Chris's Blog Archives

State-Wide Day of Mobilization: January 19

2012-01-17T12:11:00.000-08:00

1/19 California Statewide Mobilization for UC Regents Meeting At UC Riverside
California Statewide Mobilization for UC Regents Meeting
by Back2Kali

Friday Jan 13th, 2012 4:12 AM
We are writing to have our voices heard and to propose an action against the perpetually inflicted austerity measures and fee hikes rendering ourselves a lost generation. As the disaster capitalists liquidate our means of public education and healthcare, we face the repercussions - rampant unemployment, swollen student debt, prison expansion and a gutted public sector. The harsh reality of the austerity state. Our futures are being mortgaged in order to maintain bloated administrative salaries and the privatization of critical social services across the state, country, and around the world.

In the past decade alone the UC has seen a 342.2% increase in tuition and fees. This trend directly corresponds with a period of exorbitant administrative growth and devastating cuts to instruction, support services and staff, and other critical UC programs. On December 13, 2011 Governor Jerry Brown announced another $100 million in cuts to the UC system, which brings the total to $750 million this fiscal year alone.

The annual fees for attending a UC were $3,859 in 2001-2002; now they are $13,218, and estimated to increase substantially within the next four years. This trend runs completely contradictory to the 1960 CA Master Plan, which calls for tuition-free public higher education in this state. Quality, accessible public higher education is a cornerstone for establishing social and economic equality on local to global levels and as such demands our active support and protection.

Our public institutions of higher education are being actively privatized and glutted by regents, trustees and administrators who are deeply invested in large private business interests. These people and the interests they represent want to continue profiting from a drive to remake our public institutions in the image of private-for-profit models.

We are asking that all of us continue to take a stand and fight back to defend our public institutions against the betrayal of many of those charged with their protection. As the students, faculty, and staff who run California's public colleges and universities, it is our responsibility to assert every day that these are OUR SCHOOLS and that we are not powerless to further the mission of maintaining affordable, accessible and quality public higher education not only in this state, but around the world. An accessible educational experience is important for people everywhere to be able to obtain if they so choose that we might construct a more equitable, just and peaceful world for everyone.

The UC regents are invested with the responsibility of "managing" the UC system. They have insistently refused to engage in constructive dialogue with students, faculty and staff on critical issues that have been repeatedly brought to their attention. Some of them are personal friends and/or business partners of former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger or other influential politicians and that is precisely how they obtained their initial appointment as regents. A vast majority of the current regents have no professional background in public education and a corresponding majority of them maintain direct ties to business interests that seek to develop financially profitable relationships with the UC and other public institutions.

Banks and other corporations get bailed out and we get sold out, time and again. The regents' silence in Sacramento fits the destructive model of privatization that they have in mind for the UC. As part of this agenda, it also fits their interests to raise the salaries of administrators even as they tell the rest of us that we need to "continue making sacrifices."

Enough is enough. We will continue to demand that the UC regents and administrators be held accountable for their actions. Please join us in protest at the regents' next meeting, scheduled to take place at UC Riverside on January 18-19, 2012.

A statewide mobilization against austerity and fee hikes is being called for Thursday, January 19. Students, educators and workers from across the state will be busing in as we continue defend quality and accessible public education. See you on the battlefield.

Sincerely,
Concerned Students, Faculty, Staff and Community Members of UC Riverside

December 14th--Joint Legislative Hearing Agenda

2011-12-22T13:49:00.000-08:00

Joint Informational Hearing
Senate Committee on Education and Assembly Committee on Higher Education UC and CSU Policies, Procedures, and Responses: Campus Police and On-Campus Demonstrations
Wednesday, December 14, 2011 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. John L. Burton Hearing Room 4203

AGENDA
1. Welcome and Hearing Purpose
Are there tools/policies that the Legislature should support or implement to facilitate the effective management of non-violent campus demonstrations, while ensuring freedom of speech, assembly and public safety?
2. “Use of Force” Policies, Procedures, and Responses
• What are the standards/policies/training that govern the “use of force” by law enforcement entities?
• What are the bounds of legal free speech? What is an appropriate police response to nonviolent but illegal activity?
• Are there “best practices” for addressing non-violent campus demonstrations?

Michael Risher, Attorney American Civil Liberties Union
Barbara Attard, Police Practices Consultant, Accountability Associates
Formerly - San Jose Independent Police Auditor Chief Investigator, Berkeley Police Review Commission President, National Association of Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement (NACOLE)
Calvin Handy, Chief of Police, Emeritus University of California, Davis
POST Crowd Management & Civil Disobedience Guidelines
http://lib.post.ca.gov/Publications/CrowdMgtGuidelines.pdf
Headwaters Forest Defense v. County of Humboldt
http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-9th-circuit/1178646.html (long) http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-9th-circuit/1332957.html (short)
Copley Press, Inc. v. Superior Court of San Diego County
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data2/californiastatecases/S128603.PDF (long) http://caselaw.findlaw.com/summary/opinion/ca-supreme-court/2006/08/31/143113.html (short)
3. UC and CSU Systemwide Policies and Procedures
• What systemwide and/or statewide programs/policies/tools are in place to address campus demonstrations?
• Are there systemwide “best practices” for addressing non-violent campus demonstrations?
• In what instances is “use of force” authorized and who makes that determination?
• What systemwide activity is being undertaken in response to recent campus incidents?

University of California
Mark G. Yudof, President
University of California
Charles Robinson, Counsel
University of California
California State University
Dr. Ben Quillian, Executive Vice Chancellor and Chief Business Officer Chancellors’ Office, California State University
Dr. Nate Johnson, Chief Law Enforcement Officer
California State University Systemwide
Universitywide Police Policies and Administrative Procedures

4. Campus Policies and Procedures
• What campus-based programs/policies/tools are in place to address campus demonstrations?
• Are there policies/standards/training in place for campus police to prevent non¬violent demonstrations from becoming violent?
• In what instances is “use of force” authorized and who makes that determination?
• What steps are being taken locally to respond to recent incidents on the UC Davis campus?

Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi, University of California, Davis
Dr. John Welty, President, California State University, Fresno
UC Davis Use of Force Policy

5. Student/Campus Organized Demonstration

• What policies/procedures are followed by student organizations when there is a decision to demonstrate?
• How is the protection of students assured?
• What are the controls for protesters who do not abide by your policies?

UC Student Association (UCSA)
Claudia Magaña, Student, University of California, Santa Cruz President, UCSA
California State Student Association (CSSA)
Aissa Canchola, Student, CSU Fullerton and Chair, CSSA Sean Richards, Student, Sonoma State Vice-President, CSSA.
UC Policies Applying to Campus Activities, Organizations and Students

UC Davis Campuswide Administrative Policies and Regulations

CSULB Regulations for Campus Activities, Student Organizations & the University Community

1. Public Comment
2. Closing Statements

UAW President: Statement to the Regents (11/28/11)

2011-11-30T14:22:00.000-08:00

Public Comments to the Regents – 11/28/11

My name is Cheryl Deutsch. I’m a graduate student at UCLA and statewide President of UAW Local 2865, the union that represents student employees throughout the UC system.

Students have gathered on these and other campuses across the state today to demand that you make a choice. Will you continue to speak empty words while serving the interests of your class? Or will you act as the education leaders that the title of Regent would have us believe you are? Let’s be clear: you, as bankers and financiers, real estate developers and members of the corporate elite, are not representative of the people of California. You are not representative of the students of the UC. You are the 1%.

Now you’ve said today that you are going to ask the state for more funding. But you have no concrete proposals for where that money will come from or how it will get to the UC. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves.

The ReFund California Pledge offers these concrete alternatives. We are asking you today to make a choice: students have already paid more than our fair share for the economic crisis that your class created. It’s time that you – as the 1% - pay your share.

UC San Diego Statement on Police Responses to Protests

2011-11-26T18:09:00.000-08:00

University of California
San Diego
CAMPUS NOTICE

                   OFFICE OF THE CHANCELLOR

            OFFICE OF THE EXECUTIVE VICE CHANCELLOR
                       ACADEMIC AFFAIRS

              ACADEMIC SENATE: SAN DIEGO DIVISION

November 23, 2011

ALL ACADEMICS AND STAFF
ALL STUDENTS

SUBJECT: Commitment to Free Speech and Peaceful Assembly

Dear Members of our UC San Diego Community:

We share the widely expressed outrage at the violent responses to peaceful
demonstrations on our sister University of California campuses. The alarming
images are a stark reminder of our need for vigilance in protecting the rights
of free speech and the freedom to conduct peaceful protests. Our University
must guard those rights.

We fully endorse the UC Academic Council’s statements relayed to President
Mark Yudof and we strongly support the President’s actions to thoroughly
review policing policies and protocols. UC Academic Council's statements
may be accessed at the following website address:

    http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/senate/reports/

A healthy intellectual climate at UC San Diego relies on civil discourse
and respectful behavior by all community members. Our campus is steadfast
in our resolve to protect the fundamental rights of free speech and peaceful
assembly.

Marye Anne Fox
Chancellor

Suresh Subramani
Executive Vice Chancellor

Joel Sobel
Academic Senate: San Diego Division
Chair

UCLA Chancellor and EVC Response to UC Davis Pepper Spray

2011-11-25T11:29:00.001-08:00

Office of the Chancellor
Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost

To the Campus Community:

The images from events at UCB and UCD have shocked and troubled all of us on campus and across the system. Our hearts go out to the students, parents, faculty and staff at Berkeley and Davis during this trying time.

At UCLA, a small number of protesters identifying themselves as the Occupy UCLA movement established a camp last Thursday and were asked to disperse early Friday morning. They refused to disperse and preferred to be arrested. All the protesters that morning were peaceful and cooperative. The police worked with Student Affairs and the students to ensure that the process went forward smoothly and the encampment was removed without confrontation or injury. On Monday, after the actions at Davis, the protesters held a series of teach-ins, and decided to set up tents on the lawn in front of the Morgan Center. Under the circumstances and at the urging of faculty and the Senate leadership, we decided not to intervene. Today they have dismantled their tents on their own accord.

The peace and safety of the campus is a high concern for us, as is the freedom of expression. Our aim is to achieve both in a time when feelings are running extremely high. We have worked closely with Student Affairs, Legal Affairs, and UCLA PD to ensure that the campus adheres to our principles of community and that everyone acts with restraint, respect, and tolerance in all circumstances. The meeting of the Regents at UCLA this coming Monday may bring demonstrations, and we will work strenuously with all parties to ensure as far as we are able that they remain safe and peaceful. We have been in constant discussion with our students and campus leadership, and have stressed firmly that we all must act in a responsible manner that preserves the core values of the campus.

We are pleased that so far the UCLA community has managed to avoid the kinds of wrenching events that have torn our sister campuses. That we have done so is testimony to the civility and restraint shown by our students, faculty, police, and staff in difficult circumstances.

We will consult with the City Attorney next week concerning the charges against our students.

We wish you all a happy and safe Thanksgiving.

Gene D. Block
Chancellor

Scott L. Waugh
Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost

Chancellor Yang "Responds" to Police Violence (11/21/11)

2011-11-22T20:17:00.001-08:00

November 21, 2011

Dear Members of our Campus Community,

Over the weekend I have received many expressions of concern from faculty, staff, and students about the importance of preserving academic freedom. I have very much appreciated these sentiments. I also have met with our colleagues in Student Affairs, the Police Department, and the Academic Senate.

I am writing now to reaffirm, on behalf of UC Santa Barbara, our campus commitment to civil discourse, freedom of expression, and non-violence. These are core values of our academic community, and we share a common responsibility to protect and safeguard them. Our students, faculty, and staff must continue to work together to discuss important issues and concerns in an environment of mutual respect, safety, and tolerance, even in difficult times.

Thank you for helping to ensure the values of our community.

I send my best wishes for the Thanksgiving holiday.

Sincerely,

Henry T. Yang
Chancellor

UCSC Senate Chair Speaks to Faculty on Budgetary Reform, aka, "Rebenching."

2011-11-22T20:03:00.001-08:00

SANTA CRUZ: OFFICE OF THE ACADEMIC SENATE
From Senate Chair Susan Gillman’s Announcements, November 9, 2011 Senate Meeting:

FINALLY: REBENCHING

You’ll hear next from Chancellor Blumenthal, channeling EVC Galloway, who has wisely chosen to miss the Senate meeting so that she could be physically present at today’s campus rally at the Quarry in support of the statewide Day of Action. The Chancellor will fill us in on our own local multi-year approach to coping with the cuts. He will also comment on the parallel track at Office of the President (OP), where there is an effort at systemic reform of the UC budget, in the form of what are known as Funding Streams and Rebenching.

“Funding Streams” and “Rebenching” are inelegant terms for major systemwide reform of the budget. What problem does this reform address?

THE PROBLEM
OP uses an incremental budget process to determine annual budget amounts for each campus. This process consists of a permanent base amount, which varies by campus, and incremental adjustments made annually to the base amount. The budget process results in varying amounts per student distributed among campuses—in Fiscal Year 09-10, the range is of $12,309 (UCSB) to $55,186 (UCSF), with UCSC at $12,846. [Source: State Auditor Report, July 2011 http://www.bsa.ca.gov/pdfs/reports/2010-105.pdf ]

OP could not identify reasons for these differences or quantify them, other than to cite the cumulative outcome of a long history of incentives and disincentives, marginal increments and decrements, with the base budget permanent and all changes occurring only on the margins. Cross-subsidies thus reflect historic priorities and rationales that may have changed (e.g. weighting of graduate students by 3.5 FTE ended in 1996) but the subsidies themselves were built into the base budgets of each campus and have therefore become permanent.

THE SOLUTION: A TWO-PHASE APPROACH

Phase #1
Budget reform was launched with the first phase, called Funding Streams. This reform makes more transparent various revenue sources, or “funding streams,” in non-state portions of the budget, allocating them on the basic principle that revenues generated by a campus should be returned to the campus (whether from student tuition, including non-resident tuition, contracts and grants, other fundraising, etc.).

Next, in July 2011, the State Auditor Report came out in media res, when Phase 1, Funding Streams, had been completed, and Phase 2, Rebenching, was launched but shakily. President Yudof established the Budget Rebenching Task Force as an administrative group whose roster includes six chancellors, one EVC, vice-chancellors for planning and budget, OP budget managers, and five Senate representatives.

Phase #2: Not Yet

We are now operating under partially-completed budget reform. Phase 1, Funding Streams, depends for its intended outcomes on Phase 2, Rebenching, the second phase of UC’s own internal budgetary reform — the allocation of state funding to the campuses in a more transparent and equitable way. This situation promotes the status quo, which the President has publicly recognized as the leaderless outcome of a long history of ad hoc budgetary decisions. By permitting campuses to retain all the revenues they generate, Funding Streams locks in the competitive advantage of campuses that were historically advantaged by differential funding; by failing to move to Rebenching, the UC system locks in that competitive advantage. In addition, still uncompleted is the third pillar of budgetary reform, the funding for UCOP itself and how we address systemwide expenses.

The momentum in Rebenching is clearly in the direction of a formula linking systemwide allocation of core funds to current student numbers, with funding tiers for different classifications of students (undergraduate and graduate students including Masters, PhDs, professional degrees). Closing the per-student funding gap will bring the UC budgetary model in line with the long-held goal of a single public university with ten distinctive locations across California. This goal has been reaffirmed at multiple times and in multiple venues by the Senate, and it is now in jeopardy.

The Academic Council’s Rebenching proposal proposes a methodology for ensuring that each campus has the support it needs to meet the mission and Master Plan obligation of educating all qualified, state-funded students. The Council proposal is guided by the principle that all UC students of a particular classification, regardless of campus, should receive the same level of funding necessary to support a UC-quality education. It also includes a mechanism for funding PhD students that recognizes the centrality of doctoral education to the UC mission and the interdependence of graduate and undergraduate education at UC.

The principle has been nominally accepted in Rebenching discussions thus far, but it is unclear how, when, or even whether it will be implemented. Among the stumbling blocks to consensus, some are significant while others appear to be delaying tactics. A significant question remaining is how funding for health sciences, agriculture and other systemwide priorities should be treated. Less substantive questions include whether Rebenching should apply only to new state funds, or whether it should be implemented over a long transition period. A clear delaying tactic is a repeated objection that Rebenching will be divisive, pitting haves against have-nots, the flagships versus foundering ships, larger and older campuses versus the younger and smaller. These terms are simply synonyms for the fragmentation of the UC system by campus self-interest.

WHAT IS TO BE DONE?

Now is the time to proceed deliberately with budget reform. Both the Senate and the Administration, (the latter in the November, 2010 Commission on the Future Report, commissioned by President Yudof) have endorsed the value of UC as one university, and if we mean that we are one university, we need to stand by that value in defining principles for budgeting.

The whole Rebenching effort should be viewed as the UC systemwide version of “Let no budget crisis go to waste.” This is a moment when campuses will demonstrate that they set policy by principle, not by adherence to local needs and desires alone. How Rebenching will end, whether with greater transparency and equity in budgetary allocations across the system, and whether from any principled basis at all, is still an open question.

With student protests across campuses, UC may finally have the necessary conjunction of external and internal budget efforts: the ReFund California/student protests are looking to Sacramento, where the pattern of disinvestment in higher education originates and can be solved, while OP is looking inward through Rebenching to the single greatest choice in the university’s financial control, the allocation of our state funds. Together, these forces may finally be in sufficient alignment that real change can occur.

Susan Gillman Chair, Santa Cruz Division, Academic Senate

UCSC Senate Chair on Campus Protests and University Budget

2011-11-22T20:03:00.000-08:00

Dear Colleagues,

The UC community has been horrified by the police violence we have seen exercised against student protestors at UC Davis as well as earlier against students and faculty at Berkeley. The system-wide Academic Senate has issued a statement (appended below).

For our campus, which has thus far seen only peaceful protest, I am concerned first and foremost to maintain the communication among the administration, students and faculty that will help us to avoid any escalation of violence at UCSC. Second, our campus should not lose sight of the focus of the student protest on state disinvestment in higher education.

To that end, please see the attached document from my Senate speech on November 9, which coincided with the statewide Day of Action. Our campus held a peaceful rally, followed by a march downtown to Occupy Santa Cruz,thanks to the collective efforts of the organizers and participants of our local ReFund California coalition (undergraduates, graduate students, unions) as well as those of Chancellor Blumenthal and CP/EVC Galloway.

As Senate Chair, I used the chance to speak to the faculty about the issue of "Rebenching," an effort at budgetary reform for the UC system as a whole that is currently underway at the Office of the President (OP). Both little-known and poorly publicized, Rebenching is the university's most significant response to the ongoing budget crisis--and the single largest element the university has in its direct control. Rebenching is the most important action the university will, or will not, take in the next few years.

For those who did not attend the November 9 Senate meeting, as well as for the general campus community, please see the attached excerpt from my speech on Rebenching. Students, faculty and administrators at UCSC must redouble efforts to complete the budgetary reform contingent on Rebenching.

Sincerely,
Susan Gillman, Chair
Academic Senate
Professor of Literature

UCSB Faculty Letter to Chancellor Yang on UC Davis Police Violence

2011-11-21T10:40:00.000-08:00

Recent acts of police violence at UC Berkeley and UC Davis have left us disheartened and angry. In video footage of the November 9 police attacks at Berkeley, we see non-violent students and faculty beaten by truncheons. These students and faculty were hoping to improve access to education at their university; in return for this noble work, they were assaulted – on their own campus – by police officers in riot gear. The non-violent student protest at Davis was suppressed with comparable brutality on November 18. In video from Davis, we can see police in riot gear using pepper spray against non-violent student protestors who had the courage to stand in solidarity with the men and women who had been beaten at Berkeley the week before. Accounts from police attacks at Davis are harrowing where they detail the chemical burns and respiratory bleeding that are the hallmark of pepper spray.

We, the undersigned faculty, refuse to accept these acts of brutality against non-violent protestors at our sister campuses in the University of California system. Consequently, we call upon Chancellor Yang to make a public statement on our behalf.

First, we call upon Chancellor Yang to denounce unequivocally the recent acts of police violence at Berkeley and Davis. Chancellor Yang is our representative to the UC system, and we hope that he uses this position to make our anger heard.

Second, we call upon Chancellor Yang to declare that the violence we’ve seen on other UC campuses will not happen here. We call upon Chancellor Yang to declare that UCSB will never condone the use of police violence – including the use of pepper spray – against non-violent protests by members of our community. We call upon Chancellor Yang to make this statement into policy.

Chancellor Yang has a long record of protecting students and faculty at UCSB; we hope that he continues to be our strong advocate.

Sincerely,

Porter Abbot (English)

Linda Adler-Kassner (Writing Program)

Kevin Anderson (Sociology)

Stephanie Batiste (English)

Eileen Boris (Feminst Studies)

Maurizia Bocagli (English)

Julie Carlson (English)

Brian Donnelly (English)

Enda Duffy (English)

Richard Flacks (Sociology)

Claudio Fogu (French and Italian Studies)

John Foran (Sociology)

Aranye Fradenburg (English)

Patricia Fumerton (English)

Nancy Gallagher (History)

Catherine Gautier (Geography)

Bishnupriya Ghosh (English)

Andrew Griffin (English)

Peter Lackner (Theater and Dance)

Stephanie Lemenager (English)

Shirley Lim (English)

Alan Liu (English)

Christina McMahon (Theater and Dance)

Laurie Monahan (History of Art and Architecture)

Chris Newfield (English)

Michael O’Connell (English)

Carole Paul (Art History)

Russell Samolsky (English)

Bhaskar Sarkar (Film and Media Studies)

Scott Selisker (English)

Teresa Shewry (English)

Sven Spieker (Germanic, Slavic, and Semitic Studies)

Vera Tobin (English)

Candace Waid (English)

Elisabeth Weber (German and Comparative Literature)

Howard Winant (Sociology)

Richard Wittman (History of Art and Architecture)

Kay Young (English)

Music with its Sleeves Rolled UP (Thanks to Michael O'Hare)

2011-11-19T12:42:00.000-08:00

Any crowd can learn this song after one chorus and one verse

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N43Cm6ra0hY

Come all you Californians,
Here's news to give you cheer,
The ninety-nine percent who work
Are standing up right here.

cho after each verse:

Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?

My grandpa paid his taxes,
He built the U of C,
I owe it to my children,
That knowledge should be free.

It used to be that people

Could work and save some pay

To give their kids a better life

And see a brighter day.

There's work to do for all of us

Prop thirteen shut us down

We're taking back our government

For field and town and gown.

They say all down the valley,
There are no neutrals there.
You’ll either be a one of us,
Or die from poisoned air.

Oh, people can you stand it?
Ten years and more of pain.
Get with the 99%
And board the people's train!

The 1% are on Fox News ,
Don’t listen to their lies.
There's none of us that's got a chance,
Unless we organize.

Nicole Lindhal Eyewitness Account of Police Attack on Occupy Cal November 9th

2011-11-18T08:59:00.000-08:00

Dear friends, family, and colleagues,

For many of you it has been a long time since we were last in contact;
I wish that I was writing now in order to set up a long overdue
conversation, or to fill you in on happy developments in my life.
Instead, I am writing because I feel compelled to give you a first
hand account of some disturbing events which occurred on the UC
Berkeley campus this week.

This Wednesday, November 9, UC Berkeley students staged a rally and
march with the goals of protesting a proposed 81% fee hike and drawing
attention to the increasing fiscal crisis facing public education in
California. After the march, students held a General Assembly meeting
in which they formed a consensus to build an encampment (a la Occupy
Wall Street) on Sproul Plaza. Students made this decision with full
awareness that, earlier in the week, the UC Berkeley Chancellor had
issued a letter stating that camping constituted a violation of the
campus code.

Shortly after the tents were pitched, while students were playing
music on guitars, painting signs, and chit-chatting in true UC
Berkeley fashion, police forces began gathering. What ensued was
nothing less than two separate police attacks on non-violent student
protesters. Two police forces (UCPD and the Alameda County Sheriff's
Department) and hundreds of police officers in full riot gear advanced
on students who had linked arms to form a human barricade around the
tents. The riot police formed a line with batons drawn, held in both
hands across their bodies, and they moved forward as a block, jabbing
the batons towards the line of students in unison. Behind them were
several officers holding automatic weapons that looked like something
out of Grand Theft Auto--tear gas launchers? rubber bullet
guns?--which they sometimes pointed directly at students' heads and
bodies.

I witnessed a young woman on the ground being repeatedly attacked with
the end of a baton by a police lieutenant from the Alameda County
Sheriff's department. I saw two young men get tackled and arrested,
one as a tactic to break the line of locked-armed students, and the
other for trying to pick up a tent pole. I also saw two young women
get their hands stamped on by a policeman's boot when they tried to
pick up a bike light in between our line and the officers'. And this
was just in my small corner of the first and less intense standoff.

