own hands.

But if they do not-- if they keep their heads down, sacrifice other people's jobs in the hope of keeping their own, if senior professors identify with the managers rather than with their colleagues -- then the game will be over for good.

King's, certainly, will be badly damaged, for such institutions depend above all on the unquantifiable factors of co-operation and cameraderie to prosper. The "brand" which it so zealously tries to commercialise will be tarnished for a very long time.

But British academics in general will end up as mere drudge workers in the knowledge economy, doomed to follow every fad and command which comes down from on high.



Sources:
King's paper on proposed cuts

King's Strategy plan, 2006-16

King's accounts, 2003-2009

Continuation of "A Very White Day at the University of California"

Continuation of first page

The Berkeley protests against fee increases and budget cuts were met fairly early on by police action.  The police intervention preceded the widely reported and ill-conceived damage of property late at night to the Chancellor’s home.  That damage followed police breaking up the sleep-in under contested conditions after campus negotiations broke down, with little police notice and perhaps some rhetorical student provocation in the very early hours of a morning at Wheeler Hall after assurances had been given to the students--who were largely peaceful even while engaged in the protesting sleep-in—that they would be allowed to stay.

The UCI MSU protests have been widely reported, including a well-circulated YouTube video.  Student after student disrupted the Ambassador’s speech even after being warned they would be arrested.  Each stood up at some minutes’ interval, yelled out, and then peacefully left the hall under police escort, handcuffed and booked on charges of “disturbing the peace”.  The University has argued repeatedly that their actions were not protected by the First Amendment, that they embarrassed the University, would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law but that it was up to the District Attorney to decide whether to press charges. A number of faculty has protested this unfortunate strategy and the lack of thoughtful intervention in letters and emails to the administration, to no avail thus far. Senior administrators seem to be responding, perhaps understandably, to a concern that the University may lose private contributions if it did not take a hard line.  While there has been an occasional threat by individual donors to end an individual donation as a result of the Oren disruptions, most donors concerned with these issues have in fact written that they are open to helping out in whatever way would be deemed most useful, an offer that seems to hint more at seeking thoughtful dialogue than prosecution.

On the La Jolla campus, the University response has been all over the map.  The fraternity members hosting the racist theme party seem to have evaded direct action on grounds that they do not fall under the direct jurisdiction of the campus administration.  So free expression reigns for racist actions by students of the University so long as not doing it directly in the University name or on their dime or directly on University property. The student radio station seeking to justify the racist expression of the student party led to the suspension by the University of all 33 student based media outlets on campus while policies are reviewed.  So effectively reputable and responsible student groups with absolutely no connection to these expressions are paying a price equal to the violating radio outlet itself. And this as the President of the University, Mark Yudof, calls explicitly and volubly for upholding free speech as the central core of a university even as he equally strenuously supports the UCI administration’s determination that the Muslim Students Union disruptive speech is unprotected by the First Amendment.  At the same time, UCSD has suspended the senior who admitted hanging the library noose, but not her two accomplices as “investigation continues,” and it has pointedly refrained from prosecuting anyone for “disrupting the peace,” let alone threatening it or with the intent to terrorize, which California law characterizes as a misdemeanor.

The UCSD administration response to the concerns expressed about the history of racism on campus and the dismal record of the University in attracting and retaining African descended and Latino students and faculty has been to hold a town hall meeting for the campus, to sponsor a teach-in on racism, to condemn racist expression, and to leave undisrupted campus sit-ins this last Friday of the University administration offices. They have yet to respond to student and faculty demands. Due to continue on Monday it remains to be seen how long the Administration occupation will be left to linger unhindered.

What, then, can be drawn from this admittedly partial set of descriptions?  First, distinctions matter. Others have pointed out that the UCI case is about free speech and its disruptions. The Berkeley events are part of a longstanding tradition at universities generally, and across UC in particular, of protesting diminishing support for higher education.  The UCSD events are all about racisms, their long lingering ground conditions in the academy and across UC as well as the incapacity of the University to have the comprehension or the courage to address the simmering concerns. The fact that a senior a quarter away from graduating can go through almost four years of college and be able to claim that she failed to realize the symbolic and material implications of a hanging noose in this country says as much about the failure of university education—our collective malaise on racial matters—as it does about the young students’ lack of character.  That the UCSD administration seems so readily to have swallowed her excuse says something about their naïveté  too; after all, if she didn’t know what she was doing—if she didn’t intend to harm, as the usual defense would go—why on earth did she hang the damned thing, and in a library no less.

The University generally wants to uphold its commitment to academic freedom and free speech. “A university is a special place for the exchange of views and ideas,” Mark Yudof has stated in response to recent events. And UCSD’s Chancellor Fox adds, “The remedy for dangerous, offensive, or extreme speech is more speech, not less.” Except when it isn’t, when the speech isn’t quite the right kind or expressed by quite the right folks, or expressing quite the right views.  Witness Irvine. Or Berkeley. It doesn’t help to  hide behind the First Amendment constraints because of course the law need only be invoked to curtail or prosecute or protect or promote one side or set of views over another, as convenience and commitment prevail.  

As a private university Yale is considerably less bound by First Amendment considerations to protect free speech than the University of California. And yet at a recent talk by Richard Goldstone at Yale he was hounded by Israeli supporters throughout his speech, in the question period after, even pursued and shouted at on his way to and at the reception following his talk.  Yale officials did not apologize (at least publicly), did nothing to curtail the offensive and disruptive interventions by his critics and opponents, and no outcry about civility or protecting balanced exchange has been heard (for the record, while his report of the Gaza invasion has been scathing of Israel, Justice Goldstone is hardly one who has not expressed support for the country over the years). (Thanks to Paul Amar, UCSB, for the reference.)  Edward Said, I am told, suffered a similar fate in the final talk he gave at UCLA not long before his passing with no expression of concern from the University of any sort. If the University is going to be bothered by incivility it would at the very least be more believable if it showed a modicum of evenhandedness and consistency across place, time and people rather than condemning some outbursts or protests while turning a blind eye to others depending on the viewpoint expressed.

Second, it seems that the University generally responds to expressions of concern or protests about issues of passionate and justifiable concern and conviction with a degree of impatience that is more often than not breathtaking.  This has a long history. Expressions to the contrary notwithstanding, the University has a long history of intolerance of disruption and protest it finds uncomfortable.  The breaking of the Berkeley promise about the sleep-in is far from the first time violent police response has been the default. Think of the Free Speech movement.  The student in the UCLA library last year didn’t have to be tasered, the UCSC student, African American as it happens, protesting budget cuts a couple of years ago didn’t have to be suspended for a year or more,  the Irvine 11 don’t have to be prosecuted and indeed didn’t have to be arrested to begin with.

I went to college in South Africa in the mid-1970s.  There was an agreement between the university establishment and the state that the police would not be allowed on campus unless called for by university administrators. I fully understand the conditions that made such an arrangement possible at that time, and the differences—not complete, of course—between then and there and here and now. Occasionally viciously violated by the police at the time to dampen protest and arrest anti-apartheid organizers, nevertheless a campus like the University of Cape Town was generally patient, tolerant, even supportive of student sit-ins, loud protests, a university-wide disruption and a closing down or two. Such events became part of the campus landscape , of the learning ecology and experience.  We might take a leaf out of that book.

We are an educational institution, not a criminal justice one.  Our commitment is—should be—to educate first and last, not to prosecute where really unnecessary, to inform in the sense both of providing information and forming dispositions to make wise judgments in the face of every sort of challenge.  Where we don’t we have failed, our mission, ourselves. Where our default is the impatience of discipline and prosecution we are no longer an educational institution but a correctional one.  No wonder Governor Schwarzenegger is finally so at ease switching prison dollars for higher education ones. While we may welcome it,  I am suggesting this might give us some pause. Interestingly, the five principal Jewish student groups on the Irvine campus get what the campus administration has failed to comprehend;  they have called, in the name of committing to education, for more dialogue with MSU members rather than their prosecution. Sometimes, the University administration should listen to and learn from  our students.