In the second, the police forces were more aggressive, and many
officers (as opposed to only a few in the earlier event), were--for
lack of a better word--rabid. They repeatedly attacked students with
batons with ZERO provocation. In total, 39 people were arrested in
both confrontations, and many more were beaten, including two students
in a class I am currently teaching and a fellow graduate student from
my department.

I was fortunate enough to escape these events with only minor scrapes
and bruises. I am shaken, however, and more angry than perhaps I've
even been in my life. On Thursday morning, I had visions of booting
police officers in the face while I was in the shower. For the rest
of the day, I intermittently cried and swelled with outrage. When I
saw police officers on Sproul plaza standing around in small groups, I
literally could not raise my eyes to look at them. Predictably
enough, I have been completely mobilized into action by Wednesday's
events, as have thousands of students and community members who have
been shocked and outraged by the videos they've seen (see below this
message for links to a few videos I hope you take the time time to
check out).

I am incredibly proud of Cal students who courageously held the line
and remained completely peaceful throughout the day and night. We
continuously shouted "peaceful! protest!" particularly when the police
were acting most aggressively. There was not a rock or bottle thrown,
and the chants consistently demonstrated empathy with or at least
respect for the humanity of the police ("We're doing this for your
children!" or "Stop beating students!" or "You are the 99%!").

The larger point here is that we live in a society in which this type
of police use of force is entirely normalized. It is expected, and in
fact justified, that the roll-out of police in riot gear is the first
response to non-violent student protesters. I mean, the students were
violating the law, right? They should have known that this is what
they would get. What did they expect?

I ask instead, in what world are militarized riot police an
appropriate response to students with tents????? And I challenge you
(and all of us) to think through what Wednesday afternoon might have
looked like if the use of force was OFF THE TABLE.

In the aftermath of these events, I had the urge to ask the Chancellor
to articulate the threat that the encampment posed that justified the
kind of response we saw on Wednesday. And in fact, he issued a letter
to the campus community doing just that on Thursday. It turns out,
while he supports marches and rallies as forms of protest, encampments
pose a threat to sanitation and hygiene, and he is worried about the
campus administration's ability to manage conflicts arising within
(Needless to say, I, too, am worried about the administration's
ability to manage conflict after Wednesday's events, but I digress).

I would argue that this standoff is not about hygiene, sanitation, or
conflict management; nor is it simply about a few students with tents,
as those of us who are sympathetic to the protests have argued. This
is about establishing a space within which dialogue across divisions
of race, class, gender, religion, and ideology is encouraged,
facilitated, and prioritized; within which any and all participants
are provided the consistent opportunity to give voice to their ideas
and concerns about the nature of the society they live in; a space in
which the creativity and imagination necessary to visualize inclusive
and egalitarian political, economic, and social systems are nurtured;
a space in which I, for one, feel like I can participate without
making ethical compromises. THIS is the threat that these encampments
represent. And this is also the reason that so many students,
including me, are willing to defend their construction with our
bodies.

With much love and, for the first time in my life, real hope for a
better future,

Nicole

Videos:
This site contains a video from the afternoon attack which has gone
viral, and a photo of the plaza an hour or so after the second attack,
when even more students gathered and held the second general assembly
meeting of the day (in which they formed a consensus to call for a
UC-wide strike on Tuesday, November 15):

This is a video from the first attack which I uploaded from the camera
on my phone. This advance occurred after the police had already torn
down the encampment, and resulted in them reclaiming a few feet of
dirt. It doesn't capture police beatings in as clear detail as the
previous video, but it gives you an up close and personal sense of the
atmosphere among the student protesters as well as what it was like to
be standing peacefully in a line, only to be advanced upon by a row of
riot police:

This video was taken by a stranger who was in a very similar position
to me during the clash in the evening. Since it's not clear, let me
remind you that students were gathered on the lawn distributing food
and hanging out before the police officers moved into formation and
formed the line you see here (in other words, the students did not
approach a line of riot cops, but rather were approached while
peacefully assembling). Whoever took this video got a much better
angle on the events that I was witnessing than I did with my camera
phone:

For more, search for "Occupy Cal" on YouTube.

We are on a race to become a mediocre university at best

2011-05-21T09:26:00.000-07:00

by Tom Lutz, Professor of Creative Writing, UC Riverside
cross-posted

Dear colleagues and students,

After a year and a half as Chair of the department, I am stepping down. Professor Andrew Winer will be taking my place, for which we should all be grateful.

As my last act as Chair, I would like to share with you my sense of the gravity of the situation we face. I spent most of my academic career doing what most of us do—teaching, writing, reading graduate applications and theses, having office hours, reading in my field, doing research. I didn’t pay much attention to the University and its administration. None of us have that luxury anymore. Budget cuts after budget cuts after budget cuts have left us all painfully aware of how the sausage is made, or not made.

Having served in administrative posts for most of the last five years, I have come to know the budget issues very well. We are now past the tipping point. We are on a rapid downhill slide that will have profound effects for our state, our families, our country, and our world.

In the space of less than a single lifetime, the University of California, Riverside went from being a small agricultural experiment station to being one of the top 100 universities in the world. An incredibly dense and elaborate web of specialists across all fields of scholarship, science, and the arts was developed, and it took enormous efforts by thousands of people over those years to make it happen. In less than the four years it used to take to graduate, it is being destroyed.

Our department is a great example of the breadth of vision and dogged effort that has made Riverside the exceptional place it has been. There are other creative writing programs in the country, but not a single one anywhere with the range across genres and fields, with the breadth of knowledge in world literatures, with the diversity of voices, methods, and styles that we have. And there is not another creative writing program anywhere—and certainly none with our caliber of professors—that is more truly dedicated to its pedagogical mission at every level. The faculty at Princeton is perhaps a bit more famous, but undergraduates there never meet them, much less have access to them in, before, and after class. I have now taught at every kind of school—fancy elite universities, small colleges, Big 10 universities, art schools, and universities abroad. I have never been part of a faculty this student-centered, this concerned about the educational experience and future prospects of its undergraduate and graduate students.

Three years ago I was offered a job at USC, which is much closer to my house, more prestigious as an academic address, and was offering me more money. UCR worked hard and did the best it could to match the salary and I stayed. I stayed because I wanted to be part of this project, I wanted to teach a student body that is over 85% first-generation college students, that comes not from the richest families in California but some of the poorest, a group of students that have a much greater likelihood than not of coming from immigrant families and from families that speak more than English. I wanted to remain part of one of the greatest democratic experiments in history, and certainly one of the few greatest experiments in public education in the history of the human race, the University of California.

If I got that offer today, though, I’m not sure I could turn it down, and in fact, many people are not turning down outside offers these days. There are people who have taught here for more than twenty years considering going somewhere else, somewhere the future is a bit more certain. These are people who are the best in their field—you don’t get such offers unless someone thinks you are among the best in your field—and UCR, and the educational experience at UCR, is diminished each time this happens, each time one of the best of our best leaves for a better job. We can’t blame them—they have kids of their own to put through college, they have research projects that require funding, they know that to teach the most complex subjects effectively, they need to run seminars with 15 students sitting around the table, not 150.

The budget cuts of recent years and the ones we know for certain are coming next year mean a gross deterioration of our school. Those faculty who leave for better jobs are not being replaced. Many of you know Yvonne Howard, who has been the chief administrator for our department since it was founded. This year her job was unceremoniously terminated. Staff people and faculty who retire are not being replaced. Next year students at UCR will have trouble getting the classes they need, and many of the classes they get will be crowded beyond responsible limits. Departments are being forced to abandon optimal class-size limits for classes two, three, and five times that size. The library has virtually stopped buying books. We are on a race to become a mediocre university at best, and if the $500 million of proposed cuts to UC turn into a billion dollars, as they are now discussing in Sacramento, we will be over. The billion dollar cut translates into thousands of classes across the system. It means creative writing workshops with 50 students. It means we will cease to be a real university, and will simply become another community-college-level institution. Then, maybe, after a few years, with tuition at $25,000 or $30,000 a year, we can begin the slow build back into a real university.

Why is this happening? Political demagoguery and corruption. Thirty years ago UC received 9% of the state budget and prisons 3%. Now UC gets 3% and the prison-industrial complex gets 9%. The legislature is taking the money that should be used to educate the best of its citizens and using it enrich the people who make a profit from the imprisoning the poorest. The percentage of the cost of higher education provided by the state has been cut in half, cut in half again, and is on the verge of getting cut in half a third time. The people in the legislature understand the value of public higher education—the vast majority of them have degrees from our state system, and many of them have multiple degrees—all made possible by the legislators who preceded them and had more courage. They do not protect the University for a very simple reason: because they risk a flow of conservative attacks and Tea Party racism if they stick up for anything that is directly devoted to the commonweal.

In my darkest moments, I think the monied interests working against reasonable taxation are doing so because they consciously, actively seek to make sure we do not have an informed, educated citizenry, the better to extract our collective labor and wealth unimpeded. But such intentionality isn’t necessary. Simple, short-sighted, grab-it-now, bottom-line greed explains their destruction of our culture, without recourse to any dystopian conspiracies.

The only thing that has a chance of turning this devastation around is student activism. We in higher education cannot spend millions of dollars on campaign contributions the way the prison profiteers or the medical and insurance and aerospace industries do, so we need to find other ways to provide a political counterweight. We need to make our voices heard. For you students, your own self-interest should be the catalyst, as you will, no matter what happens this year, have trouble finding the classes you need, much less than the ones you want, and the chance you will graduate in a reasonable amount of time is already gone. But you should also think of what this means for your families, your neighbors, your friends, your own kids when they come of age. And think what it means if California reduces its higher education budget to the levels of Missouri or West Virginia—we will become like those places. Because of its education system, a system that, until just a few years ago, has always been considered the best in the country, California has been among the most innovative and significant literary and cultural centers in the country, and because of this education system, too, California has been the economic powerhouse it has been—1000 research and development companies a year are formed out of the UC system, for instance, and four UC inventions a week are presented to the patent office. We had the best educational system because we were willing to pay for it, and our expenditures were among the highest in the nation, too. In a few short years we have dropped into the middle in state spending, and we are fast falling even farther. Only a political movement strong enough to buck the corporate money determining our tax policy can change this downward spiral. Only you can make that happen.

We have been told, from the top, not to expect a return to ‘the glory days.’ This year was not the glory days. This year we already have discussion sections that are not discussions, fewer classes, an exploded faculty:student ratio; we are very far from the glory days. Now that either 500 million or 1 billion more dollars are getting yanked out of the system, your favorite lecturer will be gone. The class you wanted won’t exist anymore. Your student advisor will have 800 or 1000 students to advise instead of the 300 we all agreed was an absolute maximum two short years ago. This is the end of quality. And why? Because a few very wealthy people are protecting their wealth from taxes, taxes considered reasonable not only everywhere else in the developed world, but considered reasonable in America until the last 20 years.

I hope you get angry. I hope you get active. Call and write your legislators, get out in the streets, take back your university, don’t let yourselves be the last people to have even this chance.

Tom Lutz
Professor and Chair, Department of Creative Writing

Academic Council Responds to Debt-Financing of Online Project (5/6/11)

2011-05-08T14:28:00.000-07:00

May 6, 2011

PRESIDENT MARK G. YUDOF
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

Re: Online education pilot program

Dear Mark:

Last year the Academic Council endorsed the UC online education pilot program with the understanding that only private funding was to be used to support the program. At the time it was suggested that as much as $30M could be raised from extramural sources to support this program. Since then, 29 letters of intent from UC faculty were selected out of 70 submissions for the planning phase of the online pilot courses. Despite the optimistic funding projections, however, only $748K in private funding from Next Generation Learning Challenges (funded by the Gates and Hewlett foundations) has been secured, and that funding requires that course material be open-source, available to others to freely use and adapt. The majority of funds for the online pilot courses are to come from a loan that UC will make to the program of up to $6.9M. The loan is intended to be repaid with fees from non-UC students taking the pilot online courses.

The members of the Council have received multiple expressions of concern from faculty about the changes in both the funding and planning for the project compared with that originally was endorsed by the Council. I am instructed by the Council to communicate the scope of the concerns raised across the campuses.

The Council’s concerns reflect neither on the work of our colleagues in crafting pilot course proposals, nor on our support for experimenting with online education to produce educational flexibility and to improve access to UC-quality courses for prospective transfer students. Rather, the Council’s questions are raised in relation to the pilot program as a whole, as outlined in the Project Plan: UC Online Education (March 24, 2011). There are questions on oversight and evaluation of the program, the dependence of the budget model on enrollments of non-UC students, the corresponding focus on lower division requirements and possible competition with the Community College mission, and the financial feasibility of paying back the loan. The program description, as well as any program protocols and communications regarding the program, must be clear that there is no guarantee of UC undergraduate admission upon completion of the online courses and that there is as of yet no mechanism for establishing eligibility for transfer on the basis of the courses in the program description. Additionally, there is no coherent curriculum design reflected in the courses, nor has a transfer curriculum been proposed as part of the program. The fundamental question of whether an on-line curriculum can or should provide the basis of a transfer curriculum separate from a course of study at an accredited institution has not been raised and remains to be addressed. The Council also questions how non-UC students' qualifications are to be determined and, given other equally attractive and perhaps more affordable online courses, whether the enrollments will be sufficient to be able to pay back the loan. In short, while the pilot project was intended to enhance access and to generate revenue, it is now unclear whether these goals may be meshed and met.

Council also notes that while the project description indicates that courses will be offered beginning July 2011, to our knowledge no course proposals have yet been submitted to Senate course committees for approval as part of the pilot project. We understand that at this point courses may not be sufficiently developed to move forward as part of the project. Yet the project description lists as a program “risk” the possibility that Senate courses committees will be slow to grant course approval. The Council wants to be clear that delays in implementation of the program beyond what is contemplated in the program description are not attributable to a lack of Senate action, but to the fact that the program proponents underestimated the time required to put courses into place. Senate evaluation should necessarily encompass both the intellectual content of the class materials and the modality of delivery.

Given these concerns, the Council advises that no additional online pilot courses be developed, beyond those currently selected and funded, until the following takes place:

(1) The evaluation procedure contemplated in the proposal must be conducted and then subjected to independent rigorous review in order to assess online courses that are taught in this pilot program. We fully appreciate that evaluation tools to assess the online program are a significant element of the project and, when developed, these tools might be useful to assess the quality of other courses within the UC system. The quality and desirability of the courses as a means of producing a high-quality online component to UC education should be assessed. The efficacy of the technological aspects of the course delivery (appropriate platform, testing mechanism, etc.), the business model beyond the pilot program (profitability), and the pros and cons of this educational direction for UC should be assessed.

(2) Any full proposal for expanding the online pilot program would be developed on the basis of the findings in (1), defining the proposed expansion, its aims and objectives, the scope and impact on the system, and the funding model.
On behalf of the Academic Council,

Daniel L. Simmons, Chair
Academic Council

Copy: Lawrence Pitts, Provost and EVP
Daniel Greenstein, Vice Provost
Robert Anderson, Academic Council Vice Chair
Academic Council
Martha Winnacker, Academic Senate Executive Director

100 UCI FACULTY CALL FOR D.A. TO DROP CHARGES AGAINST STUDENT PROTESTERS

2011-02-09T11:13:00.000-08:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Feb. 9, 2011
Contact: Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean, School of Law: 949-824-7722
Jon Wiener, Professor of History: 310-558-0132; wiener@uci.edu

100 UC Irvine Faculty Call on D.A. to Drop Charges against Students who Disrupted Israeli Ambassador’s Speech

100 faculty members at UCI, including five deans and 14 Chancellor’s Professors and Distinguished Professors, have signed a letter to the Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas calling on him to drop criminal charges against 11 students who disrupted a speech on the UCI campus by the Israeli Ambassador to the US last year.

The group includes Dean of the Law School Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of Social Ecology Valerie Jenness, Dean of Humanities Vicki Ruiz, and Dean of Undergraduate Education Sharon Salinger, as well as Executive Vice Dean of the Medicine F. Allan Hubbell.

The students face criminal conspiracy charges and six months in jail if convicted.

“The students were wrong to prevent a speaker invited to the campus from speaking and being heard,” the faculty letter says. “But the individual students and the Muslim Student Union were disciplined for this conduct by the University, including the MSU being suspended from being a student organization for a quarter.” University discipline, the faculty members said, was “sufficient.”

The criminal charges are “detrimental to our campus,” the faculty letter argues, calling the D.A.’s action “a dangerous precedent for the use of the criminal law against non-violent protests on campus.” It also criticized Rackauckas for risking “undoing the healing process which has occurred over the last year.”

Among those who signed the statement were Pulitzer Prize-winning writers Jack Miles and Barry Siegel, neurobiology pioneer James McGaugh, Penelope Maddy, famous for her work in the philosophy of mathematics, and award-winning historian of China Kenneth Pomeranz. Seven law professors also joined the call.

FULL TEXT OF STATEMENT AND SIGNATURES FOLLOWS

As faculty of the University of California, Irvine we are deeply distressed by the decision of the Orange County District Attorney to file criminal charges against the students who disrupted Ambassador Michael Oren’s speech on campus. The students were wrong to prevent a speaker invited to the campus from speaking and being heard. And the Muslim Student Union acted inappropriately in coordinating this and in misrepresenting its involvement to University officials. But the individual students and the Muslim Student Union were disciplined for this conduct by the University, including the MSU being suspended from being a student organization for a quarter. This is sufficient punishment. There is no need for criminal prosecution and criminal sanctions. The use of the criminal justice system will be detrimental to our campus as it inherently will be divisive and risk undoing the healing process which has occurred over the last year. It also sets a dangerous precedent for the use of the criminal law against non-violent protests on campus.

We urge the District Attorney to dismiss the criminal charges. At the very least, we urge the District Attorney and the students to agree to resolve the charges with the students performing community service and a short probation, after which the matter will be expunged from the students’ records.

Frank D. Bean, Chancellor's Professor of Sociology
Kitty Calavita, Chancellor’s Professor of Criminology, Law and Society
Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean, School of Law
Joseph F. C. DiMento, Professor of Law and Policy, Planning & Design
Valerie Jenness, Dean, School of Social Ecology
Catherine Liu, Director, Humanities Center
Duncan Luce, Distinguished Research Professor of Cognitive Science
Penelope Maddy, Distinguished Professor of Logic & Philosophy of Science
George Marcus, Chancellor’s Professor of Anthropology
James M. McGaugh, Research Professor, Neurobiology and Behavior
Carrie Menkel-Meadow, Chancellor’s Professor of Law
Jack Miles, Distinguished Professor of English and Religious Studies
Mark Petracca, Chair, Dept. of Political Science
Kenneth Pomeranz, Chancellor’s Professor of History
Vicki Ruiz, Dean, School of Humanities
Sharon Salinger, Dean of Undergraduate Education
Barry Siegel, Director, Literary Journalism Program
Brook Thomas, Chancellor’s Professor of English
Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Chair, Dept. of History
Henry Weinstein, Senior Lecturer in Law and Literary Journalism
Jon Wiener, Professor of History
Dan L. Burk, Chancellor's Professor of Law
Catherine Fisk, Chancellor's Professor of Law
David A. Snow, Chancellor's Professor of Sociology
F. Allan Hubbell, Executive Vice Dean, School of Medicine
Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Distinguished Professor of English & Comparative Literature
Etienne Balibar, Distinguished Professor of Humanities
Greg Duncan, Distinguished Professor of Education
Grace C. Tonner, Associate Dean of Lawyering Skills
Ulrike Strasser, Associate Professor, History and Director, European Studies
Irene Tucker, Associate Professor of English
James Given, Professor of History
Dickson D. Bruce, Jr., Professor of History, Emeritus
Hugh Roberts, Assoc. Prof. Dept. of English
Robert Newsom, Professor Emeritus, Department of English
Mark Poster, Emeritus Professor, Film and Media Studies and History
Sharon Block, Associate Professor of History
Ann Van Sant, English
Jennifer Terry, Chair and Associate Professor of Women's Studies
Laura J. Mitchell, Associate Professor of History
Emily Rosenberg, Professor of History
R. Radhakrishnan, Chancellor's Professor of English and Comparative Literature
Eyal Amiran, Associate Professor, Comparative Literature and Film and Media Studies
Jerome Christensen, Professor of English
Susan Jarratt, Comparative Literature
Rebeca Helfer, English Department
Annette Schlichter, Associate Professor, Comparative Literature
Timothy Tackett, Professor of History
Touraj Daryaee, History Department
Carolyn P. Boyd, Professor Emerita, Department of History
Amy Wilentz, Professor of English and Literary Journalism
Victoria Silver, Associate Professor of English
Alice Fahs, Associate Professor of History
Anne Walthall, Professor of History
Laura Kang, Associate Professor of Women's Studies
Alexander Gelley, Professor, Dept. of Comparative Literature
Elizabeth Allen, Associate Professor of English
Rubén G. Rumbaut, Professor of Sociology
David A. Smith, Professor of Sociology and Planning, Policy and Design
Sarah Farmer, Associate Professor of History
Raul Fernandez, Social Sciences/Chicano Latino Studies
Keith Nelson, Professor Emeritus of History, Director, Program in Religious Studies
Estela Zarate, Assistant Professor, Department of Education
Leo Chavez, Anthropology
Deborah R. Vargas, Assistant Professor, Chicano/Latino Studies
Thurston Domina, Assistant Professor of Education and Sociology
, DeSipio, Chair, Department of Chicano/Latino Studies
Jutta Heckhausen, Professor, Psychology and Social Behavior
Heidi Tinsman, Associate Professor of History
Ellen Burt, Professor of French and Comparative Literature
Belinda Robnett-Olsen, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology
Robert Folkenflik, Edward A. Dickson Emeritus Professor of English
Ron Carlson, Professor of English
Edwin Amenta, Professor of Sociology and History
Francesca Polletta, Professor of Sociology
Susan K. Brown, Associate Professor of Sociology
Adriana Johnson, Comparative Literature
Rachel Sarah O'Toole, Assistant Professor, History Department
Nancy McLaughlin, Assistant Professor, History Department
Steven C. Topik, Professor of History
Gilbert G. Gonzalez, Professor, Chicano-Latino Studies
Judy Stepan-Norris, Sociology
Julia Reinhard Lupton, Professor of English and Comparative Literature
Spencer Olin, Professor Emeritus of History
Glen Mimura, Associate Dean of Graduate Study, School of Humanities
Ana Elizabeth Rosas, Assistant Professor, Chicana/o-Latina/o Studies and History
Robert Moeller, Department of History
Elizabeth M. Guthrie, French, retired
Cecile Whiting, Chair, Department of Art History
Cynthia Feliciano, Associate Professor, Sociology and Chicano/Latino Studies
David S. Meyer, Professor, Sociology
Charlie Chubb, Professor, Cognitive Sciences
Alejandro Morales, Professor, Department of Chicano/Latino Studies
Ian Munro, Associate Professor of Drama
Luke Hegel-Cantarella, Head of Scenic Design - Claire Trevor School of the Arts
David Igler, Associate Professor of History
Stephen Barker, Associate Dean, Claire Trevor School of the Arts
Cliff Faulkner, Senior Lecturer, Drama Department
Vincent Olivieri, Designer/Composer/Assistant Professor, Drama Department
Carol Burke, Professor, English

Yudof Statement to the Legislature on the Proposed Budget Cuts (2/7/11)

2011-02-08T20:29:00.000-08:00

Following is University of California President Mark G. Yudof's statement to the California Assembly Budget Subcommittee at the state Capitol in Sacramento on Monday, Feb. 7, 2011.

As prepared for delivery

Thank You, Madam Chair and Members of the Committee:

I am here today to offer my assessment – and answer any questions you might have – about the University of California’s immediate fiscal situation, especially as it relates to the reductions proposed by the governor.

But, before the wailing and gnashing of teeth begins, I’d first like to look beyond the horizon a bit, to talk about the needs of California and the role that the three systems of public higher education must be able to play if this state is to move forward and thrive.

California was given one great Gold Rush, and that was a long time ago. Since then, we climbed our way to the top by out-thinking and out-creating and out-innovating the world.

To succeed – (and I would say building the world’s eighth-largest economy is a pretty good marker of success) – has required topflight systems of education, public education.

And that will be even more critical in the future, as the world flattens and human capital becomes king. This is just a fact.

I know I don’t need to sell any of you on the importance of education and the need to invigorate our economy and society with an educated populace and game-changing research.

Madam Chair has taught school. Other committee members have led school districts. Most of you came up through the Cal State or community college systems.