This would be the case also with regards to the long history of racism, the exclusions, intimidations, hostilities and inhospitality towards many student, staff and faculty of color across the University. The UCSD events did not happen in a vacuum, they were not the anomaly of a misguided few.  The events are deeply undergirded by stereotypes of incapacity, of failure to comprehend or insist upon what it would take to turn these conditions around, commission after commission, study after study, recommendation after recommendation  notwithstanding.  At most every campus across the system. At the University of the Orange Free State in South Africa, a major bastion of segregated education and social conditions and the ideas underpinning them during the apartheid years,  about a year or so ago white students horrified much of the country by urinating in the food of black women cleaning staff and  then forcing the women to eat it.  Jonathan Jansen, the new  and first black Rector at the University, assuming the position after the event, took considerable risk (not to mention heat) by refusing to pursue the prosecution of the young men. Instead, he consigned them to cleaning the university bathrooms for a considerable period, so they might learn “the dignity of labor.” At the same time he raised considerable funding to promote racial diversification of the faculty at the highest levels of the professoriate.  That takes courage, in the circumstances, and exhibits the sort of leadership we could do with here.

Expressing horror at the event, UCSD Chancellor Fox called the noose incident “truly a dark day in the history of this university”  No, Chancellor Fox, given this history, given the repetition of like incidents, it is not a very dark day, even as one understands the recourse to cliché here. It is, alas, an all too white day. A day even the response to which surfaces and reproduces the easy continuation of the structural conditions of presumptive white privilege. (To say this emphatically is not to condemn whites, all or even any particular individual, as is too often assumed. Rather, it is to call into question the prevailing structures of power and privilege that reproduce these conditions and events. Whiteness, like blackness, on this understanding, is a structural positioning historically linked but not reducible to phenotype.) It is a day that in the absence of commitment and conviction, institutional courage and address, again and again, happens all too often. And no doubt will happen again, with similar handwringing,  inconsistency, and embarrassment. We can surely do better, for our students, for ourselves, this time and next.

Back to blog

University of Washington NO BUDGET CUTS Info and Demands

March 4th Student Strike Against Budget Cuts

Part of the National Day of Action to Defend Public Education

1 PM on the Quad at UW-Seattle: Rally and picket lines begin

Facebook Page (invite your friends!):

*MEDIA UPDATE BELOW!


The Washington State Labor Council has promoted this striketo its networks. The call to action has been aired on KOMO News, KING 5, among other media outlets.

WFSE 1488, SEIU 925 and UAW 4121, labor unions on UW campus, have all endorsed the student strike. This strike will be a historical moment  to mark the beginning of a long fight. This will show the power of student and worker solidarity to fight the cuts that hurt ALL OF US! Not just in WA state, but across the country! WE WILL NOT PAY FOR THOSE WHO CREATED THIS ECONOMIC CRISIS. NOT ON THE BACKS OF WORKERS AND STUDENTS!

At the University of Washington  is facing massive budget cuts which means tuition hikes, cuts to financial aid, and overcrowded classrooms for students.

It means layoffs, overwork, dangerous working conditions, furloughs, health care cuts, and union busting for workers. 

On March 4th we will fight back to defend our education and our jobs! Students and workers across the country and around the world will be striking on that day, responding to a call emerging from the mass movement against budget cuts in California. Activists in some California cities are even organizing to build for city-wide strikes and actions on the 4th!

Here at UW we have tried rallying several times and it hasn't been enough to stop the cuts. It's time we up the ante by showing the legislators in Olympia that there will be no more business as usual on our campus as long as they try to balance the budget at our expense!

It's also time we show Mark Emmert and the Board of Regents that UW is not for sale to corporations. The budget cuts are no excuse for targeting cuts towards custodians and other immigrant workers, working class students, students of color, women, and queer folks. We need to fight to make sure that UW is open and accessible for ALL people regardless of income!