So you know how the pieces that Chancellors Reed and Scott and I represent all fit together under the California Master Plan. And you know that Master Plan for 50 years has served as the state’s not-so-secret ingredient in its formula for success.

Of course, the Master Plan, for all its wonders, has a problem.

The problem is that it has not been adequately funded for years. Adjusting for inflation, state investment in UC students is less than half of what it was 20 years ago.

Here’s another way of looking at what’s happened: The governor’s proposed budget will ratchet back state support for UC to a level it last saw in fiscal year 1998-99 – and since that time we’ve added 73,000 more students to our universe. Same amount of money; enough additional students to fill UC Berkeley — twice.

Now the governor says that he wants to quit kicking cans down the road and instead engage Californians in an honest conversation about just what scale of government they are willing to support with their tax dollars.

I take him at his word and I am eager, along with my colleagues at the table, to join that conversation. We think we have a pretty good story to tell.

In the meantime, though, we must act. At UC, I’ve given our campuses targets for cutting their budgets. Our central office in Oakland also will be looking at significant cuts, even as it leads a systemwide effort to wring $500 million in savings through innovative operational efficiencies.

These proposed cuts will be put before our governing Board of Regents in mid-March. While this is still a work in progress, it’s already clear that this process won’t produce a pretty picture.

The low-hanging fruit was picked long ago. We are looking at layoffs. We are looking at program elimination, at shrinking the enterprise.

We undertake this exercise not to monger fear. We can’t scare anybody into giving us money that isn’t there. We also have to remember that, under the governor’s proposal, the numbers we are dealing with represent only the best-case scenario.

And the numbers don’t lie. When additional mandatory costs are factored in, along with what we are now paying into our pension system and the cost of educating 11,000 students who are unfunded by the state, the fact is that we will be looking to slice $1 billion out of our 10-campus system.

This will be the second time in three years we have done so.

The last time around, we looked to student fee increases and systemwide furloughs to squeak by. These will not be my first choices this time. But, as you know, the first rule in this environment is to never say never.

As a public university, we pride ourselves on access, affordability and excellence. These are our lodestars.

With the cuts as proposed, we are moving perilously close to the point where we can no longer do all three.

We can be accessible (with our doors wide open to all eligible students) and affordable (with tuition levels that compare well to those of our peers). But we cannot do so and ensure excellence.

We can be excellent and fully accessible, but it will mean chucking affordability out the door.

And we can be affordable and excellent, but we can’t do so and maintain the enrollment promises enshrined in the Master Plan.

Unless we find a way to reverse this trend of disinvestment, something simply must give.

In my view, we can’t give up on excellence. Generations of Californians invested in this university and watched it grow into an envy of the world. You can destroy what took 15 decades to build in a matter of a few short years, and never get it back.

I’m also not going to surrender on the question of preserving our standing as a public university.

Nearly 40 percent of our students come from families earning less than $50,000 a year, many of them the first in their family to attend a university.

The reach of our research stretches from strawberry fields to the farthest stars.

These sorts of things are what a public university must do, and I’m determined to do everything in my power to ensure that at the University of California this doesn’t change.

But consider this: If the governor’s proposed cuts are enacted, it will mean that for the first time in our shared history, the students and families of the University of California will be contributing more to our core operating budget than California taxpayers.

That should be worrisome to anyone who believes that what we provide is a public good, and not a private one.

So all this leads me to a pretty sobering conclusion. If we must preserve excellence, and we must strive to remain affordable, that leaves us with access.

If trends are not reversed, we will soon approach the day when we will be forced to tell qualified California high school graduates that there no longer is a place for them at a UC campus.

That is where we are headed.

So how can we avoid this?

Let me leave you with a few ideas.

First, we need to work out with you and your colleagues in Sacramento a long-term arrangement (compact, I know, has become a dirty word in this context.)

We will emerge from this budget process with a new floor and find a way to live with it. We will push a reset button.

In exchange, though, we need commitments going forward of stable, sustainable funding increases, so that we can plan and grow in an orderly fashion and prepare to serve a California populace that inevitably is going to grow and place greater pressure on our public universities.

Structured properly, this arrangement also could allow California families to make college plans with greater clarity when it comes to their costs.

The California Dream need not die with the baby boomers. There is a new California coming forward, and it deserves to be served.

More immediately, I ask for flexibility. Universities, especially research universities, are complicated. One size never fits all. So we ask for the legislature to support the governor’s request for an unallocated reduction to the UC Budget.

In this vein, I’d also ask for support of legislation that would leverage the university’s borrowing power and its $400 million in shovel-ready projects into a job stimulus initiative, providing a boost for a construction industry that faces 20 percent unemployment.

I ask for fairness. Should further cuts become necessary or, more happily, should fiscal conditions improve, I would ask you to compare proportionately the cuts made to higher education to those of other state entities.

As an aside, I would point out here that, for every dollar invested by the state in the University of California, we return four dollars in tax revenue to the state general fund. And for every dollar the state invests in our research, we generate another eight dollars from non-state sources.

Finally, I would ask you to engage with us, to consider us your partner in working through these dark and dreary times. With the expertise that populates our campuses, with alumni rolls filled with some of California’s most innovative minds and, of course, with the passion and people power that our 230,000 students represent, we can be an effective ally.

And we stand willing to serve.

Madam Chair, this concludes my testimony.

UC Berkeley Hires New Vice Chancellor - Administration and Finance

2011-01-20T14:56:00.000-08:00

From: "Robert J. Birgeneau, Chancellor"
Date: January 20, 2011 10:02:24 AM PST
To: "Staff, All Academic Titles
Subject: Appointment of the Vice-Chancellor Administration and Finance

It gives me very great pleasure to announce the appointment of John Wilton as Vice Chancellor - Administration and Finance. John was identified to fill this critical position for the Berkeley campus from a field of outstanding candidates in a nation-wide search following the move of Nathan Brostrom to the Office of the President. John is expected to begin his new position on February 1st.

John Wilton has extensive experience in both the public and private sector. For almost 25 years, he worked at the World Bank - a complex, global organization with an annual budget of $2Billion that provides low-interest loans, interest-free credits, grants and policy advice to developing countries for a wide array of purposes to assist their advancement, including in education. While there, he worked in most parts of the Bank, including operations in Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe as well as in the Economic Research and Treasury departments. He also undertook two overseas assignments working on specific economic policy issues in Indonesia and the broader set of issues related to the process of transition to a market economy in Eastern Europe. In 2002, he became Vice President for Strategy, Finance and Risk, and two years later was named Chief Financial Officer. During this time he was responsible for defining the Bank's overall business strategy, overseeing its financial policies and risk management functions, and ensuring that the administrative budget was consistent with the Bank's financial outlook and aligned with its strategic priorities. He oversaw a team of over 400 staff at the World Bank.

Since leaving the Bank in 2006, John has worked as a Managing Director and the Director of International Research for Farallon Capital Management LLC, a global multi-strategy US-based investment manager. He was also a consultant to Hellman & Friedman, a private equity firm. John provided these firms with global macroeconomic advice and research on specific issues.

John grew up and was educated in the United Kingdom, where he attended the University of Sussex, receiving his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in economics and statistics. He then spent two years working as an economist for the Government of Tanzania before returning to the UK to study at the University of Cambridge for his PhD in economics. He was working on his doctoral degree when he left to join the World Bank.

John will play an instrumental leadership role at UC Berkeley at a time of continuing and challenging resource constraints, partnering with the Chancellor and the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost to set long-range administrative and financial goals, and in management of the campus, the development of campus policies, and the distribution and utilization of financial, capital and human resources.

This Vice Chancellor position has broadened to include leadership of increasingly urgent campus priorities: the continuing design and implementation of Operational Excellence, the campus's initiative to reduce costs and improve campus operations; stabilization of the budget; and the establishment of a sustainable financial model for the future. The focus on these goals as the immediate agenda led to a change in title from Vice Chancellor-Administration to Vice Chancellor-Administration and Finance. Associate Vice Chancellor Erin Gore will continue to serve as chief financial officer, reporting directly to John.

I am most grateful to Vice Chancellor Frank Yeary and Associate Vice Chancellor, Business and Administrative Services, Ron Coley, who have set aside some of their other priorities to help us manage this critical portfolio, while we searched to fill this position.

I also want to express my thanks to the search committee, which was aided by the consulting firm of Spencer Stuart, for their outstanding work in advising me on this appointment.

Please join me in warmly welcoming John Wilton to UC Berkeley.

A press release announcing the appointment will be posted later today on the campus NewsCenter

Robert J. Birgeneau
Chancellor

Operation Excellence Memo

2011-01-14T14:36:00.000-08:00

A message to members of the Berkeley campus community from the Operational Excellence Executive Committee

While we continue to absorb this week’s budget announcement from Governor Jerry Brown of a proposed $500 million reduction to the University of California state appropriation and study its implications for the Berkeley campus, we are more than ever convinced of the importance of the success of Operational Excellence (OE). We want to take this opportunity to update the campus about the progress of Operational Excellence and specifically, the results of one part of the organizational simplification initiative begun last fall that addresses our management structures.

We have for some time now been pursuing a number of different approaches to meet our budget challenges and reduce our reliance on state funding. Our plans have focused on both revenue increases and cost reductions and include both short- and long-term strategies. We have realized revenues through growing philanthropy, increasing research funding, higher student fees, and a rise in the number of students paying non-resident tuition.

Operational Excellence is a major strategy for reducing our administrative costs while simultaneously improving the quality of our operations. OE is designed to create efficiency, improve organizational performance, and reduce our costs over the next three years, on a recurring and ongoing basis, by at least $75 million dollars per year.

The Operational Excellence diagnostic report, completed and accepted in Spring 2010, identified that contrary to best practice in well-run organizations, we have too many supervisors who supervise only a few people and that elimination of management layers could save up to $20 million annually. In September, we set out to design new organizational structures across campus by asking our Deans and Vice-Chancellors, including the Chancellor’s office, to have unit restructuring plans ready to implement in early 2011 which would meet savings targets by creating higher spans of control, that is, having fewer supervisors manage more people.

While unit restructuring is never an easy or simple exercise, I am pleased to report that

our Deans and Vice Chancellors put forward extremely high quality submissions that collectively exceeded our expectations. In total, the plans prepared by the unit leaders will deliver savings of as much as $20 million. As importantly, we will create a flatter and healthier organizational structure which will have about one third fewer managers and will focus our best managers on developing talent and actively managing the organization.

The campus expects to eliminate approximately 280 full time positions, half involuntarily and half through removal of vacant positions, retirements and voluntary separations, mostly before June 2011. Although this is positive news for our cost savings effort, we are saddened to announce that nearly 150 staff on our campus will be laid off. The reductions in our staff workforce have already begun and will continue through this fiscal year and beyond. Those leaving will be notified by their managers, with appropriate severance arrangements for those who qualify, including training and counseling services. We want to express our thanks and recognition to the staff who are leaving for their service to the university.

The reductions in workforce span all levels of our organization, including mid-management levels; about one-quarter of the positions eliminated have salaries plus benefits of $100,000 and above. We have significantly reduced the number of managers who supervised fewer than three people. Prior to the restructuring about 45 percent of our supervisors had fewer than three direct reports. Now, this has been reduced to 20 percent, and the campus has achieved an over-all average span of seven direct reports per supervisor. This significant elimination of layers of reporting will make us more nimble and productive.

We are encouraged by these initial results that we will meet our overall goals for Operational Excellence. Wide engagement with the campus has taken place for the second phase of Organizational Simplification, the designing of shared service centers for the delivery of common administrative functions in Human Resources, Finance, and Information Technology. A draft report for campus comment will be published in the next month. The remaining six initiatives, Information Technology, Energy, High Performance Culture, Procurement, Finance, and Human Resources continue to evolve their business cases and plans.

As was stated last September in a Chancellor’s memo, these are particularly stressful times for our staff and for managers who are working to realize these changes. We repeat how important it is that we all acknowledge the critical role that Berkeley managers and staff play in the success of our teaching and research mission. We are committed to treating all of our employees with dignity, respect and fairness while recognizing that in the end, we will have fewer administrative positions on campus. In addition to crafting a somewhat smaller workforce, our goal is to rationalize policies and procedures such that many staff will find their jobs more rewarding and less frustrating. As the OE initiatives are implemented, staff will continue to have opportunities for career growth.

We want to thank all of the many initiative sponsors, managers and volunteers who are engaged in helping us develop our plans, and our campus community for its engagement with this important effort. Your unit heads will be able to answer questions you may have about your individual unit restructuring. The OE Program Office will continue to provide information and updates on progress on their website at http://oe.berkeley.edu

Robert J. Birgeneau, Chancellor

George Breslauer, Executive Vice-Chancellor and Provost

Frank Yeary, Vice-Chancellor

Andrew Szeri, Operational Excellence Program Head and Dean of the Graduate Division

Berkeley's Operational Excellence: Layoffs and Retirements for Staff But not for Upper Administration (1/13/11)

2011-01-13T17:38:00.000-08:00

A message to members of the Berkeley campus community from the Operational Excellence Executive Committee

While we continue to absorb this week’s budget announcement from Governor Jerry Brown of a proposed $500 million reduction to the University of California state appropriation and study its implications for the Berkeley campus, we are more than ever convinced of the importance of the success of Operational Excellence (OE). We want to take this opportunity to update the campus about the progress of Operational Excellence and specifically, the results of one part of the organizational simplification initiative begun last fall that addresses our management structures.

We have for some time now been pursuing a number of different approaches to meet our budget challenges and reduce our reliance on state funding. Our plans have focused on both revenue increases and cost reductions and include both short- and long-term strategies. We have realized revenues through growing philanthropy, increasing research funding, higher student fees, and a rise in the number of students paying non-resident tuition.

Operational Excellence is a major strategy for reducing our administrative costs while simultaneously improving the quality of our operations. OE is designed to create efficiency, improve organizational performance, and reduce our costs over the next three years, on a recurring and ongoing basis, by at least $75 million dollars per year.

The Operational Excellence diagnostic report, completed and accepted in Spring 2010, identified that contrary to best practice in well-run organizations, we have too many supervisors who supervise only a few people and that elimination of management layers could save up to $20 million annually. In September, we set out to design new organizational structures across campus by asking our Deans and Vice-Chancellors, including the Chancellor’s office, to have unit restructuring plans ready to implement in early 2011 which would meet savings targets by creating higher spans of control, that is, having fewer supervisors manage more people.

While unit restructuring is never an easy or simple exercise, I am pleased to report that our Deans and Vice Chancellors put forward extremely high quality submissions that collectively exceeded our expectations. In total, the plans prepared by the unit leaders will deliver savings of as much as $20 million. As importantly, we will create a flatter and healthier organizational structure which will have about one third fewer managers and will focus our best managers on developing talent and actively managing the organization.

The campus expects to eliminate approximately 280 full time positions, half involuntarily and half through removal of vacant positions, retirements and voluntary separations, mostly before June 2011. Although this is positive news for our cost savings effort, we are saddened to announce that nearly 150 staff on our campus will be laid off. The reductions in our staff workforce have already begun and will continue through this fiscal year and beyond. Those leaving will be notified by their managers, with appropriate severance arrangements for those who qualify, including training and counseling services. We want to express our thanks and recognition to the staff who are leaving for their service to the university.

The reductions in workforce span all levels of our organization, including mid-management levels; about one-quarter of the positions eliminated have salaries plus benefits of $100,000 and above. We have significantly reduced the number of managers who supervised fewer than three people. Prior to the restructuring about 45 percent of our supervisors had fewer than three direct reports. Now, this has been reduced to 20 percent, and the campus has achieved an over-all average span of seven direct reports per supervisor. This significant elimination of layers of reporting will make us more nimble and productive.

We are encouraged by these initial results that we will meet our overall goals for Operational Excellence. Wide engagement with the campus has taken place for the second phase of Organizational Simplification, the designing of shared service centers for the delivery of common administrative functions in Human Resources, Finance, and Information Technology. A draft report for campus comment will be published in the next month. The remaining six initiatives, Information Technology, Energy, High Performance Culture, Procurement, Finance, and Human Resources continue to evolve their business cases and plans.

As was stated last September in a Chancellor’s memo, these are particularly stressful times for our staff and for managers who are working to realize these changes. We repeat how important it is that we all acknowledge the critical role that Berkeley managers and staff play in the success of our teaching and research mission. We are committed to treating all of our employees with dignity, respect and fairness while recognizing that in the end, we will have fewer administrative positions on campus. In addition to crafting a somewhat smaller workforce, our goal is to rationalize policies and procedures such that many staff will find their jobs more rewarding and less frustrating. As the OE initiatives are implemented, staff will continue to have opportunities for career growth.

We want to thank all of the many initiative sponsors, managers and volunteers who are engaged in helping us develop our plans, and our campus community for its engagement with this important effort. Your unit heads will be able to answer questions you may have about your individual unit restructuring. The OE Program Office will continue to provide information and updates on progress on their website at http://oe.berkeley.edu

Robert J. Birgeneau, Chancellor
George Breslauer, Executive Vice-Chancellor and Provost
Frank Yeary, Vice-Chancellor
Andrew Szeri, Operational Excellence Program Head and Dean of the Graduate Division

California Community Colleges Respond to Brown's Budget Proposals (1/10/11)

2011-01-10T20:06:00.000-08:00

January 10, 2011
California Community Colleges Impact of Gov. Brown’s2 011-12 Proposed State Budget (January 2011)

Impact to the California Community Colleges:

 6.8% budget reduction ($400 million). This cut translates into approximately 400,000 students losing access to classes (200,000 students already in the system for which the colleges are receiving no state remuneration and roughly 200,000 additional students).

 The proposed $10 per unit fee increase would generate $110 million for the colleges to support an additional 50,000 students.

 With the fee increase as many as 350,000 students could lose access to a community college education.

 $10 fee increase would raise student fees from $26 per credit unit to $36 (38.5% increase).

Impact of proposed budget cuts to community college students

 When implementing budget cuts in prior years, community college CEOs were directed by state chancellor Jack Scott to retain courses that lead to job retraining, degrees, certificates, transfer, and that help increase basic English and math skills.

Total proposed cuts to three segments of higher education

 University of California                   $500 million
 California State University      $500 million
 California Community Colleges     $400 million
                                                                          $1.4 billion
Priorities and efficiencies

 The California Community Colleges is the most cost-effective system of education in California. While the state revenue needed to support one community college full-time student is slightly more than $5,000 per year, that same student costs approximately $7,500 in the K-12 system and $20,000 and $11,000, respectively, at UC and CSU.

 The community colleges have looked at every corner of the system to come up with efficiencies. Tactics implemented include course reductions, debt restructuring, administrative consolidations, energy savings programs, IT efficiencies, increased class sizes, reduced student services programs, furloughs, additional online instruction, increased industry partnerships and transfer coordination with the UCs and CSUs. The system is exhausting all options to free up additional funds and many college reserves are low.

California has been divesting in higher education in the past 15 years

 Enrollment at the California Community Colleges has grown 44% in the last 15 years, yet per student funding in 2009-10 (adjusted for inflation) was lower than it was in 1995-96.

 The demand for a community college education is continuing to outstrip resources. The California Community Colleges would have naturally grown by at least 5.5% in 2009-10. But instead, decreased funding caused the system to shrink by 4.8%.

 In the 2009-10 academic year, the system sustained $520 million in budget cuts which equated to 8% of its overall budget. It is estimated that approximately 140,000 students were turned away from community college campuses in 2009-10 due to course reductions.

 The California Community Colleges are serving 200,000 students for which the system is receiving no state remuneration.

 For fall 2009, course sections were cut by 6.3% and enrollment dropped by 0.2% over fall 2008. While total headcount declined by only 0.2%, the system’s first-time community college student enrollments decreased by 12% indicating that the hardest hit by budget reductions are recent high school graduates and displaced workers because they do not have priority registration.

Economic benefits of higher education

 If just 2% more of Californians earned associate degrees and 1% more earned a bachelor’s degree, our state’s economy would grow by $20 billion, state and local tax revenue would increase by $1.2 billion a year and 174,000 new jobs would be created.

 The economic return on investment in California's higher education infrastructure is a win-win for the state and its taxpayers. For every $1 California spends on higher education, it receives $3 in return.

 The California Community Colleges is the largest provider of workforce training in the state and nation.

Workforce skills gap

 Undergraduate demand for the three public systems of higher education in California is expected to

grow by 387,000 students by 2019. To accommodate the increase it will take $1.5 billion more in revenue.

 If current funding trends persist, the Public Policy Institute of California estimates by 2025 California will face a shortage of 1 million college degree and certificate holders needed to fuel its workforce.

 Approximately 55% of CSU and 30% of UC bachelor’s degree recipients started at the California Community Colleges.

 With baby boomers retiring as the best educated and most skilled workforce in U.S. history, labor experts are concerned that California will lack workers with the critical aptitude needed to replace them.

Estimated financial impact of fee increase to students

 Under the current $26 per credit unit fee, full-time students enrolled in 15 units pay approximately $780 per academic year.

     ** With the proposed fee increase to $36 per credit unit, full-time students would pay 38.5% more or roughly $1,080 per academic year.

Fee history

Fiscal Year Fee (per unit)
 1984-85 $5*
 1991-92 $6
 1993-94 $10
 1994-95 $13
 1998-99 $12
 1999-00 $11
 2003-04 $18
 2004-05 $26
 2006-07 $20
 2009-10 $26
 2011-12 $36 (proposed amount in Gov. Brown’s Jan. 2011 budget)
*Prior to 1984, community colleges charged no fee

© 2010 California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office. 1102 Q Street, Sacramento, California 95811, Fourth Floor | 916.445.8752

The View from 2020: How Universities Came Back

2011-01-07T11:25:00.000-08:00

Chris Newfield

By 2011, the higher ed community knew some things that it hadn’t known in the year 2000. A summary of the decade’s findings, some well known, some not, read as follows.

1. State funding for public universities – serving 80% of the country’s college students – didn’t go up and down with the business cycle but (corrected for inflation and enrollment growth) went down, in a long decline over 30 years. SLIDE 2, SLIDE 3

2. Thirty years of growth in private funds helped speical projects but not general educational operations. In most humanities fields, fundraising didn’t net enough money to cover expenses. After 2011, in any case, endowment growth beat inflation, but not by much.

3. A larger number of independent analysts began to do the math on sponsored research projects. They found that this research produced large gross income and, at the same time, net losses, once overall expenses were calculated. Research, though intrinsically valuable, lost money, and was not an asset but a cost. SLIDE 4

4. After the crisis became acute in 2008, most higher education officials reacted as follows: they displayed resignation towards the steady fall in public funding (1), continued to invest academic resources in fundraising (2), staked their reputations on growth in sponsored projects (3), thus continuing to dig budgetary holes that could be filled from only one source, massive tuition increases. SLIDE 5. Right through the Great Recession they continued annual tuition hikes at 2-4x inflation. These increases led to deep tuition discounting to maintain enrollments, or to growing student debt, or to widespread public backlash, and most often to all three. SLIDE 6. The one thing tuition increases did not do was fix the budgetary problem. (For example, faculty reports coming out of the University of California calculated that to return UC to its 2001 level of resources in 2010-11, tuition would have needed to be nearly $25,000 per year, or double what it actually was.) Tuition more than doubled during the decade. By 2009, bloggers and protestors popularized the phrase “paying more to get less.” Taxpayer willingness to contribute more to public universities was further suppressed.

5. The US had had an educational advantage over every other country in the world from about 1840 on – first in high school graduation rates, then in college graduation. This was an edge in the attainment of the whole population, not just for the top 1% that went to Ivy League Plus. Between 1980 and 2010, the US completely squandered this historic advantage. It fell behind many high-income countries, and behind some medium-income countries as well. SLIDE 7

6. While playing catch-up, the U.S. had to advance the most “non-traditional” student population in its history. This population and its children were especially vulnerable to the renewed wave of offshoring that started in 2009, and to declines in manufacturing and construction, and to attacks on public sector and unionized employment. It had high proportions of first-generation students, returning students, students working full-time or unemployed, poor students, and students of color whose K-12 schools had received declining investment for 30 years. By 2010, in California, a 70% white voting public coexisted with a K-12 population that was 70% students of color. 50% of California’s K-12 students were eligible for the free lunch program. Private family resources for higher ed were overall lower than at any time since the 1970s.

7. The decade of the 2000s confirmed what the Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf called in 2011 the Great Convergence of income between the high and middle-income countries. China was slated to have 70% of the US level of output by 2030, but it hit that level this year, in 2020, 10 years ahead of schedule. This meant that standards of living in the US and Europe could not be maintained through vastly higher levels of consumption of resources. The same was true for worthy social goals like restored educational attainment: economic superiority was no longer the answer.

8. In 2010, Western governments, in harmony with the financial sector, imposed fiscal austerity from one side of Europe and North America to the other. One obvious effect was the reduction of resources for K-12 education, and for public colleges and universities. Financial cuts took precedence over investment in new forms of creativity, of social development, of ways of sustainably and equitably sharing scarce resources. These cuts, it can now be clearly seen in 2020, had a devolutionary impact on high-income countries.

9. In colleges and universities, austerity disproportionately focused on the arts and humanities – on the human sciences that were not thought to grow the economy. Fields like classics, linguistics, and literature in foreign languages, were the most likely to be proposed for closure, particularly on campuses where smaller enrollments meant those departments could not be raided for funds to subsidize expensive science and engineering research. These attacks destabilized the profession as a whole. SLIDE 8

In short, Devolutionary Spiral was in full force by the end of 2010. SLIDE 9. Older harmonies in the higher ed funding model had been destroyed. For example, public funding (1) had filled in the hidden shortfalls caused by extramural research (3), but cuts prevented this from continuting. Similarly, high income growth (7) had supported the world’s highest tuition levels (4), which for a time were used to replace drops in public funding (1), but wage stagnation and higher rates of poverty (7) deepened by austerity (8) popped the tuition bubble. Each step in the negative cycle strengthened several others.

In 2011, the US faced a systemic failure of its higher education funding model. But in that year, a surprising change began to be felt, and in parat from an unexpected place, the humanities.

FUTURE 2011-2020. Just three samples. SLIDE 10 START

2011: After a series of Freedom of Information Act requests, a major state university system revealed that savings of about a million dollars from closing humanities departments overshadowed by losses of nearly $50,000,000 annually in its sponsored research programs (Exhibit F). The website Propublica decided to investigate apparent public subsidies of private business interests in university-sponsored research centers more generally, particularly those designed to serve as incubators for local industry. The results of this work came to the attention of Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), still smarting from his battle for higher university endowment payouts. He started a new round of Senate hearings about the possible misuse of public money. In addition, faculty, staff, students, and parents, distraught by ever-rising tuition and stagnant wages, began to demand more transparency about the extent to which student tuition was subsidizing not only scientific research, which was held to be justified to a limited (and openly negotiated) extent, but commercial research that should be conducted in industrial laboratories at company expense. Although most industry sponsors successfully documented their support of basic research without exclusive intellectual property agreements, attention was directed towards the high cost of research in the increasingly unpopular health sciences arena. Students at one medical campus obtained documents showing that the medical school had received a loan from its campus equal to nearly 10% of the campus’s total revenues, and that annual cash flows went from the campus to the med school in untraceable amounts. The faculty Senate passed a resolution calling on the university to spin off the medical school as a self-supporting enterprise, charging $1 a year for using the university’s name. The move prompted wider investigation of the medical enterprises at public universities in various states across the country. Parents formed a group called Families of Future Leaders (FFL), which began to pressure state legislatures to account correctly and openly for the use of student tuition. In 2015, Sen. Grassley celebrated his 35^th year in the U.S. Senate with the Federal Fair Funding Act, which required federal research agencies for the first time to pay the full cost of sponsored research at state-funded universities, as they had always done for private industry.

2014: Two simultaneous events produced an unexpected result. First, the heads of the handful of major humanities granting agencies cosponsored a report with the Department of Education, called “The University for a Sustainable Society.” The report took direct aim at the massification of higher education, at passive learning in both large lectures and low-cost on-line arrangements, and defined the purpose of higher education as the development of human capability for the sake of social development. Endorsed and then promoted by a galaxy of higher education analysts, including former conservatives like Diane Ravitch, the report detailed learning practices essential to the reconstitution of a democratic and economically dynamic society. These required the replacement of an overemphasis on fiscal, legal, bureaucratic, and communicative control, which the report noted had infected educational practices, with the development of capacities for the transmission of informal know-how through group-based active learning, project-centered coursework, and a renewed focus on the strong individual agency and craft-skills that innovation required. CNN-NBC News ran a series called “Is Humane the New Smart,” and, for the first time since Brown v. Board of Education the tide began to turn against measurement and control as dominant educational strategies, and towards craft mastery and intellectual independence.

Also in 2014, continuing closures of humanities departments, coupled with spreading awareness of the role of large-enrollment humanities departments in subsidizing other disciplines, provoked stronger measures. Literature professors at major public research universities – UC San Diego, Wisconsin-Madison, Minnesota-Twin Cities, and North Carolina-Chapel Hill, wrote a manifesto called “The Case for Succession.” The thirty cosigners each pledged to offer one course per year off campus in their area of literary, cultural, or theoretical expertise. In other cases, they did this as an overload, nothing that most humanities doctoral advising was already done as an overload. In others, sympathetic administrators offered to house the off campus courses in the electronic university whose infrastructure was already in place. Since the 30 signers among them taught more than 10,000 students per year, the experiment attracted the interest of for-profit universities with experience in nontraditional education environments. Needing to improve its public image, Kaplan University funded two years of these experimental universities, and offered complete academic freedom and hosting services in exchange for observation rights. Student enrollments were strong, since student experience on public university campuses has been degraded through years of growing class size and reduced access to professors, graders, advisors, and basic classroom space. Under the rubric of Bootleg universities, television gives the experiments publicity. Speaking on an episode of Charlie Rose, one of the movement leaders said, “we realized our disciplines weren’t getting much of the infrastructure our students and citizens were paying for, and the administrative workload was killing us. By cutting out the university intermediary, we charge students half the price for twice the educational service.” Because of strong student support, the bootleg universities are able to stay independent. As it turned out, the “unbundling” of university activities predicted by Anya Kamerentz and others allowed the humanities to return to its roots as an immersive educational experiences at the intersection of personal and social development. Propelled by popular demand for textual and cultural skills, bootleg universities grew for the rest of the decade.

2016: Bloomberg-ABC-CBS News reported that for-profit colleges, which tripled their enrollments from 1998-2008, and whose students received 25% of all Pell Grant federal funding in 2008-09, received 50% of Pell Grant funding in 2014-15. Meanwhile, as a result of steadily rising tuition, and the closure of many low-cost community college campuses, average student debt burdens doubled between 2005 and 2015. Similar growth occurred in private-sector PLUS loans to parents for their children’s education. In Washington state, some baby-boomer senior citizens started a group called Grandparents Against Debt (GAD), and told graphic tales of the destruction of the economic security of their grandchildren, for whom affordable higher education had all but disappeared. Cross-generational discussions of family finances became public, and polls showed that support for restored public funding of education for the sake of debt reduction had gone from a solid majority position in 2010 to an 80% approval rating in 2016. Nothing much happened until the fall of that year, when several hundred college students at the Seattle campus of the University of Washington, which was charging in-state students $21,500, gathered to “burn their debt cards” in front of the campus’s financial aid office. The debt card burners promise to default on their student debt. Campus administrators, who had generally supported the expansion of loan programs, realized that the debt situation was no longer manageable. They switched sides, and the American Association of Universities along with other groups issued pledges to work for the elimination of private intermediaries in student loan programs and for strict caps on allowable student debt. Higher education began to be articulated as a public good that benefits the entire society – propelled by what in 2020 we have come to call the Great Student Debt Default that began that year.

SLIDE 11. In 2011, the wheel of misfortune began to turn in the other direction. And it would come to be known that the people who reversed the spinning wheel were among others the humanities students and teachers sitting right here in this room.

The Future of the University: a Post-MLA Conference, Sat Jan 8th

2011-01-04T15:28:00.000-08:00

Saturday, January 8th, 2011 from
1:00-5:00 pm at
Loyola Law School (Merrifield Hall, 919 Albany St, 3 blocks NW of the Marriott).

While thousands of people will be meeting at the MLA convention, we will be discussing strategies for making higher education more just. Speakers will be presenting short papers on topics such as the death of tenure, the corporatization of the university, the possibilities of unionization, direct social action, the use and abuse of graduate students, organizing contingent faculty, and taking back shared governance.

Schedule

1:00-1:45: Remaking the University of California
Chris Newfield, Joshua Clover

1:45-2:30: Defending the Humanities and Shared Governance
Cary Nelson, Jeffrey Williams, Michelle Masse

2:30-3:15: Organizing Labor and the Academic Class War
Maria Maisto, Joe Berry

3:15-4:00: Graduate Students and Precarious Labor
Annie McClanahan, Jasper Bernes, Stephanie Seawell, Kerry Pimblott

4:00-4:30: Quality, Access, and Affordability
Murray Sperber and Bob Samuels

4:30-4:55: Open Discussion on Strategies for Changing Higher Education

A $10 donation will be suggested but not required. You do not have to be a member of the MLA to attend.

SAVE "Appeal to Suspend "APBEARS" At Berkeley

2010-12-01T10:47:00.000-08:00

APPEAL TO SUSPEND “APBEARS” UNTIL IT WORKS PROPERLY

TO: EVC George Breslauer

CC: Vice Provost Sheldon Zedeck, Associate Vice Provost Angelica Stacy, Associate Vice Chancellor Shelton Waggener, Dean Andrew Szeri; campus offices

FROM: The SAVE Coordinating Committee

Evidence and testimony from across campus document that APBears was “rolled out” in a condition unfit for the use of staff and faculty. Moreover, it is potentially damaging to faculty who are now preparing dossiers for promotion review (see below). It is widely understood that some administrators in charge of this system knew about its deficiencies but suppressed this knowledge and refused to correct problems so as not to miss their “rollout” deadline. If they have not apprised you of this situation, we do so now and ask that you investigate it. Academic Senate Chair Fiona Doyle has already written to VP Zedeck and the chair of the Senate Budget Committee about this problem; VP Zedeck has responded to Deans and Chairs, but his response addresses only one of the system’s problems (the CSIR data).

We believe that faculty should be able to use an accurate and well-designed online academic personnel system. APBears, as it now runs, is not that system. We therefore ask the following:

1. Suspend APBears immediately and re-implement it only when a taskforce of campus department faculty and staff has reviewed its functionality and seen that the necessary and advisable changes to it have been made. Until then faculty should be permitted to use the present bio-bib case system.

2. Make certain that any new iteration of APBears contains clear statements about which data are supplied by external (non-faculty) sources, whether their errors can or cannot be amended, which information is supplied by faculty, and that faculty are responsible only for the information that they supply.

Here is a partial list of what is wrong with APBears:
1. It is full of procedural errors, glitches, and technical problems that are time-consuming to fix or work around. Some of these could be fixed with diligent review of a committee of faculty from all levels and across campus departments. We ask you to convene this group.
2. The data supplied by the Administration on teaching and mentoring are unacceptably inaccurate. One professor found that she was credited with only 25% of her teaching; another 400%. The requests for detailed data on student mentoring and employment are unnecessary and burdensome; faculty are not the HR office. The first problem cannot be fixed because it involves CSIR data; the second problem can be fixed by switching from a pull-down to a narrative system and eliminating several informational field requests.
3. Faculty are prohibited from correcting many kinds of errors in the system, and some apparently cannot be corrected by anyone. Despite these errors, faculty are being required to sign a statement that they have read and approved all information in their files, even though they cannot see some of it. Faculty should not be coerced to sign a document that they cannot fully review. This situation is indefensible and probably legally actionable. It could be partly fixed by prominent statements on the website that acknowledge clearly and fully that the accuracy of CSIR data is in doubt, note that data uploaded to the system at the time of its roll-out cannot be corrected, and that clarify that faculty are responsible only for the accuracy of statements that they upload to the system. This does not solve the problem of the proportion of CSIR data that is incorrect or unanalyzed, but it may improve the future accuracy of entered data.
4. Current estimates are that this system typically takes 20-40 hours longer to prepare than the traditional case procedure, and this does not include the “one-time” uploading of personnel data and historical material. This could be remedied by eliminating requests for some data, removing the pull-down menus, and allowing greater use of narratives uploaded by the faculty (see 6, 7).
5. Our faculty are incredibly diverse in the products of their research, the modes of their teaching, and the scope of their professional activities. The “pull-down” menus are time-consuming and do not encompass accurate descriptions or alternatives. These should be eliminated and a greater narrative freedom built in; otherwise faculty may as well just append accurate bio-bib statements and ignore the data fields.
6. There is no way to rank the importance of many activities; hence, a talk to a Cub Scout troop is featured as prominently as election to a national academy. Chairing a panel could mean a lot of work or none at all; there is no role for “convener” or “organizer.” The roles of authors in publications are also not adequately assessed. This could be fixed with greater narrative freedom and the abolition of pull-down menus.
7. The extent and kind of data being gathered represent an unreasonable burden on the faculty. Many of these data have to be entered in three different ways, which is redundant and time-consuming. Many categories do not accurately or adequately assess work done on a project or activity, and represent a “one size fits all” approach to professional activity and achievement. The redundancy and unnecessary fields should be eliminated.
8. It has not been thought out or clarified to the faculty how external referees will access case information in this online system of mixed and risked confidentiality. Currently the old “hard-copy” approach is being used. Why, then, the new system?
9. Department staff are spending an undue amount of time learning this system and trying to interpret it and fix its problems for faculty, at a time when they can least afford to do so, given additional job burdens related to staff cutbacks.

These problems are not simply a matter of system “growing pains” or “first time only” problems that are finding speedy remedy. They appear to be intrinsic and endemic. This system was put into place and mandated before it was ready. The entire faculty and staff should not have to be the guinea pigs for this. Let’s not repeat the errors of the BFS system.

We estimate conservatively that the extra time this system imposes upon the faculty will cost the campus well over $300,000 in faculty time this year alone. We cannot begin to estimate the loss of staff time. The argument that there will be time saved down the road is not sufficient justification for implementing a system (and APBears is by no means the only one) that has not been adequately reviewed, tested, and corrected before implementation by its principal users. Nearly every IT system on campus winds up making the faculty spend time entering data and negotiating systems that are not effectively designed to help research and teaching, but to make the jobs of administrators easier. In the end, however, this does not happen, because the systems – whether BFS, RES, or APBears -- are so flawed that both administrative and faculty time are engulfed by trying to negotiate or work around them.

We agree that an online system ultimately could be easier for the faculty to use. We recognize that this is considered the case on some other campuses. However, given the structural problems of the APBears system, it is clear that this system is not ready to be used or implemented. It could be, but only with further study and correction. Thank you for your consideration of this unwieldy and burdensome campus crisis.

Berkeley Forum on On-Line Learning Pilot

2010-10-10T10:54:00.000-07:00

UC Cyber Campus: The future we want?
A Public Forum with Dean Christopher Edley
October 12, 2010
5:00PM
Morgan Hall 101, UC Berkeley

What is the future of online education at the University of California?

On July 14, the UC Regents approved a pilot program to test the viability of online education with the aim of offering a UC bachelor’s degree that could be earned entirely online. This ambitious proposal looks to increase both access and revenue to the UC by marketing the “UC brand” online to students around the world – “from Sheboygan to Shanghai.” Given the many controversies surrounding for-profit universities that already offer online degrees, this pilot program and the future of a UC “Cyber Campus” has raised eyebrows amongst concerned faculty, students, and alumni.

Berkeley Law Dean Chris Edley and architect of the cyber campus proposal will participate in a public forum on October 12th in 101 Morgan Hall at 5pm. Acting as respondents will be Wendy Brown (Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and Political Science), Charlotte McIvor (Graduate Student in Performance Studies), and Dr. Michelle Douskey (Chemistry).

Considering that the entire UC community has much at stake in the future of online education at the UC, the majority of the public forum will be dedicated to taking questions from the audience. We welcome you and your questions.

Sponsored by: UAW Local 2865, the Graduate Assembly, ASUC, AFT Local 1474, the Graduate Student Organizing Committee, SAVE

For more information on the future of online education at the UC, please see the following:

“The Online Learning Pilot Project: Technological Evolution for a World-Leading Public University,” presentation delivered by Christopher Edley and Daniel Greenstein to the UC Board of Regents, July 14, 2010

“UC regents endorse test of online instruction,” SF Chronicle, July 15, 2010

“On UC's Risky Venture Into Online Education: Mortarboards without the bricks,” SF Chronicle, July 18, 2010

“UC online degree proposal rattles academics,” SF Chronicle, July 12, 2010

“UC Must put Emphasis on Education, not on Brand,” Op-Ed from UC Faculty

“An Online UC Degree: A Panacea or a Mirage?” Op-Ed by Berkeley Faculty

“Online learning matches UC's mission” by Christopher Edley, SF Chronicle (July 14, 2010)

Berkeley Faculty Association Report on Cyber Campus Proposal (5/12/10)

Berkeley Faculty Association Repot on the Gould Commission

“California Dreamer,” from Inside Higher Ed, August 3, 2010

“Graduate Student Statement to UC Regents Regarding On-Line Education,” delivered to the UC Regents, May 19, 2010

“The University of California invests $53 million in two diploma mills owned by a regent,” Berkeley Daily Planet, June 22, 2010

“UC Cyber-Campus?” Forum with Michael Krasny Radio Interview with Dean Christopher Edley and Professor Christopher Kutz

Principles for Evaluating Operational Excellence (SAVE)

2010-10-06T08:18:00.000-07:00

Principles for Evaluating "Operational Excellence" at UC Berkeley, Fall 2010

Proposals for major reorganization and staff reductions will be coming soon under the campus Operational Excellence, now under way. All of us need to follow the process closely and make our views heard. In order that we may speak with a clearer voice and not a cacophony of particular objections, we need a set of basic principles to judge what will happen – especially about how NOT to go about implementing reforms.

First, on the positive side:

§ The key findings of the Bain & Co. evaluation appear to be sound: UC Berkeley has too many layers of management and too horizontal an organizational chart, as well as an overly scattered procurement system and inadequate IT infrastructure.

§ Fixing these problems can benefit the campus by reducing costs, making work conditions better, and improving administrative accountability and responsiveness.

§ The formation of seven joint administrative-faculty-staff committees to tackle different facets of campus management (IT, student services, purchasing, energy, etc.) is a good approach to identify problems and develop solutions.

§ There is wide agreement that simple cost cutting is not the same as operational efficiency and better management. Furthermore, it is clear that previous rounds of budget cuts and staff layoffs made under duress have jeopardized the basic teaching and research functions of the university.

Nonetheless, OpEx will not work if certain organizational realities are ignored:

•Rushing out proposals for reorganization without adequate time for reflection is counterproductive. The current rollout timetable smacks of haste.

•Students and more staff are supposed to be added to the OpEx committees, but if this action is delayed, will they have an impact on decisions already being made?

•Reforms should not be generalized without "beta-testing". Frontline staff and faculty need to be involved in providing feedback during trial periods.

•Twenty-seven campus unit heads are supposed to implement the reform proposals coming down from the OpEx committees, but there are no guidelines on how they should involve faculty and staff in designing and implementing reforms within large units. There has to be cooperation, flexibility and feedback all the way down.

•There is a danger of 'one size fits all' proposals imposed without adequate consideration of differences in size, function, and needs of departments and other subunits. Some need more specialists, others more generalists; some can share services with other units, some cannot. Centralization is not always more efficient.

•There must be meaningful transition planning to help staff and faculty deal with cutbacks, reorganization and layoffs. When people and functions 'disappear' from units without clear directives about where to go for services, work slows down, users and clients become frustrated, and staff become demoralized from overwork.

•There has to be a willingness by top administrators to abandon reform proposals if the rollout, testing and feedback proves that they are poorly designed and flawed. Accordingly, critical feedback must not be treated as hostile and to be silenced.

•The OpEx committees should remain in place to review ongoing implementation of their proposals and to respond where reforms are not working as hoped. They, too, need an open channel for feedback from faculty, staff and students.

Furthermore, OpEx will not work if the administration does not reform itself:

•A common administrative view that faculty and staff are part of the problem, "change averse", is wrong and demeaning. Indeed, if top management had been doing a better job, problems identified by Bain & Co. would not have grown so large.

•Faculty and staff need to be involved in a meaningful way in the assessments and proposed cuts. Staff associations and union members need to be included and listened to, especially front-line people who see the effects of changes on daily work.

•The administration, the OpEx committees, and the 27 large unit directors need to make their evaluations, proposals and actions as transparent as possible, and should maintain constant communication and open dialogue with lower units and the rest of the campus.

•In a top-heavy administrative system, cuts must come at the top as well as the bottom (the latter always bear the brunt). Administrators and their jobs need to be scrutinized as closely as the rest of us and to be subject to removal, as well.

•The top-heavy salary scale that has grown up in recent years must be rethought, for reasons of campus morale as much as budget savings. Poor morale has significant effects on productivity, efficiency and loyalty.

•The university is not a corporation, either in its motives or its organizational structure; hence, bright ideas from management theory in the private sector often do not fit the university and its parts.

SAVE the University & the Berkeley Faculty Association

October 1, 2010

Addresses for Letter Writing Campaign about SUNY-Albany French Closure

2010-10-04T13:36:00.000-07:00

Dear Colleagues,

Please join us in protesting the termination of French, Italian, Russian, Classics, and Theater at SUNY--Albany by writing to the following administrators by both standard mail and e-mail. Please forward this messae to all interested colleagues as well.

George Philip, President: presmail@uamail.albany.edu
Catherine Herman, Vice-President: cherman@uamail.albany.edu
Susan Phillips, Provost: provost@uamail.albany.edu
Edelgard Wulfert, Dean of Arts & Sciences: cwulfert@uamail.albany.edu

For paper mail:

Office of the President / Vice-President / Provost
University Administration Building
State University of New York
State University of New York
Albany, NY 12222

and

Office of the Dean
Arts & Sciences Building
1400 Washington Avenue
State Unversity of New York
Albany, NY 12222

Open Letter for a Shadow University (October, 2010)

2010-10-04T11:48:00.000-07:00

Open Letter for a Shadow University

As instructors, staff members and librarians in the University of California system, we are watching with dismay as access to the university is being further restricted for working class, minority and in-state students, and as once-meaningful structures for shared governance are being dismantled. Since 2000, undergraduate student fees have more than tripled. In the past year, the average family income for incoming students rose sharply, and enrollment rates for black, filipina/o, and latina/o students remained disproportionately low. Too many Californians are being priced out of higher education, a public good that should be accessible to all.

UC President Mark Yudof has said that tuition increases, staff layoffs and pension reductions are necessary in order to balance the university's budget, and he blames the state government for defunding public higher education. Yet the UC Regents have not made public the university's budget. According to professor emeritus Charles Schwartz, there is reason to believe that the cost of instruction is significantly lower than the President has acknowledged, and that ballooning upper administrative salaries, pensions and waste are responsible for much of the budget shortfall.

Furthermore, President Yudof has refused to support Assembly Bill 656, which would better fund higher education by taxing the extraction of oil in California. This bill is facing opposition from the California Chamber of Commerce, whose Board of Directors counts Mark Yudof and UC Regent Russell Gould as active members. A number of other regents, including Richard Blum, Sherry Lansing and Paul Wachter, have benefited financially from risky investments made with the UC pension fund.

We are facing a severe crisis of governance. The University of California is being mismanaged by individuals who have demonstrated a tepid commitment to public education, and whose tenure in power has been tainted by conflicts of interest and the irresponsible squandering of public funds.

Those of us who work, study and teach in the University of California system are not only being let down by our President and Board of Regents, we are also being shut out of any role in the governance of the University. However, we need not stand aside and watch as public higher education is eviscerated. We have the power to open our classrooms and libraries to students who have been barred from enrolling at the University of California, and we are capable of collectively governing our university in such a way as to maintain its public mission.

Last year we organized and carried out a number of actions and projects that began to realize these aims. Throughout the Fall of 2009 students remained inside libraries across campus after their scheduled closing times to challenge the shortening of library hours. These direct actions, which involved collaborations between students, staff and faculty, were partially successful in re-opening the libraries. Similar collaborations took place in the Spring when students were facing possible suspension for protest actions against fee increases and staff layoffs. As the administration began prosecuting student protesters, union locals, professors and student groups called for the suspension of the Student Conduct Code rather than student protesters.

Over the last year, the administration has increasingly imposed and enforced regulations dictating how buildings and open spaces on campus can be used by members of the community, while those of us who work and study on campus have opposed such regulations and have affirmed that campus spaces are sites for critical debate, education, and protest.

Unfortunately though, hikes in tuition and fees have made it impossible for many Californians to attend our public university and to participate in the critical discussions taking place on campus. Additionally, students who have protested these tuition hikes face possible suspension. The administration is shutting the university's doors to the students it is charged with serving.
We, the undersigned are committed to providing instruction and student services to un-enrolled students and to students unable to afford rising fees. As instructors we see our classrooms as public spaces, are committed to maintaining their public character, and intend to work against disciplinary, financial, and admissions policies that bar students from accessing the university. We see the opening of our classrooms as the first stage in a larger project to democratize and reclaim as a public good the University of California.
If you would like to sign this letter, please send an email with your name and departmental affiliation to universityofshadows@gmail.com.