Strikes are an effective form of struggle and have won concrete victories in California. By walking out of a class students show that this school cannot run without our daily cooperation. We feel our collective power. By setting up picket lines we will try to convince other students to skip class once so that our classes and our classmates will even be here next year!  We hope this will inspire more people to join the struggle and will be one step among many toward building the kind of mass movement we need to actually stop these cuts.

Workers at UW, community members, and high school students are all coming out to the picket lines in solidarity with each other.  Workers, if you cannot walk out or strike, try to take an hour or two of vacation time so you can attend. Students will be striking not only for our own demands but for those of workers, high school students, and anyone else affected by budget cuts!

 Washington Federation of State Employees Local 1488 voted to support this strike.  WFSE Local 1488 is the union that represents thousands of workers and staff members at UW and Harborview.  Rank and File WFSE members, especially custodians,  have been at the forefront of the struggle against budget cuts and many will be standing in solidarity with students on the picket lines.  UAW Local 4121 (TAs, RAs, and tutors), and SEIU 925 (office workers and administrative staff) have also endorsed the student strike, and rank and file grad student workers are at the forefront of organizing it.

This action is called by the UW Student - Worker Coalition, an alliance of undergrad, worker, and grad student organizations that has come together to fight the cuts.


PRESS CONTACTS:

Michelle Woo 626 688 0015
Jennifer Fletcher 206 909 3665
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MORE INFO:

For regular updates about the anti-budget cuts struggle at UW

MEDIA UPDATES:
Campus rallies for higher ed funding this Thursday
http://www.mynorthwest.com/?nid=11&sid=292004
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/416046_UWPICKET1.html
http://www.kuow.org/program.php?current=WK1

For videos of past protests against budget cuts, go to the "dinsurg" channel on youtube. For example, check out, and also


Check out the National March 4th Day of Action facebook event page
and the website here:


Check out the publication "We Are All Workers", an analysis of budget cuts at UW that includes writings by custodians and other workers as well as working class UW students, high school students, and others

"Whose budget cuts?" pamphlet:

Solidarity with UW campus organizing from activists in California:


UW Daily coverage:

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Student-Worker Coalition's demands:

1) Transparent and democratic budget allocation
2) Cut from the top administrators; cap all salaries at $150000 per year
3) No layoffs
4) No speed ups (extra work) for workers
5) Accessible public education for all
6) Freeze tuition (no tuition hikes)
7) Replace loans with grants


NOTE: If there isn't a critical mass of people the strike will only go on for an hour and we'll go back and organize to make sure the next strike is bigger. But if a lot of people show up with energy we'll take a vote at two to see if people want to keep it going longer. So if you want to make this big, invite all your friends, make announcements in your classes, and let's make this happen!

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Berkeley Senate Committee on Admissions, Enrollment and Preparatory Education's Resolution in Support of March 4th Actions

SENT ON BEHALF OF COMMITTEE ON ADMISSIONS, ENROLLMENT, AND PREPARATORY EDUCATION CHAIR GEORGE JOHNSON


The members of the UC Berkeley's Academic Senate Committee on Admissions, Enrollment and Preparatory Education (AEPE) endorse the Day of Education on March 4, 2010, to include a statewide march on Sacramento that aims to convince legislators from both parties to give the highest priority to public education in California at all levels. For the first time in California's history, all sectors of California's education system -- K-12, community colleges, CSU's and UC's -- will join forces to bring attention to the urgent need for a commitment to public education across the board. We believe education is a matter of the public good and that legislators must act to resume funding levels that will enable the University of California, and all branches of public education, to adequately serve the people of California. As members of AEPE we are specifically concerned about issues of access to, and the affordability of, quality education in California. We realize that strong secondary and community college programs strengthen our efforts to fulfill our enrollment and attainment goals and to maintain the high quality of the education we provide at our research university to the diverse populations of our state.