Letter on Closure of French Department at SUNY-Albany

2010-10-04T01:14:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Today the seven members of the French faculty at SUNY--Albany (all tenured) were informed that by presidential decision, ostensibly for budgetary reasons, the French program has been "deactivated" at all levels (BA, MA, PhD), as have BA programs in Russian and Italian. The only foreign language program unaffected is Spanish. The primary criterion used in making the decision was undergrad majors-to-faculty ratio. We were told that tenured faculty in French, Russian, and Italian will be kept on long enough for our students to finish their degrees--meaning three years at the outside. Senoir faculty are being encouraged to take early retirement. The rest of us are being urged to "pursue our careers elsewhere," as our Provost put it.

Needless to say, the decision is personally devastating to those of us affected, but it is also symptomatic of the ongoing devaluation of foreign-language and other humanities program in universities across the United States. I'm writing to ask for your help in spreading the word about this decision as widely as possible and in generating as much negative media publicity as possible against SUNY--Albany and the SUNY system in its entirety.

There is much background to add about how this decision was reached and implemented, too much for me to explain fully here. Suffice it to say that the disappearance of French, Italian, and Russian has resulted from an almost complete lack of leadership at the Albany campus and in the SUNY system. Our president, a former state pension fund manager, holds an MBA as his highest degree, has never held a college or university teaching position, and has never engaged in any kind of scholarship.

More disturbing still, due process was not followed in the decision-making process. The affected programs were not consulted or given the opportunity to propose money-saving reforms. Our Dean and Provost simply hand-selected an advisory committee to rubber stamp the president's decision. The legalities of the situation remain to be discussed with our union, UUP, but in the
meantime I welcome any advice you may have.

best,
Brett
Brett Bowles
Associate Professor of French Studies
French Graduate Program Director
State University of New York, Albany
bbowles@albany.edu

October 7th Teaching Materials

2010-10-04T01:05:00.000-07:00

•Michael O'Hare's (UCB) welcome letter to his students this Fall:

•"Budget curriculum" composed by the Graduate Student Organizing Committee at UCSC,

•Position paper on "Restoring California Higher Education by the Council of University of California Faculty Associations:

• SAVE/BFA's Principles for Evaluating Operational Excellence

•Dick Walker's article on the economic and political crisis of California:

UCI Announcement on Suspension/Probation of Muslim Students Union (September 3, 2010)

2010-09-08T16:59:00.000-07:00

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Decision Regarding MSU Appeal
From:    "Rameen Talesh, Office of the Dean of Students" 
Date:    Fri, September 3, 2010 6:00 pm
To:      All Campus Employees, Campus Faculty, Campus Staff:;
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Muslim Student Union (MSU) at UC Irvine received notice this week of the  outcome of the appeals process following disciplinary measures imposed last spring resulting from the group's disruption of a campus speaker and other violations of the campus code of conduct.

The MSU had appealed the decision, recommended after an in-depth adjudication process undertaken by the Office of Student Affairs that found that the group's actions surrounding the February 8, 2010 speech on campus by Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren had violated campus code of conduct policies.

After an additional two-month process that included meetings with officers of the MSU as well as the careful review of new evidence, Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Manuel Gomez affirmed that the MSU violated the campus code of conduct, and imposed the following sanctions:

The organization is suspended through December 31, 2010 and must complete a collective 100 hours of community service at which time they can request reinstatement. Following this, the organization will be placed on probation for two years.  The organization's leaders will  meet monthly with the Director of Student Conduct for one year. This process has been exhaustive and detailed. The sanctions described above reflect the need for appropriate discipline following the violations of campus policy, while recognizing the role of the University in educating students in and outside of the classroom.

The sanctions described herein apply to the organization as a whole, and do not address disciplinary processes for individuals in this incident. Under federal law the University is prohibited from releasing information on individual student disciplinary matters.

"This has been a difficult decision," said Gomez.  "But in the end, this process demonstrates the University of California Irvine's commitment to values, principles and tolerance.  Although this has been a challenging experience for all involved, I am confident that we will continue to move forward as a stronger, more respectful university community."

Toronto East Asian Studies Faculty on UT Reorganization of Language and Literature Departments

2010-07-20T17:22:00.000-07:00

Dear Colleagues,

In regard to the information about the Department of East Asian Studies sent earlier, members of the department would like to pass on more information about the amalgamation from our perspective, including how it is likely to affect us and our students, as well as Asian Studies in general at the U of T.

We hope that, in addition to signing the petition and joining our Facebook group (linked to in earlier messages and below), you might consider writing a letter of support for the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Toronto. Such letters are likely to have the strongest affect.

The Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Science has, without any consultation with faculty, announced the formation of a new School of Languages and Literatures at the University of Toronto comprising the former departments of East Asian Studies, Italian Studies, Slavic Languages and Literatures, Germanic Languages and Literatures, Spanish and Portuguese and the Centre for Comparative Literature. Most of these departments will be moved en masse (with the exception of the Centre which will be "disestablished" entirely), but the dean has singled out East Asian Studies for dispersal: nine of our fifteen professors will be spread amongst the departments of History, Philosophy, Religion and Anthropology, while the remaining six will, along with the Chinese, Japanese and Korean language programmes, be reassigned to a new (non-departmental) unit of East Asian Studies within the School of Languages and Literatures by fall 2011. It is entirely unclear how the dean imagines these six remaining professors will be able to teach our nearly 1000 undergraduate majors and minors, nor how our graduate programme, which is fundamentally interdisciplinary in nature, can continue to operate. It is clear that in addition to removing the interdisciplinary elements of the department, the dean has no intention of strengthening the reduced East Asian unit to operate as a full language and literature programme. It may be noted that the university's Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations has a similar interdisciplinary approach to the Department of East Asian Studies (although with far fewer majors) but has been left intact rather than being dissolved into the new School of Languages and Literatures.

We have multiple concerns regarding the effects of the dean's decision on both students and faculty in East Asian Studies at this university. Our primary concerns can be summarized as follows:

1. The dean does not seem to appreciate that our department, which has made many hires in recent years, has a strong and growing reputation in the field of East Asian Studies around the world. We believe that in light of our strengths, our department should be a valued part of the University of Toronto rather than be singled out for dissolution.

2. The dean declares that the dispersal of our faculty will "strengthen" the profile of the study of East Asia at the University of Toronto, but it is far more likely that the result will be the marginalization of small numbers of East Asian Studies faculty within various disciplinary departments and the inability of those few faculty remaining in the new East Asian Studies unit to lobby for the East Asian language programmes within a large school of mainly European languages.

3. This dissolution of the East Asian Studies department is taking place precisely as East Asia is assuming central importance in the economic and political worlds. It should be a source of embarrassment to the university's administration that the University of Toronto, uniquely amongst research universities in North America, is dissolving its East Asian programme at a time when knowledge of East Asia is ever more vital.

4. The vast majority of our undergraduate students are not primarily interested in studying only language and literature, but rather wish to acquire strong language skills along with a broad-based and interdisciplinary knowledge of East Asia, including its history, society and culture. Thus the dispersal of East Asian Studies faculty over multiple academic units will greatly hamper our ability to meet student needs.

5. At the research level too, recent trends are to move away from a language and literature framework and towards the interdisciplinary study of East Asia. Six of our professors and three of our four language lecturers have been hired in the past five years and were attracted to the University of Toronto, often turning down competing offers, precisely because of our progressive interdisciplinary emphasis. We are a young, forward-looking department and are very uncomfortable with the forced reconfiguration of our intellectual home.

In short, our faculty are resolutely opposed to this decision and feel very strongly that the best interests of students and faculty alike would be served by the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Toronto remaining an autonomous and interdisciplinary academic unit, as it is at present. We would be very grateful for expressions of support of our position from our colleagues in the field of East Asian Studies as we protest the dean's decision on the future of our department. If you feel inclined to support us, please send letters on institutional letterhead to:

Dean Meric Gertler
University of Toronto
Faculty of Arts & Science
100 St. George Street
Toronto, ON CANADA M5S 3G3
(officeofthedean.artsci@utoronto.ca)

and to our department chair:

Professor Tom Keirstead
East Asian Studies
130 St. George St., Room 14087
Toronto ON CANADA M5S 3H1
(tom.keirstead@utoronto.ca)

Please visit the following website for updates regarding this issue.

http://saveeastasianstudies.wordpress.com/

There are also a petition that you might be interested in signing and
a Facebook group that you might consider joining at the following
links.

http://www.petitiononline.com/saveeas/
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=140492929295640

We would deeply appreciate your support and would be happy to reciprocate if you suddenly find yourself facing such an unwelcome fate.

Yours truly,

The Faculty of the Department of East Asian Studies
University of Toronto

Notes on the July Regents Meeting (Committee on Educational Policy)

2010-07-19T10:30:00.000-07:00

By Sara Smith

UC Regents Meeting: Committee on Educational Policy, 7/14/2010, 9:35 a.m., UCSF-Mission Bay Campus

I. BOARS Report:

The Chair of this committee, Sylvia Hurtado, is a professor of Education at UCLA. She’s been on the committee for the past six years and is stepping down. The BOARS commmiteee recently issued “Comprehensive Review in Freshman Admissions at the University of California, 2003-2009.” According to the committee, the report “is a thorough and valuable review of admissions practices on all of the campuses and it offers a number of recommendations for refining campuses processes to the meet the guidelines for Comprehensive Review.” Below are some of the notes I took during Sylvia Hurtado’s presentation.

• More underrepresented minorities have become UC eligible. Relative admit rate for African Americans remained substantially below admit rate for other minorities.

• Davis and Santa Barbara have managed to attract high proportion of underrepresented minorities.

• UCSD: least amount of growth in terms of recruiting underrepresented minorities.

• Disparate impact ratios, 2009-2010: group with highest admit rate: African Americans fall below group with highest admit rate. 71% for African Americans, 100 percent for Asian, 90 percent for Chicano/Latino, 97% of white.

• There are 12 recommendations:

o (note: I typed out some of the recommendations, but couldn’t get them all. You can find all the of the recommendations on pgs. 48-49 of the report).

o 1. Campuses should implement individualized review of all applicants to ensure that the boundary between admission and denial is not defined by criteria that are too narrow.

o 2. Additional resources should be provided to admissions offices to train and retain external readers and experienced staff, to handle the increased volume of applications, and implement outreach.

o 3. Revision of the comprehensive review guidelines. More specificity in use of standardized test scores and academic criteria in the context of factors that impact performance (e.g. access to honors courses, college-going culture of the school).

o 4. Revision of the guidelines to reflect changes for 2012.

o 5. New principles to further guide selection.
 Weighing academic accomplishments and personal achievements comparably to identify students who strive for excellence in many areas; giving priority to ELC students; evaluating standardized tests and academic indices in the context of other factors; taking steps to ensure the quality and integrity of the review process.

o 6. UC should document and report outstanding personal accomplishments of admitted students to reflect many areas of excellence at the University.

o 7. Now that electronic data about high schools can be shared more widely, campuses should make more use of info about achievements in the high school context in decision-making

o 8. BOARS will consider wider use of ratings and scores that capture many dimensions of talents among all applicants, as well as a common scoring method.

o This report details a disturbing persistence of low African American admit rates across UC campuses, which now is affecting the educational climate. The University should invest in a new strategic outreach campaign to increase the identification, recruitment, and academic preparation of underrepresented students with the help of distinguished alumni, local communities, and schools. In addition, campuses should develop admission policies that place value on the importance of diversity to enhancing the learning environment as they prepare students to enter a diverse workforce. Finally, we recommend the formation of a new study group to collaborate with BOARS to assess the situation in California high schools and determine how UC can use its expertise to diminish the academic achievement gap and disparities due to opportunity for African Americans and other under-represented groups.

II. Undergraduate online instruction project

• Panel: Dean Christopher Edley; Daniel Greenstein, Vice Provost; Doquyen Tran Taylor, Analyst.

• Dean Edley did all of the talking. Below are most of the points he made during his presentation, as well as some of the Question and Answer period afterward. You’ll note that much of the language he uses has a social justice ring to it – he talks about preserving quality education, delivering on the Master Plan, increasing access (but not affordability), “democratizing excellence,” UC online education “serving California,” etc. But he also emphasizes the use of Grad Student Instructors, without being specific about the extent to which GSIs would be used, numerous times. He also underscores that developing a completely online UC Degree would be less costly than building more campuses or expanding current campuses to keep up with demand for a UC education. At the end the Regents, for the most part, expressed very enthusiastic support for the online pilot program, emphasizing how the UC should take “leadership” on the issue and this represents the “future,” and told the” nervous” faculty to take leadership as well. They also emphasized that the Academic Senate would have a full review process.

o UC credits – the same academic standards, course approval process, use of UC faculty and GSIs

o Fully online, as opposed to online educational tools added to face-to-face education. Advantage of online education is that it’s anytime, anywhere and asynchronous. Most important that it’s “high touch.” This is not the technology in which you stick a couple of camcorders in back of classroom, record it, and put up on web, beyond that, high production values. Wrapping multimedia presentation on the web with a set of experiences between the student and the faculty, the student and faculty, the student and the GSI, and among the students, some of which can be held in real time… desktop video conferencing for instance.

o Education and curriculum working group of UCOF has never met in person. All video conferencing.

o There are opportunities for chatrooms and discussion boards in which the professor could specify discussion topic, give students window of 48 hours to make comments, to respond to comments, have that participation graded by GSIs, opportunities for self assessment and on and on.

o Use all of the strengths of social networking software, all of the tools our students year by year are increasingly familiar with.

o We’re already doing a lot of fully online instruction at the UC. Slide: in 2009/10: UC Extensions offered 1250 fully online courses, 78 bearing UC credit on a campus; enrolled 55,229 students in online courses, 4,887 of them in UC credit bearing courses.

o Carrying credit for transferring purposes. Treated like courses at community colleges.

o “We are in this business already. There’s a lot of experience to be leveraged as we think about what kind of future we want.”

o SETTING: figures prepared by Nathan Brostom and his staff. A decade from now the budget gap will have grown to 4.7 billion dollars on an annual basis… 4.7 billion dollar budget gap comes along with a 46,000 student enrollment gap relative to goals of the master plan.

o Imperatives: preserve quality, expand access, durable business model.

o ‘elite’ access? “We want excellence, not exclusivity. But budget crunch plus the bricks and mortar model threaten excellence while increasing exclusivity.

o Social justice considerations: chief among them is the question of access, of how well we perform in our role as an opportunity business, as an engine of opportunity… we have a bricks and mortar model for doing that, and we are excellent at it. The question is for the future how can we be excellent, in terms of finances, the demographic pressure to serve more students, the technology developments that create competition for the current model?

o Delivering on Master Plan – figure out how to serve more people and provide more diversity.

o “We can’t treat the excellence of the UC that we protect and we polish, whoever can get in it, boy are they lucky.”

o If all we do in the years ahead is take that little jewel box and put it on a higher.. shelf we’re betraying our mission.

o If we’re just making it less accessible, excellent but exclusive. “To me that’s a noxious form of elitism.”

o The reason to bother with commitment to fully online classes, first and foremost is about DEMOCRATIZING EXCELLENCE, maintaining excellence. Chief one is, if we can provide sufficient quality, then can we make our product, this great privilege available more broadly.

• Purpose of pilot program is to shed light on six basic questions

• Excellence? Can we deliver an equally valuable form of excellence?

• Pilot: focus on 25-40 highest demand, lower division courses, mostly gen ed courses, courses that have impaction problems.. If we do the best we can… will it be good enough to ‘double down on this investment.’ To make it an increasingly critical part of what we do to serve California in the future.

• We’re not alone re: online ed. At undergrad level the only people offering degrees are in the private sector: phoenix, capella, Kaplan, etc.

• There are NO SELECTIVE undergraduate fully online degree opportunities. The question is, when will those opportunities be available?

• The goal of enrollment at Merced is 11,000 student FTE. If we try to address 45,000 student enrollment gap for the next decade by creating another Merced, the traditional bricks and mortar investment would be 1.8 billion… investment in infrastructure. By comparison the cost of ginning up the apparatus to serve 25,000 students through today’s existing online strategies would be 25 million dollars… for a relatively small additional investment, we would be able to create something quite substantial considering student demand. (note: don’t depend on these numbers; I could’ve made a mistake. He skipped ahead rather fast here. The basic message to take away is that Edley emphasized how much more costly it would be to build more ‘bricks and mortar’ campuses, and that online education is MUCH cheaper).

• In a bricks and mortar campus, you have the ongoing cost of doing business, the prospect of more red ink. If you create an online strategy once you’ve created it, instead of costs, you have continuing stream of revenue. Our model suggests at 25,000 students, you’d be talking about 180 million of net revenues after all expenses, but not including financial aid.

• The base line: campus based incremental evolution [re: use of online educational tools] is going to continue… That’s not what we’re talking about. What we want to add is this pilot program that will specifically be designed and evaluated about our future strategy. Online degrees are not on the table today or in the immediate future. Some of us talk about online degrees because it’s important to have some idea of where you might want to go.

• It’s easier to raise money if you point toward a complete picture rather than point to where we’re going 6 mos. from now.

• All of these decisions are the domain of the ACADEMIC SENATE. They are the guarantor of academic quality.

• This distinguishes what the UC does from what peer institutions have done, somewhat unhappily.

• The UC Commission on the future will have some recs for you in this space, you have them listed there. They include endorsement of pilot project, and encouragement of evolutionary developments on campus.

• But we should move on the online project expeditiously. Let’s not make this a five year exercise.

• Let me close with four quick thoughts. There’s a role with UCOP but not about what’s happening at campuses naturally…

• In any cases, we’re not talking about building bureaucracy in Oakland. All of the work is done on the campuses by faculty and by the administrators.

• The second point is that I don’t think we can wait to do this. A lot of things have to fall into place to be as great in 10 years as we are today.

• As important, if we’re as great as we keep saying we are, we should really be leaders in this area.

• As a research university, we have opportunity not just to mimic what others are doing, but take leadership…

• Finally, virtues of failure: I prefer to be overly ambitious and fall short. That’s one of the reasons I talk about where this might evolve, rather than what the easy next two steps are.

• Given pressure facing the University, we have to be willing to be somewhat ambitious. We need to face risk of failing. That doesn’t mean you’re being reckless.

• “thank you (si, se puede)” on last slide.

Question and Answer:

Yudof: we’re committed to raising the money externally. We don’t have the money internally. … I think it’s worth an experiment. I have a feeling some people are afraid it might succeed. We’re going to go to our own faculty with an internal competition and they will come forward… regular senate processes and approval will be there, and hopefully we’ll develop a list of courses, and we’ll see what develops. I think it’s a very conservative approach to this, operating internally in this way, seeking outside funding... its’ that coalition of the willing. I’m very enthusiastic about it. In particular, I think dean Edley has thought about it rather hard. This is not a heavy hand…. I support it and I hope you will as well.

REGENT Blum: I’d like to congratulate Chris and all those who have worked on this project. …supportive. “we can’t keep teaching the way they did 200 years ago. Knowing people even in remote countries who have gotten a good education this way, it doesn’t work everywhere, but it certainly can work in a lot of places… fully supportive going forward.”

REGENT Varner: some thought about blending this, some requirement of some actually campus experience. If we do something like that.. this is something we should pursue.. may be a way to blend that.

DEAN Edley’s response: excellent points. Obviously we’re talking about a situation quite far down the road, if this moved to be at scale. Let me just make one comment. That would have significant attractions from an educational standpoint. On the other hand, you’d also be giving up some things. Students would get some campus action, but on the other hand, to the extent that this new population to which we’re trying to provide access would face difficulties because they couldn’t do part time, it would be harder to do part time, they would have substantially greater cost for on campus program.. qualified students who prefer to stay in their communities rather than travel to santa cruz because they’re phobic about banana slugs. Joke.

REGENT GOULD: I want to second what Yudof said. It is not the answer, it’s just one of the things we need. “fundamentally it comes down to leadership.” “UC should be in a leadership position.” I want to encourage the board to move forward, to pursue outside funding, we’ll learn more, and we’ll be back.

REGENT LANSING: I enthusiastically endorse this for many reasons… Nobody has been able to “lead in the way we have the opportunity to lead.” “I hear a certain nervousness” from faculty. The thing that makes me comfortable is that this is a pilot program. We’re not saying it works for every subject. .. we’re saying to faculty YOU make sure.. “all the quality rests with the faculty.” “This is something we need to do right away.”

Another REGENT: confident that “faculty will reign you in when they feel it’s appropriate.”

REGENT Marcus: “I’m very concerned about this. I think it’s very faddish. It could be everything wants to talk about, we need to approach this like any other research project. We have to do a research project like you would if you were given a grant, .. what will be OMMITTED if you use this methodology… you may receive only a portion of the total experience. When it comes to a vote we should have facts, not opinions, on this experience.”

EDLEY’s response: agrees that it’s important to use research and ev. Joint senate-administration advisory committee to design evaluation component of this, so we know we’re asking the right questions. Second point is that history will tell us if this is a fad. “This is where I think the future is leading.” “The last thing I want to say when you talk about missing parts of the experience. That’s a really critical point. Yeah, there won’t be beer bashes. There will be other stuff, like you can stay home with your kid. There’s a tradeoff. There are other things that we consider part of core learning, and we have to investigate whether or not those things that produce quality.. try to understand carefully what that means,… investigate whether or not we can improve on it. If the quality that we want is to be able to talk to the grad student instructor. Can we do that online? Absolutely. You can probably do more of it, more often, any time, any place. Understand what professor said? Can you get that online? Probably, you can hit replay. It’s going to be different. So the question of if the experience will be the same.”

REGENT REISS: supportive, confident that because dean edley is heading this up quality of online education will be ensured.

FACULTY REP Powell: The academic council of the senate blessed the pilot project several months ago subject to raising funds from private sector. We’re very much in agreement about the experience of the blended learning. All through this academic year vice provost Greenstein at identifying successful efforts at grassroots so we don’t have bad experience that other institutions have had with this.

EDLEY: Extension.berkeley.edu/onlinelearning (video you can watch about online education). Faculty as “guide on the side,” not “sage on the stage.”

REGENT Eddie Island: saying to Faculty: “lead this effort, stay engaged, embrace it, it’s the kind of change that will come to be seen in the future as a critical tipping point.”

III. Other misc. items discussed during this session.

• UCSB Chancellor gave a presentation about developments on that campus, and then a regents spent some time complementing the chancellor.

• There’s a new student regent.

• Victor Sanchez, head of UCSA, gave his last speech to the regents. Emphasized his support for AB540 (financial aid for undocumented students); expressed concern and skepticism about online education project; expressed support for “holistic” approach to admissions (relying on personal statements and other indicators aside from test scores and GPAs); said something brief about UCOF (didn’t write this down).

• Fall admissions: diversity slight up across the board at the UC, though only VERY slight for African Americans and American Indians. Freshman enrollment of Latino students up as well.

o Higher proportion of out-of-student and nonresident students, more transfer students, and more low-income students. Chancellor Birgeneau at UC Berkeley said that higher fees have led to more financial aid, which has directly resulted in higher enrollment of low-income students.

o No discussion of retention rates, little discussion of how to improve.

Notes on the June 14th UCOF Meeting

2010-06-21T14:54:00.000-07:00

By Suzanne Guerlac

Gould opened the meeting stating the CA government is listening, that there will be a substantial increase in funding, although still not enough. He emphasized the need in the CA for more skilled workers and how UC can support the innovation-based economy of the state. He stated that recommendations from the Commission would be sent to the Board of Regents within the next couple of months. He specifically cited the 3 year degree proposal, more on-line courses, self supporting post baccalaureate degrees, and best practices in administrative areas: we’ll change how the university “ does business.”

President Yudof: thanked the working groups for their contributions and stated that their work has now come to a close, promised that the Commission will stay in touch with the group members, cc-ing them on reports etc. and they are welcome to “communicate with us.” He stated that the first round of recommendations was “ exactly that,” a first round, and that the Commission wanted to look at a broad range of ideas “ in time to review how to move forward.” He stressed the value of “sustainability” in relation to UC finances, indicating that, for example, furloughs were “not sustainable.” The Commission is seeking long-range sustainable plans. When working through the proposals the governance process would have to be taken into account, curricular reform, in particular, “would have to be addressed by the Faculty Senate.” He then stated that the next steps would involve “ an orderly process for gaining assent” in accordance with CUFCA, the unions, etc.

Henry Powell: stressed that the Commission was at a “ turning point in the process,” shifting from a listening role to one of “active deliberations.” He stated that the Academic Senate had produced 300 pages of commentary on the working group recommendations, which had been synthesized into a 13-page summary. He stressed that the members of the AS had been divided in their response. The full report has been posted on the Senate website. The AS will consider the new recommendations at a later meeting. He stressed that in response to fiscal challenge, the work of the Commission would affect the University for years into the future, that for the last 20 years or so the university has been accommodating more students for less money and operating at a considerable level of efficiency but that class sizes have been growing, there have been losses in TAs, staff, phones in offices, etc. How can we continue to do more with less and keep the reputation and quality of the University? He stated that the AS asks that the Commission evaluate measures in relation to the core values of the University, stressing that quality is of paramount importance. He emphasized that time is required for deliberation, and that the academic calendar needs to be taken into account so that faculty can respond to new recommendations.

Public Comment period:
A number of students raised the question of protecting financial aid for undocumented students. Charles Schwartz called into question the basic assumptions of the Commission, judging their efforts to be in bad faith. I asked what would be the timing and procedures for faculty review of the new recs.

There was a brief discussion of the undocumented student issue. Someone asked why the two working group recs that concerned undocumented students were not on the agenda.

Yudof answered that 1) it is out of his hands, a matter of complex legal issues, 2) he picked recs that had most financial impact. AB540 was important but had no financial impact. “Financial problems are the heart of the Commission’s work.” Simmons interjected that the AC had supported the position of the students, i.e. of providing aid to undocumented students.

Financial report by Nathan Bostrum. To provide “context” for discussion of recs – the deficit in the coming decades. There will be a gap between revenue and expenses of 4.7 billion over the next ten years. Even if costs were brought down (by changes in pension and health, by not fixing the salary gap re both faculty and staff, by delaying various “quality initiatives”), there would still be a 700 million gap that could be reduced if the state would respect its obligations concerning pensions. The gap is larger if enrollments increase. Bostrum cited the Obama administration’s goal of adding a million new degree holders, adding 50,000 more students in the next decade (while the need exists to add over 100,000 new students). This would amount to two new campuses of the size of Irvine or San Diego. Indicated the goal to increase the number of graduate students (either the absolute number or the percentage). 1/3 of students receive Pell grants. Stressed commitment to financial aid and that for many (53%?) the fee increases were covered by financial aid.

Art Pulaski (Secretary Treasurer of the California Labor Federation): the fee increases been very tough for working class kids. Total cost is higher than the charts indicate. As things stand tuition for one child costs 20% of family income at 120,000 combined income.

Gould: lack of dependability of the state, CA deficit, there’s still the 700 million gap, we need to look at our own “ business enterprise” and ask “ are we doing business right, maintaining quality, being more efficient?”

The discussion would focus on recommendations that address fiscal issues and revenue stream: indirect cost recovery, post-baccalaureate degrees, advocacy, multi-year fee schedule and administrative best practices, including the Academic Council recs that call for operating at a size we can afford, and enrollment issues such as enhancing transfer path, upgrading ASSIST [the electronic site that gives students info re transfer credits at various UC institutions] and on-line credit bearing courses.

Item #1 (presented by Mary Croughan): Indirect cost recovery – the most significant rec in terms of revenue, presented by Funding Strategies and Research Working Groups.

There are about $3.5 billion/yr in grants and a shortfall of 720 million in overhead expenses.
Need for increased transparency re recovered funds. Presently a 4% “tax” to OP which gets commingled with other funds; recommends a 3% tax and 100% of recovered funds going back to campuses.
Believes $300 million is a “conservative estimate” of what can be recovered.

Powell: concerned about impact on junior faculty and competitiveness for grants if too much cost recovery is demanded.

Henry Yang (UCI Chancellor): Each campus should set a rate. Discussions in AAU about this [he is currently president of AAU]..

Croughan: There should be a “dedicated negotiating team” – centralize this a hire consultants – to help individual campuses in indirect cost recovery.
Bostrum: this is “most valuable money” for us because we can spend it on anything. We should advocate nationally w/ Sec. of Education.

Simmons: If we insist on too much recovery the amount will be taken out of the grant, so no big revenue. Academic Council against a ban on accepting grants that do not cover these costs. Need joint effort among UC campuses.

Croughan: faculty seeking grants must state how these costs would be covered; a central fund to assist in this could be set up.

Edley: Document needs to be explicit about the point Dan [Simmons] made; there is a bias toward the sciences. Encouragement needed to protect humanities. Janet Broughton supported this rec.

Gould: a national effort is needed; the state not providing this as it used to do.

Yudof: form a management team and find out, a negotiating team, need more oomph behind this. Move it forward: “ more aggressive pursuit of recoveryof indirect costs,”

Pulaski: need transparency concerning where these funds would go.

Gould: agreed.

Item #2, presented by Keith Williams: self-supporting post BA degrees. Two parts to this: 1) a self-supporting program initiative 2) on-line component.
Currently UCLA and UCI have entirely on line professional degrees. Ex: business degrees. Potential for revenue in relation to targeted audiences.

Problem concerning timely approval of courses. Should put in place a mechanism to speed up approval.

Edley: there is a danger of over regulating from the center, which would choke imagination and entrepreneurial energies on individual campuses. There is revenue potential here as well as educational value. Delays and overregulation are very problematic. This has been discussed for 18th months with no progress. Many of the concerns Keith mentions should be left to individual campuses.

Gould: re growth of private entrepreneurial institutions –UC is lagging on this, there’s a demand we are not meeting.

Edley: example of masters degree in “circuit design”; units should identify their own niches, every campus with its own business plan etc. The spirit of this rec is not a big apparatus in Oakland but to encourage campuses to push this creatively, in the spirit of reducing barriers, and further encouraging something we are already doing.

Powell: often when approval is slow it is because the proposal is badly done.

Simmons: Academic Council is against a central regulating mechanism. Concerning on-line on undergraduate level, Council is “ nervous and cautious”, endorses pilot program – yes, go get outside funding.

Gould: Regents ought to look at this – new initiative, enter into competitiveness.

Powell: there is already success in this area of professional schools, work with Extension; there is no research on what markets are out there, need market studies.

Gould: I concur.

Yudof: send information item to Regents re self-supporting graduate degrees (in July or September).

[short lunch break]

Item: Advocacy for the University.

Powell: it needs to be a “permanent war.” The importance of 4/27 when all constituencies appeared to come together.

Pulaski [union rep]: advocacy efforts should also be directed to the “public at large.”

Croughan: “public engagement”

Gould: “Let’s move this along”
Pulaski: to include unions within the “ all constituencies” effort it would be necessary to address some of the union and staff issues.

Item #2 Administrative Efficiencies (streamlining administrative operations, already discussed at May Regents meeting), presented by Peter Taylor.
Necessary to add investment for system-wide capabilities. Taylor stressed the importance of reducing administrative costs at the department level – the bulk of the costs exist at this level. Need to “rework the way our business processes work.” Specific emphasis on procurement issues.

Yudof: This has been discussed with Regents, needs to be routed through OP in order to get this done, need for a more “totalitarian regime” on this. Need to earn trust because the track record is not very good, services have been centralized and then not worked very well.

Edley: trust issue also pertains to how funds that are saved would be used: how will savings be accounted?

Gould: “good question, Chris.” Chancellors should “harvest” savings on campuses.

Pulaski: there is also the issue of high end compensation for a growing number of high-end administrators; executive compensation should be included in any evaluation of administrative costs.

Bostrum: this is always being evaluated.

Gould: importance of transparency on all compensation. Need for a centralized payroll system.

Yudof: a final report will be drafted.

Item #2: presented by Peter Taylor: multi=year fee schedule for the sake of predictability of students and families and to enable long term budget planning. This was an item suggested both by the Funding Strategies Group and the Access and Affordability group.

Initially this was discussed only as a tool to enable multi-year planning; it is now used for professional programs.

Yudof: fee increases are a response to state budgets produced and varying annually. If there is a guaranteed multi-year fee schedule the university assumes risk.

Jessie Bernal(Student Regent) – it would extend Blue and Gold type protection to middle class families.

[Speaker?] Objection to the proposal: it would institutionalize fee increases.

Simmons: Academic Council (see p. 105) favors providing accurate information
But does not support the rec because of legal risk to UC and because it would force more increases with each new cohort of students producing different cohorts. The state does not provide multi-year budget plan.

Gould: it is an issue of commitment. The Regents had concerns re Compact agreed to by the state and then not respected. The rec puts UC at risk in relation to irresponsible decision-making coming from Sacramento. There are two issues embedded in this rec: 1) the fee schedule 2) the shift from “fees” to “tuition” – support for the latter, “not comfortable with the risk ” associated with the former.

Powell: AC agrees with change of name from “fees” to ”tuition”, it is consistent with other institutions, minimizes confusion and protects students seeking financial aid from funders who on provide “tuition.”

Monica Lozano : we still need a multi-year budgeting framework.

Yudof: I don’t sense enough support for the multi-year trajectory; the risk is unwise. Put this aside. “Our future does have fee increases”, this is not going to be reversed. “Its not free …hasn’t been for a long time.” Shift to “tuition” term – “I’m in favor of candor.”

Gould: move forward on tuition, hold on multi-year.

Next item: Academic Council recs.

Dan Simmons: AC recs not widely supported, passed by an 8 to 7 vote. The recommendations were controversial among faculty.
Stresses the deficit re funding pension over next ten years. “This will not be the University as we know it for years to come.” Paramount value of quality of research and teaching faculty, UC “ not a degree mill.”
Issues: 1) maintenance of quality faculty: competitive remuneration necessary for the survival of the prestige of UC degree. 2) UC must operative at a size that is affordable.
Replacing ladder faculty with instructors diminishes quality. Need to maintain excellence in fewer areas and pay a smaller faculty competitively. 3) UC should forego new building projects; we “can’t continue to grow as usual.”

Lozano: praises AC for willingness to shrink (keep quality by shrinking).

Edley: What do you mean by “ downsizing”? At what level are you proposing this (i.e. at program level, campus level, etc). Capital projects come from non-fungible resources.
Trade-offs should be made at campus level.

Simmons: let faculty shrink by attrition.

Yudof: reservations about this. Faculty is already being downsized by hiring freeze.
Downsizing students ” would worry me.” Worried about access. So how to downsize if you want to maintain teaching load, size of grad programs, student-faculty ratios, etc.

Powell: quality cannot be replaced. The issues of buildings needs close attention – even if funds are not fungible there are maintenance and operating costs – “ what you have built
threatens what you are.” Need for transparency about building programs.

Simmons: re: reduction of enrollment - we have become so dependent on tuition that reducing students becomes a revenue loser. Re quality: the other things are fixable but if we lose the prestige of UC, we can’t fix this. Problem re diversity: downsizing faculty would mean less progress toward diversity among faculty.

Lozano: downsizing means cutting programs without high enrollments, eliminating duplications, etc. we “can’t afford all the specialized undergrad programs.”

Simmons: yes, like seven different kinds of chemistry majors on one campus. A smaller faculty would be more efficient.

It is pointed out that cutting small programs would only provide small revenue. This is very problematic, needs to be looked at for Regents to understand it.

Powell: these recs are a “tactical adjustment to current fiscal crisis” which he sees as a “short term crisis.”

Zaremburg: against moratorium on building projects because it is cheaper to build now and we put people back to work.

Gould: [responding to Powell’s comment]: we need to “start from the premise that this is not a bump in the road.” [to AC]: continue on with your work.

Next item: supporting transfer functions. Upgrade ASSIST: requires costs but these would be shared among three segments [CCs. Cal State and UC]. Need to sort our transferable courses (UC and Cal State), create a set of transferable courses for each major to make the process more efficient.

Gould: there is a bill in the legislature for a transfer degree – an AA – guaranteed admission, with AA to CSU. There is a need to prepare CC students for upper division courses or for direct entry into the work force.

Edley: we can create a”transfer culture” but our capacity for admissions [at UC [remains the same.

Blumenthal (UCSC Chancellor): problem is our campuses have different requirements for majors. Need to establish a level of uniformity in terms of major preparation. Need to bring faculty together in disciplines to set up uniform major requirements.

Yudof: legislature will pass the bill; how to consider a core curriculum that is uniform.
Who is this addressed to?

Blumenthal: to the Academic Senate. It needs to convene departments cross the system to establish uniformity. SB 1440 – 18 units dedicated to major would be accepted by CSU. No mention of UC. Need for course identification numbers for lower division prerequisites.

Yudof: we’ll draft up something for the report.

Gould: re ASSIST: we don’t have any money, it’s a band-aid. Look again at ASSIST when other program for collaboration across campuses is in place. Need to move on this for Legislature. Regents: we are too slow on this.

Simmons: we are already successfully transferring almost beyond our capacity.

Gould: that’s your case to prove. The people and legislature are on top of this issue.

Powell: they need to fund the CC’s. UC is “not a conveyer belt devised by the Legislature to produce degrees.”

Next item: production of post B.A. degrees.

Keith Williams (Co-chair of Ed and Curr working Group] introduces the subject of on-line education stating that there are reservations concerning quality, costs, infrastructure, impact on faculty workload, etc. but affirms faculty support for pilot program.

Lozano: what is the status of the pilot?

Edley: 1. Fundraising goal is 5-8 million.
2. 16 RFP have been drafted to go out once funding is received offering grants to devise courses.
3. There is an advisory committee, Gene Lucas and Larry [Pitts?] co –chairs plus representatives of the Academic Senate.
4. There is a technical advisory group that includes UC experts and “Silicon Valley types” to “ensure we’re at the frontier of software platforms.”
5. Have asked Extension to prepare an on-line presentation as a recruiting tool for faculty in RFP process; it will be ready in July,
6. Gene Lucas is head of a committee that is focused on evaluation framework re pilot: what would success look like? Working on a definition of quality for on-line.

Pulanski: re “success” - it is not just a question of a “knowledge set” for a course but of the liberal arts setting of an education.

Edley: “we absolutely agree.” We are seeking “comparison with on campus experience.” We already have a number of fully on-line courses and many more in which it is a component or enhancement. Several hundred [I assume system-wide] fully on-line given by Extension not for credit – they are making money – many are authored by/delivered by UC faculty. There are Extension courses offered for credit (9-14 at Berkeley) in summer – fully on-line courses.

The pilot is creating courses for currently enrolled students. If successful, would add populations not enrolled – goal is access and revenue.

MY: We’ll work a draft on this.

Powell: support hybrid form, blended experiences.

Williams: strong need for interaction in person. Not to replace a whole degree, perhaps 1/8 or ¼ degree, the rest would have to be resident.

Yudof: we’re out of time. We’ll send along an information item to the Regents who are quite interested in this.

Next meeting: Aug. 12 or Aug 31 will take up 3 yr pathways and additional recs

Student Victory in Puerto Rico

2010-06-18T07:30:00.001-07:00

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Breakthrough Accord Promises End to Student Strike in Puerto Rico

University of Puerto Rico students who have maintained a two-month strike declared a historic victory yesterday.

An accord brokered by a court-appointed mediator between the university's Board of Regents and the student's National Negotiating Committee (NNC), an unprecedented body representing all of the 11 campuses of the UPR system, was signed by both parties.

The accord grants the central demands of the students represented by the NNC: the continuation of tuition waivers for meritorious students, the cancelation of a planned special fee that would have raised the cost of study by 50 percent, the rejection of initiatives to privatize the university and a commitment not to enact summary sanctions against strike participants.

The UPR student strike, one of the largest and longest in recent US and Puerto Rican history, has been marked by continuous threats of the use of police force to dislodge striking students from the encampments set up at university gates across the island since April. The strike quickly spread to the entire university system, which is comprised of 11 campuses and 64,000 students.

Violent police operations have been carried out at the main campus of the UPR system in Río Piedras and in other campuses in the past two months.

The accord signed yesterday remains to be approved by a general assembly of the UPR students, tentatively planned for next Monday. Observers predict it will be easily ratified, giving way to the voluntary opening of the university on the part of the striking students and the recommencement of classes to finish the three weeks remaining to end the spring semester.

NNC student representative Alberto Rodriguez said that the accord "confirms the right to a quality public higher education accessible to all, which has been the historical patrimony of the University of Puerto Rico."

The severity and length of the conflict between students and the university administration takes place in the context of a widely unpopular austerity plan the current government has undertaken in the island nation of more than four million. Last October, the government implemented Law 7 to lay off more than 20,000 public workers.

This measure also diverted funds historically available to the University of Puerto Rico, the premier institution of higher learning on the island, causing an unprecedented fiscal crisis in the university.

The student strike has garnered the attention and support of the broad public in Puerto Rico for the past two months. Moreover, it has been at the top of the national media coverage agenda during this period.

Professors, parents and the general public have widely supported the students and blamed the University administration and the current right-wing government of intransigence in the process of negotiations. The participation of all the campuses of the university system and the creation of a national negotiating committee are unprecedented in a society which has experienced prolonged student strikes in 1948, 1970, 1981 and 1992 at the main Río Piedras campus, which have exercised an enduring impact on the culture of the nation.

CONTACTS:

Christopher Powers
christophe.powers@upr.edu
(787) 643-2750

Jocelyn Géliga Vargas
jocelyna.geliga@upr.edu
(787) 217-1578

The Ghost of UC Future

2010-06-13T15:25:00.001-07:00

by Catherine M. Cole

On June 11, UCOP made public a set of "expanded recommendations" to the UC Commission on the Future which is to meet on Monday, June 14. The cornerstone of these eleventh-hour additions seems to be items number 6 and 7 of the expanded recommendations which propose an "expedited Pilot Project" for lower division online education:

"Eventually, there will be online credit-bearing courses and B.A. degrees in the so-called quality sector. (emphasis added) That much seems certain. The questions are: Who will develop and deploy the first successful model, when will they do it, and can it be at a scale sufficient to make a meaningful difference in access to higher education. The Commission's proposed answers are: UC should be first, as soon as possible,and our ambitions should err on the side of boldness.

"We must plan assuming an indefinite period of serious financial pressures. Moreover, with or without revisions to the Master Plan, there will be growing political, economic and social demands for undergraduate spaces. Access to excellence is already too limited, and the future will be worse absent a combination of transformation and innovation - in both how we deliver on our mission and how we fund it."

You, like me, might be wondering what exactly is the "quality sector"? Sector of what? And what sectors besides "quality" are there? I am going to venture a guess that what is being discussed here is the educational industry which includes the rapidly growing market for online, for-profit higher education, aka "degree mills." I don't know what the sectors other than "quality" are called. For the time being, let's imagine two sectors: "quality" and "dreck."

Here are some disparate facts. Do we dare connect the dots?

--Federal aid to for-profit colleges jumped to from $4.6 billion in 2000 to $26.5 billion last year according to the Education Department.

--For-profit colleges can receive up to 90 percent of their revenue from federal grants and loans.

--According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, the proportion of students who borrowed at public two-year institutions and private, nonprofit four-year institutions stayed about the same between 2003-2008 (between 49.5%-53%), and at public four-year colleges grew slightly. However, "at for-profit institutions, 91.6 percent of students borrowed in 2007-8, up from 79.5 percent in 2003-4."

--Students attending for-profit schools are defaulting on their federal loans at a higher rate than those at traditional schools, according to the Dept. of Education. From the Chronicle of Higher Ed:

"Students at for-profit colleges receive 19 percent of federal student aid, which includes Stafford and Perkins Loans as well as Pell Grants for low-income students. During the 2007-8 academic year, students at more than 2,000 proprietary colleges received more than $16-billion in loans, grants, and campus-based federal aid.

"Four years into repayment, 23.3 percent of students at those colleges were defaulting on their federal loans-a higher rate than students at either public colleges, where 9.5 percent were defaulting, or private ones, where 6.5 percent were in default."

--The Department of Education is seeking to protect taxpayers from loan defaults and to stop students from taking on debt for degrees that don't pay off with higher incomes. New rules from the DOE were supposed to have gone into effect next week, but....

--As of June 11, 2010 (Friday), the Obama administration is delaying the release of a new loan rule. This rule would disqualify the major providers of for-profit education from being able to accept student loans. In response to news of this delay, stock values rallied.

--For-profit colleges say they are key to President Obama meeting his goal of having the world's highest number of college graduates by 2020.

----Blum Capital (of UC Regent Richard Blum) has significant fiscal holdings in the for-profit universities ITT Educational Services Inc. and Career Education Corp who benefit from Obama's delay.

--In 2009 the University of California Board of Regents, of which Blum is a member, voted to increase student registration fees (roughly the Univ. of California equivalent of tuition) by 32%. Shortly thereafter, Blum Capital Partners purchased additional stock in ITT Tech, a for-profit educational institution. Some contend that these events suggest a conflict of interest on Blum's part.

--The UC Commission on the Future meets on June 14 to discuss, among other ideas, several recommendations that were suddenly submitted on Friday outside of the committee review process. Online education is one of the biggest elements targeted for big, bold new initiatives. This would supposedly put those of us in the so called "quality sector" (UC) into a growing market that seems otherwise dominated by the "dreck sector" (University of Phoenix).

--Walmart's recent initiative for online, for-profit education is partnering with a company called "American Public Education." No, American Public Education isn't the federal model of funding for high quality public universities pitched to the Obama administration by the UC Berkeley administration last Fall. American Public Education is rather a fairly dowdy and unknown for-profit university that offers online training to the military. The company has now become the darling of Walmart. Yes, the "American Public University" moniker would seem to be treading on the "brand" identity of the not-for-profit and genuinely public higher education offered by institutions like UC. (Such confusion of identity is, by the way, typical of those 419 email scams from Nigeria that often come from the widow of some vaguely recognizable African leader who needs to deposit several million dollars in your bank account, if only you could send your personal financial details...)

--Of the Walmart/American Public University partnership, Jolene L. Knapp, executive director for the Society for College and University Planning, said this week: "Many in the traditional higher education world will decry this partnership".... "But many, many changes are coming to postsecondary education. This is just one."

--If I were an investor in for-profit, low quality, online universities, my interests would be served by:

a) Having the cost of attending a public university rise so that many who formerly could attend are priced out and need to seek alternate means of accreditation. (check--accomplished with 32% fee increase last year at the UC)

b) Having the lines dividing the "quality sector" from the "dreck sector" become very confused and blurred. (Check. If the new recommendations introduced by UCOP to the Commission of the Future on Monday are accepted, this second objective will be served--not just with online education, but also with expanded, fast-tracked new professional degrees; freezing the growth of the traditional, face-to-face high quality education we have been known for to date; shorter time-to-degree; greater utilization of extension classes, etc.)

c) Having online education be embraced and legitimized by traditional institutions in the "quality sector" of higher education so that the Obama administration keeps the federal loan dollars flowing. (Check. Get the Commission on the Future of the UC to embrace online education, and legitimation will be enhanced.)

For more on for-profit education and its use of online teaching, shady funding schemes, and substandard educational standards, see this Frontline special "College, Inc" which aired in early May 2010. As the website says, "Even in lean times, the $400 billion business of higher education is booming. Nowhere is this more true than in one of the fastest-growing -- and most controversial -- sectors of the industry: for-profit colleges and universities that cater to non-traditional students, often confer degrees over the Internet, and, along the way, successfully capture billions of federal financial aid dollars."

Remember the mantra coming from UCOP on this: "Our ambitions should err on the side of boldness." These are not words we have otherwise heard for a while now at the University of California.

So, friends, this is the Ghost of Christmas...I mean, er...UC Future. You may recall from Dickens, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come was the most fearsome ghost of all.

But other ways of viewing this future are possible. Some are arguing that if the UC embraces online education, this will be the "Phoenix"-like resuscitation (if you'll forgive the pun) of the dreams and values expressed in Kerr's Master Plan for Higher Education.

The proselytizers of UC online education certainly do foreground social justice issues. UCB Dean Christopher Edley says that online education and a cybercampus will serve the poor and underprivileged who will have access to UC's excellence without having to leave their homes. Such students would be physically located far from faculty and fellow students. Yet such "social justice" framings of educational access for the poor and underprivileged should give us pause. History has taught us that a separate education is rarely an equal one.

It may be that online education is the way of the future, and we must either get on board of be left behind with no money. But here are two worthy questions: If all members of the Board of Regents and top UC administrators were forced to divest themselves of any financial holdings in for-profit universities, a) would the UC still be exploring online classes?, and b) if so, would we be pursuing this new "delivery model" in the same way?

Gradaute Student Statement to UC Regents Regarding On-Line Education

2010-06-13T12:55:00.000-07:00

The following statement was presented to the UC Regents by graduate students at the May 19th UC Regents meeting at UCSF. Nine graduate students from UC Berkeley attended the meeting dressed as “GSI Joes” in army attire adorned with military patches that read “Dean Edley = Class(room) Enemy.” The action was a response to Dean Christopher Edley’s recent proposal for transforming UC Berkeley into a “Cyber Campus” where “squadrons of GSIs” will serve on the “frontline of online contact” with undergraduates. Dean Edley's Cyber Campus proposal is here, and coverage of the action is here.