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Charles Schwartz Invites President Yudof to Debate Administrative Bloat

President Mark Yudof
University of California

Dear Mark;

I have just seen your response to the Sacramento Bee's editorial about administrative bloat at UC; and I want to invite you to join me in a public debate on this important topic.

You may have noticed that the Bee editorial mentioned my name and said I had been studying this question and making complaints to University leaders for some time. That is true. I find your latest piece to be ill informed or deliberately misleading. I cannot say which. And so I think the best way to clarify this important issue - for the benefit of everyone in the University and for all concerned citizens - is for us to engage in an open scholarly debate.

Please suggest a time; and I am sure we can find hospitable accommodations for the event on this campus.

Sincerely,

Charles Schwartz
Professor Emeritus
March 2, 2010

Yudof Responds to Sacramento Bee Editorial on Adminstrative Bloat

Another View By Mark G. Yudof

Growth in non-academic personnel is a tempting target in these days of budgetary shortfalls at universities across the nation.

In the case of the University of California, the inconvenient truth is that virtually all of the growth has been in parts of the system not funded by the state – the medical enterprise, research and auxiliary services.

It’s easy to miss the bull’s-eye by underestimating the scale of the total UC enterprise, as the Sacramento Bee did in a Sunday editorial comparing the pace of administrative growth vs. the growth in enrollment.

During the past decade, the greatest growth in non-academic, full-time-equivalent (FTE) positions has been in teaching hospitals (52 percent of total growth), followed by auxiliary services, such as residence halls and parking services (10 percent) and research (9 percent).

And the system launched the first new public university of the century, UC Merced.

One-fourth of UC employees – and a roughly equal proportion of administrators – work at five medical centers and associated teaching hospitals. The Bee mistakenly lumped these employees together with academic administrators. Similar distinctions should have been made for the research universe.

We can’t move money around. The truth is when we receive a dollar in a research grant or a dollar for patient care, we can’t move it to another account. Making administrative cuts to our medical centers or research enterprises will not yield the desired savings.

There are also misconceptions about the functions performed by managers and senior professionals, who, in addition to managers, include high-level computer programmers, doctors and dentists, nursing supervisors, pharmacists and engineers. This category makes up 5 percent of all FTE.

Ladder-rank faculty represent 9,400 of 14,200 faculty FTE. The editorial left nearly 5,000 instructors out of the equation in comparing administrative roles to faculty.

That said, it’s not wrong to emphasize the need to search vigilantly for administrative efficiencies. As stewards of the University of California, we owe it to the state to look constantly for ways to make the best use of UC resources, and we have been doing so for some time – even before the most recent state funding reductions. For example, the UC Office of the President cut $60 million and 500 employees, and is actively pursuing best practices and efficiencies in information technology, procurement, space management and other administrative categories.

In an institution of this size and scope, there’s always more to do. And we’re on it.

Council of UC Faculty Associations Statement in Support of California Democracy Act

Subject: California Democracy Act Signature Gathering

Dear faculty colleague:

The California Democracy Act is the initiative started by George Lakoff to restore a simple majority requirement for state budget and tax changes. Californians for Democracy are now collecting signatures to get the initiative on the fall statewide ballot.

You can learn more and download a petition for the ballot initiative to at http://www.ca4democracy.com/

You can’t actually sign the petition online. But, if you are a California registered voter, you can print it out, sign it, and mail it in by listing yourself as both signatory and circulator/witness. There is also a version of the form that allows you to add three more signatories. All signatories on a single form must be registered in the same county.

The deadline is April 12. By then 697,000 valid signatures will be needed, but to insure sufficient valid signatures are collected the goal is to collect 1 million signatures.

The Council for UC Faculty Associations endorses the initiative. This signature gathering effort is an opportunity for you to join your colleagues in helping to change the structure of the state legislature so that an intransigent minority will no longer be able to stop all action on the budget.