We are here today as members of UAW 2865, the union for Academic Student Employees at the UC. The University of California perceives its graduate students as a cheap labor force that will follow orders without question. Recently, in a proposal for transforming UC Berkeley into a “Cyber Campus,” Christopher Edley, the Dean of Boalt Law School and Chair of the Gould Commission’s Education and Curriculum Working Group, called for “squadrons of GSI’s” to serve on the “frontlines” of a new UC Berkeley. This myopic vision of higher education conceives of the UC as more of a brand than the public institution called for in the 1960 Master Plan. We find Dean Edley’s “Cyber Campus” to be just the beginning of a frightening trajectory that will undoubtedly end in the complete implosion of public higher education in the embattled state of California. Dean Edley’s proposal and many of the recommendations currently under consideration by the University Commission on the Future are just select examples of how the UC is sacrificing undergraduate education in order to maximize profits.

As graduate students who are on the front lines of educating undergraduates, we see everyday what is happening to the quality of instruction at the UC. We are horrified by the UC Regents’ vision of the future, one that is based on business models that do not consider quality of education or student and worker experience. This is a future in which we refuse to live, work, and teach. If the future of the UC is one where graduate students are continued to be treated as a casual labor pool we guarantee it will be one that is missing the top notch graduate students on which administrators have come to rely.

One of the unfulfilled promises of the UC system is that it should be at the forefront of progressive change that California desperately needs. Instead, it is at the forefront of privatization, a high fee-high loan model that will drive low income students into debt or shut them out completely. Instead of negotiating fairly with the labor unions, the UC has repeatedly thwarted good faith bargaining. Instead of striving to be competitive in attracting graduate students to the UC, our universities expect us to work for less and receive lesser benefits because we chose to study at a public institution. Meanwhile just the opposite argument is used to attract people to high level management positions: we have to pay them exorbitant salaries and perks or they will go elsewhere. Instead of insuring childcare for the lowest income students at UC Berkeley, our registration fees subsidize football tickets for students. A crisis of priorities, indeed.

The Regents increased our fees without increasing the quality of our experience here at UC; in fact, Dean Edley's plan will destroy the quality of undergraduate education in the process of redefining what teaching means for graduate students. We did not come to graduate school to be in squadrons, nor did we come here to be virtual instructors on the frontline of dismantling quality public education in California.

But the military rhetoric Dean Edley uses is perhaps apt in this case. A moment of crisis is a time when profound change can happen, a new path taken; there are parallels here and lessons that we should have learned but have not. In the moment of crisis generated by 9-11, the president of the United States was able to sell the country on an illegal, unilateral and murderous war, a war that our country is still waging after nearly a decade. And to what end? To generate profits for a select few while hundreds of thousands suffer and die. The budget crisis has been used in the same way here at UC. You, the UC Regents, have accelerated your plans to dramatically restructure the UC in a way that represents the outright rejection of the logic of public education. Your vision of the UC could not be clearer: it is a corporation that sells education, one that lives and dies by its ability to reduce costs of production. You are well on your way to destroying the UC's public function as a collective investment in the future of all Californians, replacing it instead with the market function of providing a luxury good to those who can afford it. This will be your legacy. We did not come to the UC to fight, but we will fight you every step of the way, and that legacy will be ours.

"This Will Be Your Legacy"--Graduate Students Respond to Dean Edley and the UC Regents.

2010-06-13T12:35:00.000-07:00

The following statement was presented to the UC Regents by graduate students at the May 19th UC Regents meeting at UCSF. Nine graduate students from UC Berkeley attended the meeting dressed as “GSI Joes” in army attire adorned with military patches that read “Dean Edley = Class(room) Enemy.” The action was a response to Dean Christopher Edley’s recent proposal for transforming UC Berkeley into a “Cyber Campus” where “squadrons of GSIs” will serve on the “frontline of online contact” with undergraduates. For more information on Dean Edley's Cyber Campus proposal, see the documents found at: http://ucbfa.org/projects/gould-commission. For coverage of the action, visit http://www.cityonahillpress.com/2010/05/20/uc-targets-'sustainable'-spending

We are here today as members of UAW 2865, the union for Academic Student Employees at the UC. The University of California perceives its graduate students as a cheap labor force that will follow orders without question. Recently, in a proposal for transforming UC Berkeley into a “Cyber Campus,” Christopher Edley, the Dean of Boalt Law School and Chair of the Gould Commission’s Education and Curriculum Working Group, called for “squadrons of GSI’s” to serve on the “frontlines” of a new UC Berkeley. This myopic vision of higher education conceives of the UC as more of a brand than the public institution called for in the 1960 Master Plan. We find Dean Edley’s “Cyber Campus” to be just the beginning of a frightening trajectory that will undoubtedly end in the complete implosion of public higher education in the embattled state of California. Dean Edley’s proposal and many of the recommendations currently under consideration by the University Commission on the Future are just select examples of how the UC is sacrificing undergraduate education in order to maximize profits.

As graduate students who are on the front lines of educating undergraduates, we see everyday what is happening to the quality of instruction at the UC. We are horrified by the UC Regents’ vision of the future, one that is based on business models that do not consider quality of education or student and worker experience. This is a future in which we refuse to live, work, and teach. If the future of the UC is one where graduate students are continued to be treated as a casual labor pool we guarantee it will be one that is missing the top notch graduate students on which administrators have come to rely.

One of the unfulfilled promises of the UC system is that it should be at the forefront of progressive change that California desperately needs. Instead, it is at the forefront of privatization, a high fee-high loan model that will drive low income students into debt or shut them out completely. Instead of negotiating fairly with the labor unions, the UC has repeatedly thwarted good faith bargaining. Instead of striving to be competitive in attracting graduate students to the UC, our universities expect us to work for less and receive lesser benefits because we chose to study at a public institution. Meanwhile just the opposite argument is used to attract people to high level management positions: we have to pay them exorbitant salaries and perks or they will go elsewhere. Instead of insuring childcare for the lowest income students at UC Berkeley, our registration fees subsidize football tickets for students. A crisis of priorities, indeed.

The Regents increased our fees without increasing the quality of our experience here at UC; in fact, Dean Edley's plan will destroy the quality of undergraduate education in the process of redefining what teaching means for graduate students. We did not come to graduate school to be in squadrons, nor did we come here to be virtual instructors on the frontline of dismantling quality public education in California.

But the military rhetoric Dean Edley uses is perhaps apt in this case. A moment of crisis is a time when profound change can happen, a new path taken; there are parallels here and lessons that we should have learned but have not. In the moment of crisis generated by 9-11, the president of the United States was able to sell the country on an illegal, unilateral and murderous war, a war that our country is still waging after nearly a decade. And to what end? To generate profits for a select few while hundreds of thousands suffer and die. The budget crisis has been used in the same way here at UC. You, the UC Regents, have accelerated your plans to dramatically restructure the UC in a way that represents the outright rejection of the logic of public education. Your vision of the UC could not be clearer: it is a corporation that sells education, one that lives and dies by its ability to reduce costs of production. You are well on your way to destroying the UC's public function as a collective investment in the future of all Californians, replacing it instead with the market function of providing a luxury good to those who can afford it. This will be your legacy. We did not come to the UC to fight, but we will fight you every step of the way, and that legacy will be ours.

UC Workshop on Recruitment and Enrollment of Non-Resident Undergraduates (6/14-15/2010)

2010-06-04T09:16:00.000-07:00

DRAFT – 5/27/10

Monday, June 14 Saratoga Ballroom

9:00 to 10:00 Registration – coffee/tea

10:00 to 10:20 Introductory Session: Goals for the workshop

Tom Lifka, Associate Vice Chancellor, Student Academic Services, UCLA

10:25 to 11:00 (Chancellor Birgeneau)

11:05 to 12:15 Where is UC now regarding enrollment of non-residents?

Tom Lifka, Associate Vice Chancellor, Student Academic Services, UCLA

12:15 to 1:30 Asian Buffet Lunch - Saratoga Ballroom

How can UC best go about effectively communicating the educational imperative for non-resident enrollment and impacts on diversity?

Tom Lifka, Associate Vice Chancellor, Student Academic Services, UCLA

1:30 to 2:30 Round Hole: Square Peg – Fitting the Non-Resident Applicant into UC Admissions Processes and Practices

Presentation and Facilitated Discussion

Co-Facilitators will present some of the UC admissions practices that are called into question as we embark as a system on increasing enrollment of non-resident students. This session will stimulate a discussion of current policies/practices that serve currently as an impediment to the non-resident applicant.

The presentation will provide a review of current UC admission processes and practices impacting non-resident recruitment and enrollment. This will be followed by a facilitated brainstorming session with participation by all. Next steps will be identified with a goal to develop recommendations for UC leadership that would reduce/eliminate policy/procedure challenges.

Presenters: Brent Yunek, Associate Vice Chancellor, Enrollment Services, UCI;
Susan Wilbur, Director of Undergraduate Admissions, UCOP

2:30 to 2:40 Stretch Break – beverages and cookies

2:40 to 3:50 Building a robust prospect pool of students your campus seeks to enroll and graduate is a key component to having an effective recruitment plan. UC Berkeley and UC Riverside will describe how they work with two key partners- CollegeWeekLive and Zinch, to attract prospective students and maintain relationships through the yield cycle.

Presenters: Bob Patterson, Deputy Director of Undergraduate Admissions, UCB
Emily Engelschall, Director of Undergraduate Recruitment, UCR
Mike Garvin – CollegeWeekLive
Robert Rosenbloom – CollegeWeekLive
Brad Hagen - Zinch)

3:50 to 4:00 Stretch Break – beverages and cookies

4:00 to 5:00 Panel Session: Armchair vs travel: Communication strategies and considerations. Panelists will discuss their experiences and perspectives and offer suggestions for connecting with domestic and international non-resident students. Q&A to follow brief presentations.

Moderator: Christine Van Gieson, Director of Admissions and Associate Dean for Enrollment Services, UCSB

Panelists: Martin Bennett, EducationUSA Marketing Coordinator, Institute of International Education
Lee Melvin, Vice President for Enrollment Management and Planning, University of Connecticut

5:00 to 5:40 Diversity considerations and the tools necessary to ensure diversity. Financial Aid and “discounting.” What investment in student financial support will be needed for success and for achieving diversity? Review of current non-resident diversity data.

Tom Lifka, Associate Vice Chancellor, Student Academic Services, UCLA

For dinner, you are on your own!

Tuesday, June 15 Hops Bar and Grill /Napa Valley Room

7:30 to 8:30 Registration/Networking – beverages and muffins

8:30 to 9:00 Review of international trends meeting international priorities for US colleges and universities- OpenDoors

Martin Bennett, EducationUSA Marketing Coordinator, Institute of International Education

9:00 to 10:30 International and domestic recruitment collaborations between UC campuses and other universities; collaborations among UC campuses. Use of commercial consortia for international recruitment.

Presenters: Walter Robinson, Assistant Vice Chancellor and Director Office of Undergraduate Admissions
Martha Pitts, The College Board
Mike Garvin – CollegeWeekLive
Robert Rosenbloom – CollegeWeekLive
Brad Hagen - Zinch

10:30 to 10:45 Stretch Break – beverages and muffins

10:45 to Noon Panel Session: Collaborative relationships with individual secondary schools and college counselors in recruiting and enrolling domestic non-residents.

Moderator: Walter Robinson, Assistant Vice Chancellor and Director Office of Undergraduate Admissions

Panel: Vicki Englehart, Dean of College Counseling and Guidance, Lake Highland Prep, Orlando, Florida
Diane Freytag, Director of Counseling and Advising, The Overlake School, Redmond, Washington
Myron Arakawa, Director of College Counseling, Punahou School, Honolulu, Hawaii

Noon to 12:45 Taste of Italy Buffet Lunch – Hops Bar and Grill

12:45 to 1:30 College Board Enrollment Planning Services- College Board can provide a number of tools (Recruitment Plus, Enrollment Planning Service, Descriptor Plus and Student Search Service) that will allow us to strengthen our recruitment efforts, gain a deeper understanding of our prospective students and improve communication.

Martha Pitts, The College Board

1:30 to 2:30 Panel Session: Building relationships with California Community Colleges in UC recruitment/enrollment of international students. (Santa Monica Contact)

Brent Yunek, Associate Vice Chancellor, Enrollment Services, UCI

2:30 to 2:45 Stretch Break – beverages and brownies

2:45 to 3:45 Panel Discussion - A conversation on some of the ways that a campus might coordinate domestic and international non-resident recruitment across a broad spectrum of offices/units.

The panelists will share their experiences using a variety of campus organization resources to seek enrollment from non-residents in both campus degree and non-degree programs.

Some topics that will be raised are: the use of agents, leveraging current efforts of summer and extension outreach, and building a recruitment culture throughout the campus community.

Moderator: Kevin Browne, Assistant Vice Chancellor – Enrollment Management and Extension, UC Merced

Panel: James Maraviglia, Assistant Vice President, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo
Gary Matkin, Dean, UC Irvine
Darin Menlove, Assistant Director of Programs, Summer Sessions, UC Berkeley
George Beers, Dean, Foothill College

3:45 to 4:15 Closing session: next steps and desired deliverables. What should be included in a UC Non-Resident Recruitment/Enrollment Resource Guide?

Tom Lifka, Associate Vice Chancellor, Student Academic Services, UCLA

Friends, Romans, and Countrymen: The New UC Online Initiative

2010-06-04T08:44:00.001-07:00

Friends and colleagues -

We would like to announce our new website for UC's Online Education Initiative:
http://onlineeducation.universityofcalifornia.edu

The Initiative is an ongoing effort to integrate information technology into undergraduate instruction in an innovative response to the growing demand for selective, high quality, undergraduate education.

Our new website is meant to serve three important functions:

1) To gather and share information about online instruction efforts and lessons learned across the UC campuses and at other select universities and colleges.

2) To document the initiative's efforts to explore the efficacy of online instruction in UC's undergraduate curriculum, and to allow you to comment and provide feedback on much of that documentation.

3) To build a repository of current research, project briefings, news articles and other information that may inform the community about current practice, developing trends, opportunities and challenges in the use of online instruction in undergraduate education.

We invite you to visit the new website and peruse the project documents and other information to get a better understanding of the Initiative's goals and objectives. You can also browse the various resources and featured contributions to get a snapshot of current literature, news and research regarding online education. The website will be updated as the Initiative progresses, so visit us online periodically for the latest information about the project.

While you're at the website, we invite you to contribute to the Initiative by commenting on various project documents or submitting resources. We also welcome feedback on the Initiative or on the website itself - simply use the Contact Us form to do so.

http://onlineeducation.universityofcalifornia.edu

Thank you!

Alternative Commission on the Future: Opportunity to Submit Responses to UCOF

2010-05-28T08:59:00.000-07:00

The Alternative Commission on the Future, a group of students and workers at UCLA, is collecting student responses to the UC Commission on the Future's proposals--online classes, multi-year fee increases, eliminating majors/departments, cutting teaching staff, and differential fees, among others. We would appreciate it if you could please take and pass around this survey we are using to collect data:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/3WMM96B

We are working with UC-AFT to make a proposal analyzing the results, which we will present at the July 13-15 Regents meeting at UCSF. The plan is to show the Regents and the public how students, faculty, and staff overwhelmingly disapprove of the recommendations. We are trying to get 1000 responses, so please pass on the survey.
UCLA Fights Back!

UCB Academic Senate Establishes Special Committee on UC "Governance and Leadership" (May 24, 2010)

2010-05-24T15:02:00.001-07:00

Resolution on Senate Committee on University Governance and Leadership

In the Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate of the University of California
Approved by a vote of 263 to 113 in a formal mail ballot, May 7-21, 2010
• Official Results of the Ballot
• Text of the Resolution
• Ballot Arguments For and Against
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
May 24, 2010
CHAIR CHRISTOPHER KUTZ
Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate

Re: Resolution on Senate Committee on University
Governance and Leadership

Dear Chair Kutz,

The results of the balloting on the resolution to form a special committee to develop reform proposals concerning the governance and leadership of the University are as follows: 263 for, 113 against. The resolution thus passes.

Cordially,

Daniel F. Melia, Secretary and Chair
Committee on Rules and Elections
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------TEXT of the Resolution

Whereas, There is widespread concern about the financial future of the University;

Whereas, The Regents and the President of the University have established a Commission to study alternative future arrangements;

Whereas, It appears that consideration of Major Reforms in the Top Level Governance and Leadership of the University is unlikely to occur within that Commission;

Whereas, Numerous members of the Faculty of the University have thoughtful contributions to offer in that regard; and

Whereas, Such Reforms might be a significant factor in efforts to restore public confidence in and public support for the University; therefore, be it

Resolved, That the Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate asks its Divisional Council to convene a special Committee charged to collect, study and formulate a set of Reform Proposals concerning the Governance and Leadership of the University, which will then be distributed to the membership of the Division for a ballot assessment.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Statement FOR Resolution:

What is the motivation for this Resolution concerning Reform of the Governance and Leadership of the University of California? It is in the last Whereas:

“Whereas, Such reforms might be a significant factor in efforts to restore public confidence in and public support for the University.”

We have heard from some Working Groups of the UC Commission on the Future that maintaining a strong share of financial support from the State will be essential to a healthy future for UC; and the two officials from the Office of the President who attended the April 22 meeting of the Berkeley Division made that same point.

How does one achieve that? The standard reply is to advocate for all the wonderful benefits that UC provides to all of California. We all support that effort.

But that is not enough. We are well aware that there are problems and there are criticisms from outside, about how University officials handle the public money and the public trust placed in the hands of The Regents and their top executives.

Many of us inside UC share some of those criticisms; and this endeavor, being led by faculty, can be relied upon to protect the integrity of academic functions within the University.

So here is a chance to act in a way that can serve both objectives: to advocate for reform in University management as we see it is needed and, at the same time, to respond positively to a public disapproval of mismanagement.

This Resolution does not ask you to endorse a preformed list of complaints; rather it seeks the creation of a constructive process, within the Academic Senate and initiated by the membership. This path should achieve the most uninhibited approach to this problem – and that independent character is also essential for gaining credibility in the public domain.

The Committee created by this Resolution will invite, collect and evaluate proposals for reform in the governance and leadership of the University. It will then select the most significant proposals, solicit arguments for and against each one, and then submit all that to the full membership of the Berkeley Division to be voted on, item by item.

This process will not guarantee the achievement of those reforms supported by the majority of the faculty; nor can it guarantee that this exercise will produce the influx of new public money that we all desire for the University. Yet, it is a chance to pursue those goals, something that we the faculty can initiate; and it seems better to try than to forego the opportunity.

While the scope of this endeavor covers all of UC and might best have been undertaken by the systemwide Academic Senate, that has not happened. Therefore, we at Berkeley now have an opportunity to take this initiative, inviting colleagues at other campuses to join as they see fit.

For additional background materials, see what was provided for the April 22 meeting:
http://academic-senate.berkeley.edu/meetings/meeting_background_Spring2010_2.html

Submitted by: Charles Schwartz, Professor Emeritus of Physics
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Statement AGAINST Resolution:

We recommend a no vote on this resolution. We understand the proposed resolution to have the goal of improving management of the entire University of California System by targeting the organizational structure of the University of California Office of the President for review. While we fully support that goal, we believe that the mechanism proposed has the potential to make matters worse because of the vagueness of the charge and because the action is not being taken in concert with the other campuses and their divisions of the Senate. The charge in the resolution does not make clear the extent to which its focus is UCOP or the campuses or how overlap between the two should be addressed. The resolution calls for creation of a Berkeley committee and then a subsequent Berkeley faculty vote on the recommendations of that committee. We believe that a Berkeley go-it-alone approach to systemwide issues will do more harm than good. Currently faculty across the system are aligned with the goal of the resolution--reducing inefficiencies at UCOP. However, our experience with the systemwide Academic Senate leads us to believe that this go-it-alone approach from Berkeley is likely to be perceived as an attempt by our campus shape the outcome to Berkeley’s singular advantage, and thus create hostility to what would be widely supported proposals, were they developed by a systemwide committee. Should the current resolution pass, we hope the vague charge leaves room to insist that the committee formed actively involve our sister campuses and to put the recommendations to a vote on all 10 campuses.

Submitted by:
Ronald C. Cohen, Professor of Chemistry and of Earth and Planetary Science
Ignacio Navarette, Professor of Spanish and Portuguese
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

UC Ponders New On-Line Revenue Stream

2010-05-19T04:18:00.000-07:00

Timothy Hampton
Professor of French and
Bernie H. Williams Professor of Comparative Literature
U.C. Berkeley

This just in. . .

Dateline, Oakland, CA. Officials of the University of California are reacting cautiously to a new proposal floated by advisors to the campaign of Republican Gubernatorial Candidate Meg Whitman. The proposal aims to help close the Budget Deficit of the struggling ten-campus system. Whitman,
whose development of the eBay on-line auction site has made her a billionaire, has long been a critic of the size of the California Government, and has vowed, if elected, to cut thousands of jobs from the public sector, including UC and CSU. However, advisors close to the Whitman camp have recently advanced a new approach for funding public education that would harness the power of the Internet to reduce the size of UC.

The program, provisionally dubbed uBay, would enable citizens to place on-line bids to purchase pieces of the vast ten-campus system, from parcels of land, to buildings, to campus furniture. “Let’s face it, UC is as bloated as the rest of the public sector,” announced Helmut Sitzbad, an official close to the Whitman Campaign. “This innovative program would enable the average taxpayer, people like you and me, to help slim down some of the fat. Just log on, select your item, and click. Presto, UC will be smaller and you will own a piece of California history.” Sitzbad noted that buildings all across the System could easily attract wealthy developers looking for investment opportunities in a slack real estate market. “But the beauty of this idea is that everyone can own a piece of UC,“ he added. “We’ve got classrooms on all ten campuses with too many chairs, tables, and desks—not to mention chalkboards that don't get written on and windows that don't get closed. With the coming of recycling even the waste baskets are under-utilized. Through our plan Californians could purchase these appealing items with a simple click of their mouse. The University would shrink, its budget would grow, and the citizenry would feel itself linked to UC in an entirely new way. Some might complain that this is a form of privatization. However, at the end of the day, we see this as a way of putting the University literally back in the hands of the taxpayers.”

UC officials have been cautiously optimistic about the new uBay proposal. University spokesperson Bob Furlong noted that the plan could help alleviate some of the logistical problems on campus. “Cuts to teaching budgets mean that we’ve already got overcrowded classrooms all across the System,” he
said in an e-mail. “By eliminating desks and tables we should be able to create more space in some of our bigger lecture halls, thereby increasing standing-room capacity. The sale of windows and doors would bring knowledge to students unable to squeeze into the rooms where lectures and seminars are held.” He added that, while selling off entire buildings might seem like a big step, small departments could conduct some of their business outside during nice weather and faculty could “bunk” with each other by sharing offices during the rainy season. “We’re always promoting collaborative research, and this might well further our efforts in that direction,” he noted.

UC officials plan to solicit faculty input on the uBay initiative, but the University is confident that the pushback will be minimal. “These days UC is all about moving on-line,” noted C. Johnson Hacker, Assistant Director of Administrative Obfuscation for UC’s President’s Office. “We are moving at warp speed toward on-line courses, and next month we’ll be unveiling two exciting new initiatives to market the UC name over the Web. Our innovative digital advisement program, ‘Download-a-Dean,’ and our live-chat teaching program, ‘The Tweeting Tutor,’ both hold enormous promise for filling UC’s
coffers while engaging with the public in exciting new ways. In our view, it’s part of the University’s public mission to make UC available to everyone with a Paypal account.”

Officials close to the Whitman campaign caution that the fledgling uBay project is still on the drawing board, and they are undecided as to the extent of its reach into the often arcane world of Academe. “We’re excited about the idea of reducing bloat by selling off buildings, land, and perhaps a few professors,” noted spokesperson Sitzbad. “We’re less clear on things like bacteria, which have enormous revenue potential because they reproduce like crazy, but could, in the wrong hands, be dangerous. We’re very concerned to keep the great treasure that is the University of California
away from people who might behave irresponsibly."

Berkeley Faculty Submit Petition Calling for End of Disciplinary Proceedings Against Student Protesters

2010-04-27T20:30:00.000-07:00

To: Robert Birgeneau, Chancellor
George Breslauer, Executive Vice-Chancellor
Jonathan Poullard, Office of Student Conduct

Attached you will find the faculty petition asking for the cessation of all disciplinary proceedings against student protesters at this time. We take no positions on the allegations themselves or on the final guilt or innocence of those against whom allegations have been made, but object to the flawed procedures which cast doubt on whether any just outcomes can emerge from these reviews. I believe you already have both the statement by the Northern California ACLU as well as one from the Campus Rights Project from Boalt Law School that support the points made here. As you will see from the letter and those documents, there are several very strong reasons to object to any procedures carried out under these circumstances.