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This message was sent by: The Council of UC Faculty Associations, 15 Shattuck Square, Suite 200, Berkeley, CA 94704-1151

Monday, March 1, 2010

UCI Faculty in Support of March 4th Events

Dear Colleagues:

March 4 has been declared a national and statewide day of action on education, with protests and marches on Sacramento--in which the UC Regents among others are participating--and local events at UC and CSU campuses to demonstrate the urgency of public commitment to education at every level (K-12, community college, state college, university). Many groups across the state are organizing travel to Sacramento; UCI community members are currently organizing on-campus special classes and speeches. We are writing to encourage you to participate and to allow your students to miss classes without penalty on March 4 so that they can participate.

The UC Berkeley faculty association has issued a statement that includes the following: “For those who have classes on March 4th, canceling or re-scheduling is not a decision taken lightly. However, given the statewide mobilization of teachers, professors and students, we believe that this one day could make a significant difference in the course of California education politics. For those of us who never miss a day of class, this one feels worth it." And the collected department chairs of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at UCSB have written: “We encourage you to participate in whatever ways you can, such as: - Announcing the events in class; - Allowing students to participate in these activities without any penalty; - Teaching about the current crisis in public education."

We urge you to join our colleagues at these and other campuses in support of March 4.

Sincerely,

Dina al-Kassim, Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, Comparative Literature
Elizabeth Allen, Associate Professor of English
Eyal Amiran, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Film & Media Studies
Etienne Balibar, Professor of French and Italian
Victoria Bernal, Associate Professor of Anthropology
Ellen S. Burt, Professor of French and Italian
Kitty Calavita, Professor of Criminology, Law & Society
Marie Cartier, Lecturer in Film and Media Studies
Charles Chubb, Professor of Cognitive Sciences
Elliott Currie, Profssor of Criminology, Law, and Society
Julia Bryan-Wilson, Associate Professor of Art History and Director, Ph.D. Program in Visual Studies
Ken Dumars, Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics, School of Medicine
Julia Elyachar, Assistant Professor of Anthropology
Cynthia Feliciano, Associate Professor of Chicano & Latino Studies and Sociology
Raul Fernandez, Professor of Chicano & Latino Studies
James Fujii, Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures
Alexander Gelley, Professor of Comparative Literature
Gilbert G. Gonzalez, Professor Emeritus of Chicano & Latino Studies
Elizabeth Guthrie, Senior Lecturer in French
Paul Jesilow, Professor of Criminology, Law & Society
Adriana Johnson, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature
Marek Kaminsky, Associate Professor of Political Science
Susan B. Klein, Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures
Brook Haley, Lecturer in Humanities Core
Laura Hyun Yi Kang, Associate Professor and Chair of Women’s Studies
Karen Kim, Lecturer in Women’s Studies
Catherine Liu, Associate Professor of Film & Media Studies and Director, Humanities Institute
Catherine Lord, Professor of Studio Art
Lilith Mahmud, Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies
Laura J. Mitchell, Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, History
Cecelia Lynch, Professor of Political Science and Director, Center for Global Peace and Conflict Studies
Antoinette LaFarge, Associate Professor of Studio Art
Simon Leung, Associate Professor of Studio Art
Carrie J. Noland, Professor of French and Italian
Rachel O’Toole, Assistant Professor of History
Kristin Peterson, Assistant Professor of Anthropology
Kavita Philip, Associate Professor of Women’s Studies and Director, Critical Theory Institute
Shawn Rosenberg, Professor of Political Science and Director, Graduate Program in Political Psychology
Jeanne Scheper, Assistant Professor of Women's Studies
Annette Schlichter, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature
Martin Schwab, Professor of Philosophy
Luis Suarez-Villa, Professor of Planning, Policy, and Design
Rei Terada, Professor of Comparative Literature and Director, Critical Theory Emphasis
Jerome S. Tobis, Professor Emeritus of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation
Deborah Vargas, Assistant Professor of Chicano and Latino Studies
Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Professor of History
Frank Wilderson, Associate Professor of African-American Studies and Drama