The letter details five interlocking grounds for this position: the failure to afford due process to students charged, the imposition of sanctions without adjudication, the failure to specify evidence necessary to ground the charges, the inadequate protection of the right to protest, and the failure of the Office of Student Conduct to follow its own procedures.

I hope that it may be possible to set up a meeting with you at your earliest convenience and 2-3 of the 135 signers of this petition. Thank you for considering these serious concerns voiced by a significant cross-section of the faculty. We hope to be part of the process of arriving at a fair solution to this problem.

Sincerely,

Judith Butler
Maxine Elliot Professor
Rhetoric and Comparative Literature

UCB Faculty petition posted at:

http://budgetcrisis.berkeley.edu/?p=2387

Alternative Commission on the Future of the University at UCLA

2010-04-24T08:38:00.001-07:00

On May 4th from 5-7 at Humanities 135, faculty, workers, and students will meet together to discuss an alternative Commission for the Future of the University. The first hour will consist of presentations outlining specific recommendations, while the second hour will revolve around a democratic selection of the top suggestions. After this meeting, we will present our recommendations to the media and the Office of the President.

The central topics will be enrollment targets, student fees, online education, pension contributions, graduate education, diversity goals, summer instruction, language requirements, budget planning, and funding models. Please come and add your voice to the democratization of the university.

For more information, contact Bob Samuels: bobsamuels_us@yahoo.com

Faculty Initiative on Reform of UC Governance and Leadership

2010-04-13T16:33:00.000-07:00

On the Agenda for the April 22, 2010, meeting of the
Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate
3:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m., Booth Auditorium, School of Law

New Business
A. Resolution on the formation of a special committee to develop reform proposals concerning the governance and leadership of the University Emeritus Professor of Physics Charles Schwartz will introduce the following resolution:

Whereas, There is widespread concern about the financial future of the University;

Whereas, The Regents and the President of the University have established a Commission to study alternative future arrangements;

Whereas, It appears that consideration of Major Reforms in the Top Level Governance and Leadership of the University is unlikely to occur within that Commission;

Whereas, Numerous members of the Faculty of the University have thoughtful contributions to offer in that regard; and

Whereas, Such Reforms might be a significant factor in efforts to restore public confidence in and public support for the University; therefore, be it

Resolved, That the Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate asks its Divisional Council to convene a special Committee charged to collect, study and formulate a set of Reform Proposals concerning the Governance and Leadership of the University, which will then be distributed to the membership of the Division for a ballot assessment.

- - - - -
Some Background Materials available at
http://academic-senate.berkeley.edu/meetings/meetings.html

UCSD Faculty Coalition Letter To Paul Drake in Defense of Ricardo Dominguez and Academic Freedom (April 5, 2010)

2010-04-07T12:53:00.000-07:00

April 5, 2010

Professor Paul Drake, Senior Vice-Chancellor Acadamic Affairs
UC San Diego
9500 Gilman Dr.
La Jolla
CA 0065

Dear SVCAA Drake:

The UCSD Faculty Coalition has learned that one of its members, Ricardo Dominguez (Associate Professor, Visual Arts Department), is being investigated for an artistic project ("Virtual Sit-In on University of California Office of the President") he developed on March 4, 2010 in conjunction with the recent student protests on campus. Your office has informed Professor Dominguez that you are attempting to determine the legal grounds necessary to file criminal charges against him. These charges, if successful, could lead to the revocation of his tenure at UCSD or other disciplinary procedures through the Committee on Privilege and Tenure. Two detectives from the UCSD Police Department (Officers Michael Britton and Garrett Williams) have since interviewed Professor Dominguez (on March 30, 2010) and made it clear that they were concerned with whether or not he had violated any city, county, state or federal laws, with the goal of turning their findings over to the San Diego City Attorney's office or the California state Attorney General.

We hereby inform you that the Faculty Coalition views these developments with great alarm and is prepared to oppose them in the strongest possible terms. We are particularly concerned because of the implied attempt to criminalize an artistic practice, "Electronic Civil Disobedience" or ECD, which is central to Professor Dominguez's role as a researcher in Visual Arts at UCSD. This attempt is evident in the initial documentation of the complaint, which erroneously claims that the March 4 project involved the use of "botnet" code and "zombie" computers (see e-mail from Elazar Harel, March 5, 2010, "Denial of Service Attack Against UCOP Website"). This misunderstanding is unfortunate, as the distinction between ECD and a "classic Denial of Service attack" (e-mail from Paul Weiss to David Ernst and Nathan Brostrom, March 4, 2010), is absolutely central to Professor Dominguez's work, and was discussed in some detail in the referee letters for his tenure promotion file (approved by your office in 2009). As you note in your notification letter of March 30, 2009, "Professor Dominguez. . . has been a defining figure in the migration of performance art from physical space to virtual space. Professor Dominguez's work, first with Critical Art Ensemble and then with Electronic Disturbance Theater, has been highly cited, and he has been invited to lecture on the work across a host of important international venues . . . The esteemed status of Professor Dominguez's field-defining work has been duly noted by the external referees, who include major international intellectuals working in performance art, new media and globalization".

The central importance of ECD, and a related practice, "Electronic Disturbance Theater," to Professor Dominguez's research is referenced repeatedly in those same referee letters. Thus, Stephen Duncombe of New York University notes that Professor Dominguez "is one of the seminal figures in the cross-over world of activism and art . . . He continually pushes the boundaries of the field, and in the process redefines it . . . His Electronic Civil Disobedience enthralled practitioners and scholars of contemporary social movements by theorizing that one could move the terrain of an age-old political tactic to the internet." Michael Hardt, of Duke University, argues that Professor Dominguez's work with Electronic Disturbance Theater has been "widely influential in academic fields such as critical theory and performance studies . . . He has essentially invented a form of political activism and civil disobedience that combines art performance and new technologies." Finally, Rita Raley of UC Santa Barbara clearly states that "the bulk of Dominguez's work falls under the category of art-activism . . . it is not for nothing that this art practice is also known as 'Electronic Civil Disobedience' . . . There are important differences between EDT and what we might call basic distributed denial-of-service attacks . . . First, EDT by no means aims simply to halt server traffic. An important component of any EDT performance . . . involves an error message that itself is part of the performance. Specifically, the applet will request files with names such as 'Justice,' 'Freedom,' and 'Human Rights' from targeted websites; the error message then in effect reads, 'Justice Not Found'. As a performative exercise EDT has three parts: Act 1 is the announcement of the action; Act II is the action itself; and Act III is the follow up discussion. The discussion is the site for sophisticated theoretical intervention."

"Classic" denial of service attacks use the computers of unknowing individuals as the conduits or vehicles for increased traffic to a given URL, through a program surreptitiously placed on these computers via the internet. The goal is to mask or obscure the identity of the actual perpetrators. As Professor Raley emphasizes, ECD or EDT are defined precisely by their transparency, and by the open acknowledgement of responsibility. Professor Dominguez's March 4 action was widely publicized ahead of time as a form of conscious, public speech, with the intention of demonstrating the breadth of support for UC-wide protests against the dismantling of public education in the state of California. Professor Brett Stallbaum, one of Professor Dominguez's collaborators and a fellow developer of ECD, further clarifies the distinction:

A botnet runs autonomously and automatically, and operates under remote direction. The owners/users of zombie computers controlled by a botnet are generally not aware that their computer is performing any action that could have an effect on a third party or targeted website. Neither are owners/users typically even aware that their computer's security has been compromised, nor that it is under the direct and ongoing control of a third party. By contrast, in a Virtual Sit-in, there is no botnet controlling anything . . . in a Virtual Sit-in the owners/users are always aware that their computers are having an effect on a third party machine or website. This is a very important difference that goes directly to the issue of legality and free speech . . . as organizers of hundreds of past EDT related protests Ricardo (and I) have always taken full and complete public credit for organizing the protests. Instead of maintaining the anonymity desired by criminals, we maintain the public face of citizens freely expressing ourselves as artists.

This key distinction, and the broad academic recognition of ECD as a form of contemporary artistic practice, is elided in the language of the investigation against Professor Dominguez launched by UCSD. In the absence of any more compelling explanation for this sudden willingness to criminalize a research-based artistic practice that the university, only a year ago, recognized as deserving of tenure, one can only assume that UCSD has been placed under some form of external political pressure. Whether this pressure is coming from the UC Office of the President or some other source it represents a disturbing breach of the university's obligation to maintain a climate of free creative and academic inquiry.

The Faculty Coalition is deeply concerned about the chilling effect that will result from this investigation. We view the attempt to prosecute Professor Dominguez on criminal grounds as a serious assault on the principles of academic freedom and the right to protest. In our view, a major goal of the investigation is to intimidate Professor Dominguez and dissuade him from examining activities for which the university has hitherto routinely rewarded him. All that appears to have changed is that in the course of the student protests, UCSD became the object of Professor Dominguez' acclaimed work. Thus, it is the object of his criticism, and not the nature of his work, that appears to have set off the criminal investigation. In short, Professor Dominguez is being muzzled for purely institutional reasons and his rights as both scholar and citizen are under attack. Therefore, the Faculty Coalition also views the on-going criminal investigation as an attempt to intimidate and silence all other faculty, staff and students who exposed and mobilized against racism on the campus and eventually singled out the administration as a major pillar of the "hostile campus climate" that has taken root at UCSD. The attack on Professor Dominguez is therefore a shot across our collective bow, an attempt to restrict both academic freedom and the right to dissent against the University.

The energetic investigation of Professor Dominguez contrasts starkly with the university's tepid response to the various outrages perpetrated by students, including the criminal destruction of University property and the serial commission of hate crimes on campus. To date, no charges of any kind have been brought against a small number of known perpetrators who repeatedly violated the civil rights of many students, staff and faculty and created an inhospitable climate that almost brought the campus to a standstill. The contrast between the treatment of Professor Dominguez and the Koala is particularly galling and offensive. You will recall that Chancellor Fox refused to act against the Koala for fear of infringing on the newspaper's "freedom of speech". In light of this response, the criminal investigation of Professor Dominguez is bizarre, and an egregious insult to the scholarly community at UCSD.

It should be noted that over past two to three months Professor Dominguez and his collaborators have received several death threats in response to their research. Comments such as "Hopefully, you traitors will be shot in the back of your heads when you least expect it" (and much worse) have been posted directly on the bang.lab website and also mailed to Professor Grant Kester, Chair of the Visual Arts Department. At a time of increasingly violent rhetoric from political extremists in this country, including harassment and threats directed at public officials who hold alternate political views, it is deeply troubling that our administration is not mounting a more robust defense of the mission of the university as a site of autonomous, critical, reflection. While the threats today are directed at ECD, tomorrow they may well be aimed at evolutionary biology or genomic research.

We call upon the UCSD administration to discontinue the unwarranted attack it has initiated against Professor Dominguez and on the very principles of free inquiry on which the university system is based.

Sincerely,
The UCSD Faculty Coalition

Cc:
- Stephanie Burke (Assistant Vice-Chancellor, Audit and Management
Advisory Services)
- Professor Harold Pashler (Chair, Committee on Academic Freedom)
- Professor Ricardo Dominguez (Associate Professor, Visual Arts Department)
- Professor Grant Kester, (Chair, Department of Visual Arts)

UC/AFT Resolution in Support of the B.A.N.G. Lab and In Defense of Academic Freedom

2010-04-04T17:40:00.001-07:00

===================================

UC/AFT Resolution on Academic Freedom in light of UCOP's recent efforts against initiatives by Senate and Non-Senate Faculty.

Whereas an internet performative collaboration, (http://bang.calit2.net), was done by U.C. faculty and

Whereas such action is part of a Senate faculty member's mode of often collaborative art practice and

Whereas this tenured Senate Faculty, Professor Ricardo Dominguez, was hired and promoted by the U.C. San Diego Visual Arts Department for this and other kinds of "new media" work and

Whereas, in this case, has involved Unit 18 members such as Micha Cárdenas in his department as well as Ken Ehrlich at U.C. Riverside whose rights are protected by an MOU with the UC/AFT and

Whereas, a similar work was done without UCOP intervention a year ago by Professor Dominguez and

Whereas, UCOP initiated an investigation by the Senior Vice Chancellor (SVC) of (http://bang.calit2.net) and

Whereas, UCOP by its actions seems intent upon a shut down of the bang.lab's research server, which hosts student publications, the lab's blog and essential class services including a wiki,

Be it resolved that said action by UCOP is an unwarranted assault upon the academic rights and freedoms of it faculty and

Be it further resolved that the UC/AFT call upon UCOP to cease and desist in this and any other attempts to stifle free expression by faculty and students and

Be it further resolved that the UC/AFT will join with other members of the academic community, individuals, groups and organizations in the community to protect academic rights and privileges

==================================

Debate: Student Fees and UC Construction Projects

2010-03-29T07:44:00.001-07:00

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

Response: CFO, University of California, Peter Taylor

Moderator: Professor Alan Schoenfeld
- - -

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

Letter for Regents' Meeting on Recent Campus Events

2010-03-24T08:29:00.001-07:00

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://mondoweiss.net/2010/01/at-yale-judge-goldstone-faces-down-his-accusers.html>

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

Continuation of "Whom Do You Tolerate"

2010-03-18T07:02:00.001-07:00

back to start

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

March 15, 2010
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Schwartz--Pitts Exchange on Lack of Open Discussion At UCOF

2010-03-12T12:23:00.001-08:00

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

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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
---------------------
January 28, 2010
Charlie - thanks. We'll post it as soon as the Communications people get the web site addition active. Larry
--------------------
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
-----------------
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
------------------------
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
------------------------

Students Disrupt Washington Legislature with Song

2010-03-08T10:55:00.000-08:00

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!

South Africa Education Protests March 4th

2010-03-05T14:42:00.000-08:00

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

2010-03-05T14:38:00.000-08:00

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

The paleographer and the managers: a tale of modern times

2010-03-04T13:17:00.000-08:00

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"

2010-03-04T02:39:00.000-08:00

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.

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University of Washington NO BUDGET CUTS Info and Demands

2010-03-04T02:24:00.000-08:00

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!

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

2010-03-03T20:05:00.000-08:00

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.

Charles Schwartz Invites President Yudof to Debate Administrative Bloat

2010-03-02T20:03:00.000-08:00

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

2010-03-02T19:58:00.000-08:00

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

2010-03-02T17:32:00.000-08:00

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

UCI Faculty in Support of March 4th Events

2010-03-01T12:36:00.001-08:00

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

"Values and Civility"

2010-02-28T15:03:00.001-08:00

February 22, 2010

Dear Chancellor Drake:

I write to express my concern about your letter of February 17 and other aspects of the University’s response to 11 UCI students’ protest of the appearance of Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren and to student protest generally.

Much of the public discussion of the protest has debated whether or not the students’ protest tactics would be legally protected by the First Amendment. The narrow question of legal protection, however, does not define the set of issues that a university should think about on such an occasion. No university believes that its values are exhausted by what is legally required. Rather, universities should be sensitive to all speech and action that is principled, and should be mindful of traditions of civil disobedience. The complex and often illustrious history of civil disobedience in the U.S. includes illegal actions by definition. Many historical, philosophical, literary, and sociological texts commonly taught in the UCI curriculum acknowledge the benefits of such an approach. The idea that the spaces of democracy are kept open through challenges to their bounds and rules *by those who are formally excluded from these very spaces* is familiar and crucial to scholars of democracy.

The case of the protest at Michael Oren’s lecture raises questions about the availability and viability of other means by which the concerns of the 11 could be raised. In addition to Oren, a second speaker affiliated with the Israeli government appears on the UCI calendar this quarter—Daniel Taub, Principal Deputy Legal Adviser of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Feb. 10, 2010). I believe that no Palestinian official has spoken at UCI since Manuel Hassassian, ambassador of the Palestinian General Delegation to the UK, appeared at a forum with Prof. Edward Kaufman (formerly of Hebrew University) in 2006. Further, I’m concerned about the diversity of expression more generally. Over the last decade mainstream scholars have addressed concerns similar to the 11 students’—namely, that gains by the religious right in Israel have resulted in “new discriminatory policies and practices toward the Palestinian minority” and a climate in which extreme “policies of expulsion” are newly thinkable (see Nadim N. Rouhana and Nimer Sultany, “Redrawing the Boundaries of Citizenship: Israel's New Hegemony,” Journal of Palestine Studies 33 [2003], 5-22). As far as I can tell, the last speaker sponsored by UCI whose main topic was the plight of Palestinians may have been Prof. Saree Makdisi, as part of the conference “"Whither the Levant?," in December 2008.

Most of the UCI events sponsored by the Ford Foundation have featured speakers from the political center whose main topic has been the desirability of reconciliation. The UCI “difficult dialogues” are not really dialogic and not really difficult, however,unless they include the full spectrum of political opinion. This context may help one understand why the 11 students may have wanted to publicize their point in the way they did. It is worth assessing whether the “Difficult Dialogues” project is serving the needs of the student groups that truly differ, rather than those already occupying the center; and whether, by seeming to align itself with this center, UCI could be seen to be taking a de facto position in the Middle East conflict itself.

The perception that UCI may be more interested in suppressing the appearance of conflict than in working through it is exacerbated by the OC Register’s report that UCI has rehired a public relations consultant, Alan Hilburg, whose previous experience with damage control includes work on the Exxon Valdez oil spill, Love Canal, and smokeless tobacco. Alan Hilburg’s previous work for at least one client has included cost-benefit analyses of a company’s taking, or seeming to take, one stance or another; a paper he has given for the national conference of public relations specialists promotes “trust” for its connection to “lower transaction costs” and “high brand value” (“The High Cost of Low Trust: Managing the Climate of Skepticism”). It’s appropriate for a university to maintain its own public relations staff, but not to retain a consultant with such a record.

Finally, although people may agree or disagree with the views and/or tactics of the 11 students who protested Oren’s appearance, no reasonable person could believe that the students were unprincipled. The university must show that it is able to recognize the difference between principled civil disobedience and unprincipled disruption and be careful to treat protesters with respect. Your letter of February 17 falls short in this regard. Its title, “Why do values and civility matter?,” and statement that “some” at UCI have the goal of “closing channels of communication,” seem to assume that the people being referred to lack “values” and “civility” and are ill-motivated. This broadly phrased letter might be taken to extend to recent protests over UC finances (its terms are problematic, however, whether it refers to the smaller or to the larger group). It would be more productive to assume that students engaged in protest—both the 11 students at Oren’s talk and the wider community of protesters—care about the civil society of the university and are expressing, in time-honored ways, values that matter.

Sincerely,

Rei Terada
Professor of Comparative Literature

Subject line Why Do Values and Civility Matter?

I have spoken and written often about the manner in which we discuss and debate our differences, about our values, and about how we use those values to guide our decision-making. I am disappointed that some in our community seem more comfortable engaging in confrontation than collaboration, and in closing channels of communication rather than opening them.

At this juncture, we have two options. We can continue to amp up the rhetoric of outrage that is reverberating inside and outside our walls. Or, rather than fortifying barriers, we can use this energy to build bridges across the spaces that divide us.

We can discuss our differences respectfully, moving first toward understanding, and perhaps eventually toward resolution. And we can challenge ourselves to be better: What does it mean to be a part of a learning community? How do we engage each other in constructive dialog? How do we move forward?

To that end, I am asking several campus units to join together to host a series of discussions that will help light our path forward. School of Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky's "First Amendment in a Multicultural Society" lecture last week set a high standard, and we will explore other issues in upcoming weeks. We will announce these shortly. I hope that all interested students, faculty and staff will participate, and that rather than repeating the behavior of so many others and sinking backward, we will move forward as a campus.

I know that we can advance. As we do, we must remember that the collective energy of our diverse communities is among our greatest strengths, and one that clearly enhances our position among the great learning centers of the world.

Chancellor Michael Drake

Berkeley ASUC Resolution in Support of March 4th Events

2010-02-28T10:55:00.001-08:00

A Bill in Support of the National March 4th Day of Action

Authored by Christina Urista, and Elliot Astral Goldstein

Sponsored by Christina Oatfield

WHEREAS, on October 24, 2009 more than 800 students, workers, and teachers converged at UC Berkeley at the California Coordinating Committee Conference; and

WHEREAS, the California Coordinating Committee is a coalition between students, teachers, and workers across all sectors of public education, including K-12, community colleges, state colleges, and the University of California; and

WHEREAS, the California Coordinating Committee was formed in an effort to preserve and save the quality, access, and excellence of public education in California;

WHEREAS, the California Coordinating Committee democratically voted on localized actions throughout all sectors of public education in California for March 4th2010; and

WHEREAS, the October 24th Conference inspired other public educational campuses across the nation to also defend their educational rights in response to the national fiscal crisis, and to take action on March 4th, 2010; and

WHEREAS, the UC Berkeley General Assembly voted on a strike on the day with picket lines at the UC Berkeley campus, followed by a march to Oakland’s Ogawa Plaza; and

WHEREAS, the mass rally to Oakland stands in solidarity with all public educational sectors in the East Bay, including K-12, community colleges, and state campuses; and

WHEREAS, the standards of access, quality, and excellence in all sectors of public education are threatened or have diminished under the charge of those who have been entrusted to defend and promote them; and

WHEREAS, UC President Mark Yudof has mishandled the current crisis, therefore galvanizing University employees, faculty, staff and students to launch their own statewide vote of “No Confidence” in his leadership; and

WHEREAS, the ASUC already supported democratizing the Regents (SB 251, Spring 2009), before the Regents passed a devastating 32% fee hike on November 19th at UCLA, only two Regents opposing the increase,

WHEREAS, the State of California has continually disinvested in public education across all sectors of higher education, essentially failing to uphold the Master Plan for Higher Education in California,

WHEREAS, the California K-12 public school system faced $5.2 billion dollars in cuts from 2009-2010, failing to uphold the minimum funding levels under the voter approved Proposition 98; and

WHEREAS, Governor Schwarzenegger’s new proposal to fund higher public education does not include California’s K-12 public school system; and

WHEREAS, although separate from the California Coordinating Committee, the March 4th National Day of Action to Defend Public Education stands for the same cause and is endorsed by SAVE UC, UC Berkeley Solidarity Alliance, UC Berkeley General Assembly, UC Berkeley Graduate Student Organizing Committee, the California Labor Federation, the California Faculty Association, the California Federation of Teachers, United Teachers of Los Angeles, United Educators of San Francisco, AFSCME Local 444; and

WHEREAS, under its Constitution, the Associated Students of the University of California (ASUC) is committed to effective student participation in all areas of student concern; and

WHEREAS, the ASUC is deeply committed to upholding the quality of education in public higher education institutions in California and is in solidarity with all sectors of public education in California;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the ASUC stands in support of and participates in the March 4th National Day of Action to Defend Public Education as a concerned body of student representatives.

THEREFORE BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the ASUC stands in solidarity with all sectors of public education, including students, teachers, staff and workers in the K-12, college and university sectors fighting to defend their educational rights on March 4th 2010.

THEREFORE BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the ASUC President and External Affairs Vice President are authorized to write letters to the respective stakeholders, including the student body, in support of the March 4th National Day to Defend Public Education, including UC Berkeley’s localized actions to: strike, march to Ogawa Plaza, and demonstration in Sacramento.

THEREFORE BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED, that ASUC supports and will use its resources, peoplepower, and channels of communication to increase awareness and mobilize students leading up to and on the March 4th Day of Action.

UC Berkeley Statement on Protest Regulations

2010-02-25T10:36:00.000-08:00

Subject: Update on Campus Regulations Concerning Protests and Demonstrations

At the start of the semester we wrote to you about the rules of time, place and manner that govern the rights of protest and demonstration and protect the liberty of each of us to teach, learn, work, live and engage in political expression on campus, and our intent to enforce these rules.

We are happy to report that student organizers have worked together successfully with faculty and administrators to hold events to promote discussion and debate concerning a path forward for Berkeley and higher education, while abiding by these rules. We commend the efforts that students, faculty and staff are making to be respectful of our campus values of peaceful protest and to work together to ensure compliance with campus regulations.

As the campus prepares to step up its advocacy efforts, we are writing to remind you of these rules and note that University House has been added to the Campus Regulations Concerning the Time, Place, and Manner of Public Expression. These are available at: http://students.berkeley.edu/uga/regs.stm (Secs. 300ff).

Christopher Kutz
Chair, Faculty Senate

Fiona M. Doyle
Vice Chair, Faculty Senate

Robert J. Birgeneau
Chancellor

George Breslauer
Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost