Remaking the University

Links for February 1, 2012

2012-02-01T20:21:00.000-08:00

Bob Samuels reflects on Mark Yudof's response to President Obama's education initiative. Yudof seems to be making the rounds as he talks here as well.

Students at Berkeley Challenge Edley and Robinson: Why Have an Armed Police Force on Campus?

The California Budget Project has a new study of the deep effects that the recession and budget cuts in California have had on women and families.

Catherine Liu was interviewed on Left Business Observer about her book American Idyll.

David Sirota points to reasons to doubt the "myth of the education crisis."

Claremont McKenna admits that it inflated its average SAT scores for several years. Of course they are not the only ones who have tried to game the ranking system.

Controversy continues to swirl around Pomona College and its decision to fire immigrant workers without documents.

In California Republican registration continues to drop; Decline to State continues to Rise.

Both Florida and Georgia are debating legislation to limit opportunities for undocumented students.

New analysis suggests that online may work best when students are using it only part-time.

Indiana adds new anti-union law.

Even the IMF realizes that European austerity has gone too far. Maybe more will notice the massive unemployment and demoralization of the austere.

An Open Letter to UCR Chancellor Tim White: Why Were UCR Students and Faculty Criminalized and then Assaulted?

2012-01-27T13:52:00.000-08:00

UPDATES: Open letter from Occupy UCR, including statements of the humanistic social purposes of the university
Open letter to the UC Riverside chancellor from Prof. Jennifer Doyle from The Nation blog.

According to a faculty observer, on January 19 while the Regents met on the UC Riverside campus, hundreds of UC students and faculty gathered outside to protest further cuts to funding and demand a more transparent form of decision-making by the Regents. In response, they were met with police in full riot gear declaring their nonviolent gathering an "unlawful" assembly. Some of these students and faculty were eventually shoved to the ground, dragged across the pavement, attacked with batons, and shot with plastic pellets. This week, faculty, students and staff at UCR generated an "Open Letter" to Chancellor Tim White, demanding accountability for the exaggerated militarization and violence of the UC's response to these nonviolent protests.

Letter Below the Fold

Dear Chancellor White,

In light of the events of January 19, we felt it appropriate to issue our own letter asking for your response to some urgent questions. We are citizens of this community—students, faculty and staff—demanding answers for the troubling events of last Thursday.

Whose decision was it to militarize an unarmed, nonviolent protest on our campus on January 19, by calling in police in riot gear to threaten and assault a crowd of protesters who continually insisted loudly that their protest was intended to be peaceful?

Who decided that this peaceful protest was an “unlawful assembly,” as the police repeatedly announced over the PA system? On what basis was this determined?

Why did you (or whoever else was responsible) not come out to address the crowd and explain this decision? Did you hear them chanting, “Tell us why”? What makes a large crowd of dissatisfied people demanding dialogue with their representatives on their own campus an “unlawful assembly”? And don't those whose actions are unilaterally deemed “unlawful” deserve an explanation as to why?

Your Friday letter states that the behavior of a “small number of individuals... briefly and peacefully shut down the Regents meeting... Their actions, while making a point to disrupt and while remaining nonviolent, nonetheless prevented others from listening to the discussion by denying public access to the remainder of the meeting.”

If, as you acknowledge, the actions of that small group of students were nonviolent, why and how would the actions of a handful of disruptive students cause the entire protest to be deemed “unlawful assembly” and justify the threat of force and arrest against all of the other students and faculty members gathered?

Why has nonviolent disruption, assertiveness and defiance been equated with aggression, violence and threat on our campus, when Gandhi himself called for nonviolent disobedience to be forceful and confrontational, and when, from a first amendment perspective, “disruptive” and “dangerous” are two very different things?

You say in your most recent Friday letter that you needed to “use our police to ensure the safety of meeting participants as well as the majority of protest participants.” But is there any evidence that any of the protesters were threatening the Regents, rather than simply using disruptive—and potentially embarrassing—tactics to make their demands visible?

Even if it is still true that police presence was required, why did the police have to be armed with violent equipment, as though they were facing dangerous criminals? Could they not simply have been sent to observe and monitor the proceedings; why did they have to be armed to the hilt, and then escalate the situation with the threats and use of potentially lethal force?

Who, in this situation, was the real “threat” to our campus’ security: a group of dissatisfied but unarmed students and faculty chanting “peaceful protest!”, or a group of highly-armed police threatening to and willing to use force through batons, tear gas and rubber bullets (which have been known to kill people in other conflicts)?

Your Friday letter expresses concern about officers who “received minor injuries, as barricades were thrown at them and signs used as weapons.” But what we see in the following videos are police in full riot gear shoving unarmed students and faculty with batons, and then firing paint-filled bullets at them. Please see, among MANY others, the videos and reports of injuries to students and faculty from police violence:

http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2012/01/20/uc-riverside-students-attacked-by-police-during-day-of-protest-for-education/

http://voiceforhumanrights.org/2012/01/21/students-at-uc-riverside-face-violence-during-protest-against-uc-regents-meeting/

http://antiimperialtheorizing.wordpress.com/2012/01/21/cops-and-cowards-reflections-on-the-recent-uc-regents-protest/

What we see on the following video clips are the protesters seizing the police barricades and trying to place them between themselves and the police. We do not see anyone using the barricades to attack the police. Meanwhile, the following video shows a protester being hit with rubber/paint pellets. That student is clearly in a great deal of pain and saying that he is having trouble breathing. He is carried away by a handful of other students who call out for water and help (skip to 4:30) You can also see from the videos that the response of the protesters was to chant, “peaceful protest, peaceful protest!”

How can rubber bullets and batons be considered a justifiable response to disruption and embarrassment that is not in any way physically dangerous? What evidence do we have that it was the protesters, and not the highly-armed and militarized police force, who escalated the violence?

What accounts for the tight, 1-minute so-called "comment period" provided at the Regents' meeting? Students and faculty were demanding an open forum that was NOT controlled by the Regents' own inadequate vision of what constitutes democratic dialogue and transparent decision-making. In light of this, why should their demand to be heard at such a forum be construed as a threat, justifying such escalated violence?

When fully-armed police are sent in to threaten, shove and physically assault unarmed people who are already frustrated, resentful and angry at being criminalized and having lost their voices, will this not inevitably escalate the level of violence?

So, in conclusion, Chancellor White, we are seeking answers for what happened on January 19, but are also deeply concerned with the implications of these events for the future of free speech on our campus. What makes a crowd of unarmed, peacefully dissenting people “unlawful” and “dangerous”? Who gets to decide, and on what basis? And, what forms of free, nonviolent speech and expression of dissent can be considered “lawful” on our campus, so that they are not met with met with exaggerated militarization, and the escalation of institutionally-authorized violence?

Sincerely,

Concerned Members of the UCR Community

Links for January 26, 2012

2012-01-26T18:07:00.000-08:00

A letter from Justice Cruz Reynoso indicates that the UC Davis Police Force is not cooperating with his investigation as they promised.

David Wittman has a recent post on how he got involved in Davis protests. It is part of a new blog on how Faculty can support Students. Check it out.

Victory at Kroeber Library.

CSU Trustees agree to limit pay increases for CSU Presidents.

The PPIC is out with their latest polling on Californian's and their Government. A lot of mixed messages: good for K-12, less for Higher Ed and social services; Good for increasing the progressivity of taxes. But still a lot of confusion.

The Nation has an analysis of Obama's Education Rhetoric. They were no more impressed than I was.

Faculty at University of Oregon begin drive for Unionization.

Stanford rethinks their undergraduate education.

I think this is what they really mean when they talk about creative destruction.

Thanks to Cameron's austerity policies England now is in worse shape than at the equivalent point of the Great Depression.

A Letter from the London Review of Books points out:

Universities under Attack

‘If we can’t speak the language of our enemies, not only will they not listen to us,’ Michael Wood writes, ‘but they can’t’ (LRB, 15 December 2011). He is far too defeatist. Under New Labour, the arts were told that statements about value, quality and excellence were irrelevant and self-serving, and would be rejected out of hand by the Treasury. Unless the arts could demonstrate, numerically, their instrumental utility to society, the economy, the environment and social development, they would never get a decent hearing in Whitehall. For a decade, arts leaders demonstrated that they could run their organisations in ‘business-like ways’ – which is totally different from running them ‘like businesses’. The sector poured out instrumental indicators by the ton. But the arts never gave up their own language for describing the real nature of their activity.

The essential question for higher education is not ‘will they listen?’ It is ‘will we speak out?’

John Tusa
London N1

Mis-State of the Union and the Educational Future

2012-01-25T17:37:00.000-08:00

By Michael Meranze

As expected, President Obama previewed his election year populist pivot in last night's State of the Union address. Between his opening and closing reminder to Republicans that he had carried out stealth warfare with greater efficiency than his predecessor, he articulated a domestic agenda that aimed to present himself as the candidate of a more caring domestic future. He also spent a good deal of time discussing education.

Playing on the growing anger about inequality, the President tried to define the question of fairness in terms of the gaps between rich and poor as opposed to the Republican insistence that the poor and the elderly were the true fat-cats of our society. And there were elements of his domestic agenda that might prove positive if he actually carries them out: initiatives to rearrange the tax code to discourage the off-shoring of jobs and manufacturing, to make sure that Corporations pay some sort of tax, to strengthen unemployment insurance and the safety net, to turn the money saved from bringing troops home into money spent on infrastructure, and to encourage new forms of energy. He is setting up a new board to look into financial malfeasance (although since his DOJ could have been prosecuting people for the last 3 years this looks more like a fig leaf).

Unfortunately, this was still all phrased within the same language of debt reduction with its austerity that the President has employed since he first took office and, of course, there is no guarantee that he will actually fight for any of this stuff.

In this mix, education took a prominent role. Like Jerry Brown in his recent State of the State address, President Obama pushed hard for the centrality of education in any flourishing American Society. But where Brown expressed skepticism about the role of educational "reformers" and standardized testing in K-12, President Obama in the State of the Union and in his accompanying "Blueprint" doubled-down on both.

Under the buzzword of allowing more leeway to schools, the President sought to expand the range of testing and also--dangerous opening--to subject schools and teachers to greater market discipline. As the blueprint puts it, the President is "Creating new career ladders for teachers to become more effective, and ensuring that earnings are tied more closely to performance" (5).

And despite the rhetoric of freeing teachers from "teaching to the test" the upshot would simply be more varied systems of testing. (5) This is the administration of Arne Duncan after all, so caution is in order. Obama hit the rhetorical notes of caring about education and teaching, but without evidence that he has overcome his fondness for market solutions in education (and there was none on display) it is hard to see how this rhetoric will do more than provide a cover for the ongoing undermining of public schools.

The President's Higher Ed discussion was equally problematic. On the one hand, Obama reasserted his convictions on the importance of higher ed and expressed his worries about the rising amount of student debt. He also stressed the continuing importance of research and the need to fund it.

On the other hand, his proposals do little to secure the future of higher ed or help students. His most prominent example of his vision lies in linking community colleges closer to businesses:

Model partnerships between businesses like Siemens and community colleges in places like Charlotte, Orlando, and Louisville are up and running. Now you need to give more community colleges the resources they need to become community career centers - places that teach people skills that local businesses are looking for right now, from data management to high-tech manufacturing.

But as the New York Times recently reported, these partnerships primarily help businesses--not students--by training students to work for specific companies rather than giving them an education and knowledge that can be transferred if the company goes under.

Moreover, Obama's response to the reduction of State aid to public universities is to set up new audit requirements in the name of market efficiency in order to continue to receive student loan aid. Even his proposal to expand his tax credit for college costs while helpful is so small (capped at $10,000 for 4 years) as to be risible in the current context. The same can be said for his proposal to require more work-study jobs.

Insofar as our aim should be to allow students to focus on their studies without condemning themselves to huge amounts of debt, what is called for is Federal Direct Funding to enable tuition to be kept down and colleges to make the investments in faculty and infrastructure that would enable the sort of creative production to overcome the ongoing creative destruction that today's capitalism glories in.

In the end the President struck important notes about the fairness and importance of investing in the future (as opposed to investing in Hedge Funds); however, he--like most of the political class--seems unable to shake the notions that austerity is necessary (except around the margins) or that we can overcome the disasters of neo-liberalism by expanding the reach of market mechanisms.

Obama's vision is more human than any of his Republican opponents' but it remains a mis-statement of the Union.

Photo: Obama State of the Union - WhiteHouse.gov

Links for January 23, 2012

2012-01-23T12:51:00.000-08:00

Students at Riverside Protests offered the Regents a civics lesson on the right of assembly.

Of course that didn't stop police from arresting two and using plastic pellets on others.

For those of you who missed it, Nathan Brostrom and Patrick Lenz offered a power-point version of UCOP's analysis of the Budget at Last week's Regent's meeting. Here is the more old-fashioned form.

The Regents got a report on Diversity at UC. Spoilers: Could be better.

Sign of the Times department: UCSF offers its justification for its bid to get a new relationship with UC. Apparently they only get 200M in base state support.

UC Plans to place new campus of Lawrence Berkeley lab in Richmond.

At Berkeley protesters succeed in getting administration to return to full hours at Anthropology Library.

The problems facing mid-year transfers this year continue to grow.

UCLA is planning on selling its Japanese Tea Garden and Cultural Center for some cash.

States are looking to cut support for higher education even further while tightening control. State support for Higher Ed dropped nearly 8% last year.

And just so you know, Moody's says the financial outlook for colleges and universities is mixed.

Yves Smith wonders if the Obama administration is going to shift pension funds over to banks.

Dianne Ravitch discusses the assault on public education.

And while we are all enjoying our apple products...

Photo: UCR protesters link arms - KTLA-TV

Today's Links, Riverside Edition

2012-01-20T12:02:00.000-08:00

Our start on eventual proper coverage

UCR Riverside protesters are attacked by police.

Bob Samuels has a helpful overview of the Regents issues along with his takedown of the worst idea of the week -- students' trading tuition in college for twenty years of debt. This idea is being implemented in the UK as part of the Tory government's attempt to mitigate the obvious cost disaster they were imposing on British college students with their overnight tripling of fees to 9000 pounds. It would undoubtedly ease regular large tuition increases, since it would exploit people's inability to feel as upset about future costs as they are about present ones, and would solidify, in the world of education, our economy of debt.

UCSF's chancellor offered the other big surprise of the week by expressing a desire to leave the UC system-- sort of. We will be looking into this, but the San Francisco Chronicle coverage implied that the motive was that UCSF could no longer afford to subsidize the UC system. Chancellor Desmond-Hellmann mentioned a loss to UC of $49 million. This is about 1% of UCSF's budget, but in any case is offset by the $186 million that UCSF receives in state general funds, which is over $52,000 per student or over five times the per student GF of Berkeley. There are many more cash flows back and forth than I've just mentioned, but the main point is that a huge taboo has been broken. The main motive is probably a bad case of UCOP fatigue, and we may see a systemwide outbreak soon.

Photo: "Protest at UC Riverside" by Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times

Links for January 18, 2012

2012-01-18T14:26:00.000-08:00

For the Latest in UCOP's position on the budget you can listen to Patrick Lenz' spiel on January 11th. And here is the budget update for tomorrow's Regent's meeting.

The Regents are moving their May Meeting to Sacramento. Promise to Protest Cuts to Higher Ed.

Brown delivers his State of the State. He is continuing to push for austerity.

Think Long has pulled its tax initiative from the ballot.

"Neo-Racism" in southwestern education.

Even the NSF has sounded the alarm about the fact that states are cutting investment in research. The fuller report can be found here.

The NSF is also trying to encourage more research experience for students at community colleges.

University of Michigan Grad Student says she was dismissed because of her union activity.

Illinois Attorney General to sue for-profit college for misrepresentations to students.

The latest venture capitalist effort in Higher Ed.

Another reason not to get carried away by an emphasis on using standardized tests to evaluate teachers.

To criticize would just be envy: Goldman Sachs to spend more on bonuses even though revenue is down.

Photo: Jennifer Dibbern by Melanie Maxwell/Associated Press

Racial Patterns of Campus Budget Inequality: the State Audit Part II

2012-01-17T10:05:00.000-08:00

You'll recall that the California State Auditor released its audit of the University of California last July. In Part I of my analysis, I discussed the Bureau of State Audit's (BSA's) incomprehensible claim that student tuition money is public funding. Yet the audit compensated for its coverup of UC's revenue problem with a disturbing analysis of UC's internal distribution of funds among the campuses. It noted two things: a rich man/ poor man inequality among campuses in educational resources, and an apparent racial pattern in which the poor campuses are those that have higher proportion of underrepresented racial or ethnic groups.

I'll discuss these findings, and toward the end of this post will show charts that challenge the Office of the President's rebuttal of these findings. Has UC's central administration been underdeveloping the University of California in part along racial lines? In spite of OP's 's good intentions--and the audit's backpedaling on "inequity"--the current evidence says yes. The unequal distribution of both underrepresented students and core funding poses a question about whether UC is willing and able to advance social development in a minority-majority state.

Here's the figure that summarizes the Audit's findings on racial disparity:

UC campuses have significant variation in their proportion of underrepresented racial groups, defined as "Hispanic, Black (non‐Hispanic), American Indian, and Alaskan Native." The report separates them into two clusters on either side of their 18% systemwide average. The averages for the two groups are 27% for the campuses with more students from underrepresented groups, and 15% for the campuses that have a higher proportion of students that are white and/or Asian American. These latter campuses are Berkeley, Los Angeles, San Diego, Irvine, and Davis. The more black-and-brown campuses are Merced, Riverside, Santa Barbara, and Santa Cruz.

The audit equally finds large variations in the per-student amount of state and tuition money that each campus receives from the Office of the President.

These variations are also large. A student at the poorest campus, Santa Barbara, has 63 cents on the dollar received by a UCLA student down the road. The auditors know that the difference has something to do with the outsize per-capita sums spent on medical education -- hence their third column above, and San Francisco's $55k per student. Comparing Santa Barbara to Berkeley, which also has no medical school, still puts Santa Barbara at 72 cents on the Berkeley dollar. In spite of its placement with the better off campuses in Table 7, Irvine is a lower-middle income campus with a medical school, receiving 79 cents on the Davis dollar (another medical campus).

The punch line is the Auditor's correlation between the poorer campuses and their higher enrollments of underrepresented minority students ( Table 7 again, p 38). The audit quantifies underfunding as something over $200 million a year for the four "minority" campuses. $200 million would buy a lot of the individualized instruction that budget cuts are squeezing out right when the state of California needs instructional upgrades instead. The audit puts the difference at about $3500 less per head at the lower-income campuses. Since the average of all the campuses minus SF is just under $15,500, students at poorer campuses lose nearly a quarter of average UC resources by attending one of the them.

The Audit thus identifies two separable but interrelated issues with UC's budgetary structure:

1.The campuses are unequally funded. Though some of the differences reflect different program mixtures (on this more below), it is very hard to justify charging all UC students the same tuition and then giving them very different resources at different campuses. On its face, UC creates a clear inequity when it charges the same amount for different resources depending on the campus a UC student attends.

Similar arguments can be made for research: all UC activity is premised on UC being a balanced system of comparable quality everywhere. To put it obnoxiously, the NSF doesn't fund grants at UCSB thinking that that campus will put in 63% of the intelligence or effort of a similarly funded grant at UCLA. Indeed UCSB personnel and students put in 100%, yet without 100% of the matching resources.

2. UCOP sends less money to campus with more underrepresented students. The audit doesn't claim that UCOP sends less money because a campus is more black and brown, or that UCOP has any racist intent -- it goes out of its way to deny a causal connection and refuses the term "inequity" (see p 37). Nonetheless, the BSA identifies racial disparities that correlate with funding inequalities.

Unequal resources for racial minorities is a fundamental pattern in American society and schooling that decades if not centuries of struggle and countermeasures have not remedied. UC is not above this history. Now the state audit lays a serious charge at UC's door. How does UCOP respond to the audit's identification of these issues?

UCOP makes two main points:

Campus funding differentials reflect "150 years of strategic funding choices," different program mixes, and each campus's unique identity (pp 79-80). These differences do not reflect inequity, but instead the strategic flexibility that former UC president Clark Kerr described as a key to excellence.
Regarding the racial pattern, UC has no biased intent and the BSA has no evidence of either intent or disparate outcomes. The "BSA makes no investigation into or observation of disproportionate or inequitable treatment or outcomes for students at different campuses. The University of California has a firm commitment to diversity and an extraordinary record when it comes to the persistence and graduation of students from all California communities:" (p 81)

I have two thoughts about the first point. One is that UCOP shouldn't see Kerr-style excellence as expressed by a system that has turned out to have such unequally funded campuses. It is true by definition that the poorer campuses have cheaper programs, which means they have fewer professional programs and graduate programs and the myriad intellectual activities that go with that. Since UC is a system of research campuses, why is it OK that at least four of them are funded more like undergraduate colleges? We should instead take unequal funding as a sign that UC remains underdeveloped, more so at some campuses than others. We should also read UCOP as saying that in a restricted funding environment, this underdevelopment has been intentional and strategic.

For some reason, the auditors deny they implied that funding differentials have a "potential for inequity" (87). In fact UC officials have not only admitted resource inequity but said that it is deliberate and good. In addition, they say they will oppose correcting it: the Office of the President "further stated [to the state's audit team] that the university does not wish to jeopardize the achievements of the Berkeley and Los Angeles campuses by shifting funds away to other campuses in an effort to provide an equal amount of the general funds and tuition budget per student" (36). In a period of stagnant or declining funding, UCOP defines its job as protecting UC stratification rather than correcting it.

Secondly, funding differences aren't created by the presence of high-cost professional and medical programs (pp 32-33). A fellow UCPB alum analyzed UC's audited financial statements and removed funding for the medical and other professional schools. He did this for 2006-07, which was a fairly normal year after the cuts of 2002-05 and before those of 2008-2012. This is a chart based on those calculations (excluding the all-medical campus of UCSF):

UCOP distributes both tuition and state general fund unequally, in a pattern similar to that the audit described. (San Diego is sometimes called the "third flagship" but is funded as the system's average campus. Irvine is actually found among the poor.) The crucial point is that differential campus funding remains even after the biggest program-based causes are removed. The remaining differences derive from "historical variations" by campus in funding for undergraduates and academic graduate students. This is the problem, not the justification of it.

On the racial pattern, UCOP pushes back hard.

[W]e strongly object to the BSA’s use of the variation in the race/ethnicity profiles of our campus student populations to further cast into doubt the integrity of the University’s allocation process. There is absolutely no basis – statistically, historically, or ethically – for drawing such a connection. Furthermore, the BSA makes no investigation into or observation of disproportionate or inequitable treatment or outcomes for students at different campuses. The University of California has a firm commitment to diversity and an extraordinary record when it comes to the persistence and graduation of students from all California communities. Four- and six-year graduation rates for all combinations of race/ethnicity and gender are higher at UC than at 21 public peer institutions.

But UCOP's own 2009 report on campus differences does find inequitable outcomes - namely, significant variations in graduation rates.

The audit's rich and poor campus correlate are those that have system's higher and lower graduation rates, respectively. (UC's comparator universities show the same correlation.)

Although a race-based breakdown of graduation rates is beyond my scope here, we do have this evidence that UC's underfunded campuses have lower graduation rates that would negatively affect their higher proportion of underrepresented students. In this case, UC's funding disparities places an extra burden on its underrepresented students.

The patterns I've discussed call into question UC's social relevance to a state which now has a solid minority majority in its student population and in most metropolitan areas. Were UC to equalize graduation rates and academic attainment across racial groups, that would be remarkable and transformative, and something the state's majority would be likely to fund. But if UC mostly reproduces racial hierarchies through a stratified system of unequal campuses, it does much less work for the state, and will have less interest to its population. UC would by this logic of diminished public service receive less public funding. If UC defines its accomplishments as damaged by equitable funding distribution around the system, as it does when it puts flagship funding first, these accomplishments will not attract broad public interest.

Finally, there has been some important internal rethinking of these funding patterns. The faculty Senate's Academic Council has proposed the "rebenching" of base budgets, which I will discuss in another post. In so doing, the Council offers this as its core principle: " UC is one university with one standard of excellence at its ten campuses, and the cost of a UC quality education is the same on every campus." Council passed this principle unanimously.

Principles are free and can be adopted by anyone. UCOP should adopt the principle of equal funding across campuses for each type of student (undergrad, grad, etc) . This would allow the UC system to accomplish it larger mission.

Links--Martin Luther King's Birthday Special Edition

2012-01-15T15:30:00.000-08:00

Senator Lieu proposes capping CSU Presidents' salaries. Senator Yee proposes extending administrative salary cap to UC.

Brown proposes limiting access and benefits of Cal Grants.

Out-of-State and International Applications to UC are up dramatically.

California Leads Nation in Unaccredited schools.

K-12 Districts can't plan in face of Budget Uncertainties.

UT-Austin prepares to raise Tuition.

Texas Hopes to align Higher Ed closer to the job market.

East Coast Elite worries they are losing control over early admission process.

Romney Tries to Drum up Support for For-Profit College; Doesn't mention its cost or the fact that its head is one of his donors.

On Solitude and against the "New Groupthink."

Photos: (Jerry Brown) Justin Sullivan/Getty Images, (Mitt Romney) Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Davis, November 18

2012-01-12T20:17:00.000-08:00

By Kelley Rees

When I returned to campus after the holidays the calls for resignation and protest seemed largely quieted by the month-long respite. I wasn’t there when police pepper-sprayed my fellow University of California, Davis students. I was wholly unaware. About an hour later I received a text message saying some students were pepper-sprayed. I don’t consider myself an activist, a reformist, a futurist. My initial thought was that the police were in the right, and the students in the wrong. Upon further inquiry I found photos and videos which set my early reactions straight.

morePrior to November 18th, I had seen the small encampment on the Quad but not paid much mind to its intent. I, like many others at the time, wasn’t entirely certain if their purpose was to show camaraderie with the Occupy Wall Street protesters or to begin their own movement focused on University of California tuition hikes. I will say though, that the actions of UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi, and the UC Davis Campus Police could not have better unified those whose chief emotion was indifference with those at the very heart of the movement. The large congregation that gathered as riot police closed in on those peacefully seated were not radicals, activists, or extremists of any kind. They were students on their way to classes and faculty on their way to work, interrupted from their daily goings-on – their learning and their employment – not by protestors but by those sent in to disband them.

In the first email Chancellor Katehi sent to those attending UC Davis following the events of November 18th, she affirmed, “We have a responsibility to our entire campus community, including the parents who have entrusted their students to us, to ensure that all can live, learn and work in a safe and secure environment.” However, it was not the protestors, but the actions of the police sent by Chancellor Katehi that disrupted this living, learning, and working. And suddenly the handful of students that had begun protesting an unclear ideology, or a greatly disparate class-structure, or a gross increase in tuition had become thousands of students, faculty, and staff with written objectives and a means of advancing them.

The general assembly held the week following the pepper spraying seemed to me a sort of call to arms. Many, myself included, who had days before walked by the tents without a second glance were now standing side by side fellow believers. Most were not believers in a radical ideology, but in a doctrine that founded our nation – believers in the “right of the people peaceably to assemble.”

I am proud to be part of the University of California but more so because of student actions and not those of the administration. During the general assembly students from other campuses came to speak and show their solidarity. The heads of unions spoke of their support. Dozens of professors and the entire English Department requested the resignation of Chancellor Katehi. Throughout everything students remained peaceful and patient. And it was students who quickly pacified any rare outburst that did occur. When Chancellor Katehi walked to the podium some began to boo. Others quickly silenced them with shushing and calls of “let her speak.” If a more extreme idea was proposed at some point in the assembly, such as the removal of police from the campus, much attention was given to explaining the rational, encouraging questions and debate, and allowing those with dissenting opinions to share their views. It was an ideal example of a democratic process, not the totalitarian tactics seen days earlier.

The mentality that the only fault of the University of California system is the recent police brutality at the Berkeley and the Davis campuses overlooks other significant failings. But from a student’s perspective at least, it seems as though the powers that be, including the Regents and the Chancellor of my own university, refuse to see and acknowledge this. Upton Sinclair once said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” (109) Something is out of place when this sentiment so perfectly applies to those leading an institute of higher learning.

Photograph: Paul Sakuma/AP

Links for January 11, 2012

2012-01-11T17:10:00.000-08:00

California Community College Board endorses huge changes to their organization and mission. The changes may reduce access.

Assemblyman proposes state tax break to help middle-class families pay for increasing tuition.

Surprise! The number of Californians with more than a million dollar incomes shot upwards last year. So did their share of the income stream.

Brazil has passed California. Now the state only has the 9th largest economy in the world. I'm sure austerity will help improve that as much as it has helped in Europe. At least there some of the technocrats may be realizing austerity has been a mistake.

According to Pew Report tensions between the rich and poor are now seen as the largest source of conflict in US.

Never before seen event: Connecticut decides to eliminate high-level university administrative positions because they aren't needed.

Illinois faculty protest Administration's attempt to influence deliberations through anonymous email. See it as an effort to undermine shared governance.

A new report commissioned by the Department of Education calls for expanded education in democratic engagement by colleges and universities. The whole report can be found here.

Google is now offering "virtual tours" of college campuses.

One person dies and 22 are injured as students struggle for limited enrollment spaces at the University of Johannesburg.

Links for January 9, 2012

2012-01-09T20:39:00.000-08:00

As you are all aware, the Governor released his proposed budget last week. Analyses are starting to come in. The picture they paint is not pretty. Here is the California Budget Project's "First Impressions" as well as a more thorough if still preliminary account that they are providing.

The California Faculty Association did what UCOP wouldn't: Respond in a forceful way to how damaging the budget would be.

Oh, and the LAO wants to have more say in how programs are developed and defined.

Jim Newton in the LAT asks why it is that no one is willing to recognize the damage that Proposition 13 is doing to the state.

More on the way that austerity is destroying the European economy (to say nothing about European society). Not that American politicians and economists seem able to understand that.

Of course, states still seem to think that if they provide enough free stuff to businesses they will come in and save the economy. Chris has more on this issue here.

How Subsidized Capitalism Hurts Innovation

2012-01-08T22:19:00.000-08:00

I have a post on my other blog that continues last week's piece about the damage done by our version of publicly-subsidized capitalism. This one is about the high-tech industry that is supposed to save the California and American economies, and less about the university.

What the Governor's proposed budget means for UC

2012-01-07T13:15:00.000-08:00

by Eric Hays, Executive Director, Council of UC Faculty Associations

The budget forecasts a hole of about $9.2 billion that will need to be addressed with cuts or tax increases. Brown is proposing to split the difference, with about half of the hole filled by cuts (mostly to social service programs) and half by his proposed tax increase (a temporary increase of the income tax on those making $250,000 or more a year and an half percent increase in the sales tax, increases that would expire by 2017). This year Brown is taking his tax proposal to the voters through a ballot initiative rather than try to get the legislature to pass a tax increase. There is another budget trigger in this year's budget that will fire if the voters do not approve the tax increase (more on that below).
The budget proposal treats the post-trigger 2010-11 state budget as the base, so the $100 million cut that UC just officially received last month is counted when calculating the base UC budget of $2.274 billion, the lowest funding UC has received from the state (when you count federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act money) since the 1999-2000 budget, without even adjusting for inflation or considering the increases in enrollment that have occurred in the intervening years.

To this base, Brown proposes adding $90 million, which can be seen as an acknowledgement of the state's obligation to begin again contributing towards the UC Retirement Plan. The budget also eliminates almost all categoricals in UC's funding –- the language specifying specific programs the state expects UC to spend certain of the state budgeted money on -- which the Governor's budget characterizes as increasing UCOP's flexibility in how it manages recent cuts in state funding. But this includes no longer separately budgeting UC's capital costs, which is to "require the University to factor these costs into UC's overall fiscal outlook and decision making process."

The budget proposal makes major cuts to student financial aid that would eliminate funding for tens of thousands of students currently receiving financial aid.

If the Governor's tax proposal fails to pass and the trigger gets pulled, most of the cuts -- $4.8 billion – would be made to K-14, but UC and CSU would each be cut $200 million, which the budget anticipates would likely result in tuition increases at each system.

In a separate document, the Department of Finance has indicated that there is a plan to provide UC and CSU four percent increases in state funding each year starting with the 2013-14 fiscal year, assuming the Governor's tax proposal passes.

Gov Gives UC Just About Nothing, Continuing the Gradual Termination of "UC" (Updated 1/7, with revised chart)

2012-01-06T16:08:00.000-08:00

I have redone our traditional chart of UC's share of state general funds to reflect Gov Jerry Brown's proposal. The UC Regents agreed to request a $411 million increase on the heels of Brown's $750 million cut for 2011-12, leaving UC's general fund well under water looking only at the time since Brown took office. Brown proposed a possible $300 million increase, to be reduced to a $100 million increase if tax increases are not approved by voters in a possible ballot resolution in November. I have context and comments below the fold.

The final number for state general funds to UC is $2.273 billion, erasing any gains made in the past fifteen years (during which time enrollments grew 50%). The UC Regents requested $411 million more next year, and Brown proposed $90 million in new general fund.

Some history will help explain this chart. The Benchmark line (purple diamonds) tracks UC general fund growth starting in 2000-2001 as if it were to grow at the same rate each year as state per capita income, which is what we used in the Futures Report as a measure of the state population's financial capacity. While California's unemploymen ratet is very high, it's overall personal income has continued to grow. The current forecast is growth of 4.9% in 2011 (p 3). Commentators are starting to notice that Brown's are cuts of choice, not necessity. (I discussed Brown's decline from his already-weak "post-Democratic" 1970s semi-vision of social development in his current budget, and in broader terms earlier this week).

Why the diverging lines starting at 2005? 2005 marks the point in time when the Schwarzenegger administration and UC officials agreed to combine low growth in state funding (2-3% per year) with larger growth in tuition (7-10% per year). The 2001 Pathway shows what would have been required to build back the funding base to the 2001 benchmark. The same goes for the 1990 line. The Funding Freeze was our 2006 worst case scenario, which the state has erratically achieved.

The chart shows that the University of California has been radically restructured in the past ten years: it is not $411 million or $1 billion but over $2 billion below where it would have been if the 2001 trend had not been interrupted by two cycles of massive cuts. Financially speaking, we simply no longer have the "University of California." What we still call UC is something else, which admin and faculty are of course reluctant to specify.

Further history: an attempt to avoid ending up exactly where we are right now, the Academic Senate produced three budget reports (via UC Planning and Budget). Then Senate chair John Oakley and I made a presentation of the Futures Report findings to the Regents on May 17, 2007, showing both the public funding shortfall and the impossibility of using private fundraising and research revenues to fill in the gap. No action was taken in response.

A year later, the Cuts Report came with explicit budgetary recommendations. On April 8, 2008, Academic Council recommended that the President

make a public commitment that, in the interest of avoiding yet another reduction to the current level of resources devoted to each UC student, the University will establish a minimum cost of instruction no lower than the current, already-reduced, 2007-08 level, and will take the necessary steps to sustain its public investment per student, adjusted annually to reflect actual costs

The 2007-08 general fund level was about $3.2 billion, or one billion dollars above where were are in 2011-12.
No action was taken. There is no evidence that UCOP even mentioned the faculty recommendations to the Regents.

A year after that, Arnold Schwarzenegger abrogated the Compact and inflicted the first 20% cut to UC's general fund budget (see UCOP's chart p S-7). The following year, federal stimulus funds back-filled the cuts on a one-time basis.

In May 2010 UCOP announced that UC was going to find $500 million in administrative expenses. Six months after that, the new Democratic governor, Jerry Brown, proposed a cut of $500 million. This is the cut that has now become $750 million, or a cut of 25%. This year's Jerry Brown cut has been larger than the catastrophe cut by Arnold Schwarzenegger. We learned this week that we will at best get 12% of that back, and may, if the November tax increases don't make it, lose $200 million more.

That's where we are now. In response, UCOP has deployed a repetoire of three strategies: "balance sheet initiatives" run by the financial people, more on-line instruction, and a rapid increase in out-of-state students paying levels of tuition that are closing in on the levels at major private universities. Of course, these are on top of the most fundamental policy of all: the repeated, massive tuition increases on in-state UC sudents - up over 50% in the past 5 years (using 2007-08 as base). Even these terrible tuition increases have not repaired UC revenues. UC is set to receive $2.97 billion in student fees in 2012-13, while having about $2.43 billion in fees in 2007-08. This means that it has grossed in student tuition revenues a bit more than half of what it has lost in state general funds. When we factor in financial aid (33% of new tuition dollars), increased subsidies of research's indirect costs, and other rising expenses, the shortfall is even worse. This is why UCOP is projection a remarkable $2.5 billion budget shortfall in 2015-16 (Display 7).

None of UCOP's non-tuition measures are going to fix the educational or budgetary holes. And neither will its tuition measures, in spite of the hardships they cause, and of their gradual elimination of the distinctive nature of public universities.

This is all extremely sad, and could have been avoided -- could still be avoided -- were UC officials to fight tooth and nail for public funding This would require explaining the basic budget math, but also saying exactly why public funding is necessary to offer 21st century versions of high-quality learning at UC and CSU's mass scale to an unevenly educated, multinational, and extremely promising generation now in school. Private money has never and will never built the infrastructure for this, and there are many many people at this university who could spell out why and how and what public money does.

But the official reflex at UC is for the self-destructive cover-up, and the profuse thanks for nothing. I have often discussed this habit, (e.g. February 20, 2009), which makes rational sense only on the theory that UCOP is trying to reduce public funding and convert UC to a high-tuition model with enough financial aid to enable a steady stream of press conferences about the university's public mindedness. But I am still unable to get myself to believe this.

So on the tattered theory that UCOP wants strong public funding for its public university, the new UCOP statement is yet another example of perversity. It says that the new money will go to cover pension costs rather than to instruction and research, so that the employees can take the fall for future fee hikes while the university lets the state off the hook for paying pension costs directly. (Yes I realize UCOP may believe it is setting a precedent for the state paying for the pension, but that's not how the statement will be read.)

The statement again invokes administrative savings in the hundreds of millions, implying for the nth time that more state funding is really not that necessary. And it says the university is "gratified" when it asks for $411 million and receives $90 million instead, suggesting more cuts, low-balling, and underfunding will, at UCOP, be not only tolerated, but welcomed with praise. The effect of this kind of statement on both the public and the UC community can only be demobilization. There is no big problem here, no emergency, just the kind of business as usual that has led to an unbroken series of public funding cuts and huge tuition hikes.

That is the simple logic that binds together UC's executive administration and the governor's office. And I would like to know why the hundreds of thousands of us at UC are stuck year in year out with this losing strategy. Why?

A final technical note: the numbers now out there do not add up. The red line in the chart does not follow the Department of Finance 2011-12 figure for UC, which appears to reflect only the first $500 million cut and not the full $750m. The DOF's historical tables do not square with this summer's state audit figures, but I haven't had time to figure out why. UCLA's FA blog notes has a good brief discussion of the deficit issue.

Links for January 6, 2012--Special Catching Up From Break Edition

2012-01-06T15:52:00.000-08:00

As Chris noted yesterday, Jerry Brown has released his 2012-13 budget proposal. It is heavy on cuts to welfare and social services and filled with threats to cut education in a devastating manner if he doesn't get his proposed tax increases.

The Higher Ed section of Brown's proposals can be found here. While the Governor makes a lot of noise about increased funding for UC and CSU over last year, if you look at the 2007-2008 totals you will see that both systems are still down 700 Million in General Fund support. (3) Predictably, UCOP rushed out a statement from Patrick Lenz doffing their caps and thanking the Governor for his generosity. You do get the impression though that what makes them happiest is " the governor's willingness to grant UC leadership maximum flexibility in navigating these fiscal times" because nothing is more important to UC's future than that.

UCR has established a task-force to look into protest guidelines. There is already protest about the Task-force's lack of transparency.

Oh, and UCR Chancellor White has decided to challenge UCOP for the University's "Highlight in Sycophancy Award" with his subtle comparison of Christopher Edley to Merlin in his second letter here.

New NIH Rules will make Universities cover more of researchers' salaries.

Bloomberg reports that UCSD's search for International Students is hurting admission possibilities for Asian-American residents of California. HuffPo has more. I'm sure that these developments will deepen public commitment to the University.

The Next Step in Higher Ed Efficiency?: Hebrew University is requiring students grade their peers papers because the institution has so little money.

The US economy created 200,000 jobs last month. But Dean Baker doesn't want anyone to get carried away by the news.

Eurozone unemployment on the other hand is up. Merkozy are planning on making it worse through continued austerity measures. Oh, and for those intellectual historians out there you might be interested in this discussion of the Continental version of Anglo Neo-Liberal thought.

Andrew Cuomo continues to govern New York as the financial industry wants him to: buys into the educational reform mantras. No details of course.

Higher Ed to be Cut Again Unless Ballot Measures Pass

2012-01-05T15:02:00.000-08:00

Same goes for welfare, child care aid, and K-12, as announced by Gov. Jerry Brown at his press conference on his 2012-13 budget.

Tenure for Teachers

2012-01-05T14:15:00.000-08:00

By Bob Samuels

As the UC system increases its reliance on funding coming from undergraduate students, it must dedicate itself to paying more attention to undergraduate instruction. At UCLA, for example, a large increase in freshmen enrollments (1,200 additional students) has not been matched with a similar increase in faculty positions. As a result, classes and sections are getting larger, and fewer students will be able to graduate in four years. Other campuses are seeing similar growth. To reverse this situation, UCLA and other campuses should consider following the American Association of University Professors’ new endorsement of tenure for instructors.

By dedicating permanent funding to faculty whose primary responsibility is undergraduate instruction, the university can make sure that students are given a high quality undergraduate education, and protect the research mission of the university. Since teachers with tenure will cost less than research professors, but will increase the focus on instruction, they will able to free up money for research professors as they provide more stable funding for required undergraduate courses. This change would also create more stability for the curriculum and would end the system of treating valued teachers as disposable labor.

As Gwen Brooks of the AAUP shows in “Instructor Tenure Proposals" universities across the country are developing new positions in order to provide tenure for faculty members whose main job is to teach undergraduate students. For instance, at Rutgers the faculty senate has endorsed converting many non-tenured positions into tenured positions because, in part, it wants these faculty members to participate in faculty governance and committee work. Since most non-tenured teachers are not able to vote in their faculty senates or serve in faculty committees, tenured professors are left doing more work. Moreover, as the number of non-tenured faculty members surpasses the number of professors with tenure, the majority of faculty who teach at American universities do not have their academic freedom protected.

While the University of California already has a form of tenure for instructors, which is called “Lecturers with Security of Employment” (LSOE), there are currently only 110 in the system, and they often suffer from a lack of clear definition. If parts of the lecturer contract dealing with academic freedom, merit review, and course load protections were applied to LSOE positions, they would become a good model for granting instructor tenure. Moreover, an increase in LSOE positions and a redefining of their rights and benefits could help UCLA and other campuses to fund more undergraduate courses through the use of permanent lines for tenured instructors that teach six courses a year.

By providing tenure for those whose primary responsibility is teaching, UC could also improve its methods of assessing quality instruction. Since, these positions would be given tenure and promotion based on their expertise in education and pedagogy, they would require a robust method of assessing quality instruction. These positions, which rely on expert knowledge in methods of instruction, could also help to improve the quality of instruction across the campuses. Moreover, if lecturers with continuing appointments were simply converted into LSOE positions, it would not cost the university any money; however, it would provide more stable funding for undergraduate courses.

Higher Ed in 2012: Background Thoughts on the Public Sector Under Subsidized Capitalism

2012-01-03T22:16:00.000-08:00

Hope springs eternal in education like everywhere else. Hope is the precondition of the long and intensive educational process. Hope is a major outcome of the intellectual and emotional transformations that show education has taken place. In 2011 many of us understandably turned back toward the daily pleasures of teaching and research, where problems really do get solved and progress happens. Given everyone's desire to feel effective and useful, why woulodn't we in higher ed minimized our time with the various blockages of governance and educational policy. But looking outward again, what can we hope for in 2012?

This is a long post about the public university and a fundamental problem with American economic practice. I've written it as part of a conversation that needs to be much more dynamic and widespread about the value of public, government-based investment in things like health, infrastructure, education and research. For a while now I have felt real urgency about this. If the US can't get over the hump and start spending real money through public institutions on social needs, our distored, inefficient private sector is going to keep suffocating public universities, not to mention the public and the economy overall. The Occupy movement make millions of people feel like they could do something about a private sector that has stopped working for the vast majority of society. My thoughts here are about how universities should react.

As we start 2012, neither the economy nor the political system promise improvement. The relationship between these two dimensions of U.S. society seems as benighted as it has ever been. The presidential campaign is a perfect example, where the leading Republican candidate, the Harvard-educated investment banker Mitt Romney, routinely defines government as what takes things away from people, and his "opportunity nation" as negating government with liberty. As of this writing, bookmakers are giving this guy a one in three chance of being the next president.

Our backward, benighted political discourse about collective action in general and public investment in particular has effects large and small. On the state level they have been brutally squeezing anything like childhood health or schooling or whatever else looks like an investment in the collective future. To take the obvious example, the University of California has lost about one-quarter of its state funding in the past year alone (e.g. Display 1).

We are often asked to pin this irrational destructiveness on Congress or on the Sacramento legislature, which in the latter case means blaming rabidly anti-tax Republican minorities and their lock-step Grover Norquist no-tax pledging. But 2011 was the year in which Democrats stepped up to budget cutting on a Republican scale. California Democrat governor Jerry Brown's higher ed cuts were as large as those of his Republican predecessor, and havoc has been created in the state of Washington's public ed sector in large part by a Democratic governor there.

We are confronting the "end of growth in the United States," the real possibility of two "zero decades" in a row, the looming death of the middle class, and a population that is nearly half poor or near-poor. And yet 2011 saw the cementing of a bipartisan consensus in the US and Europe against expanding public investment. This blog opposed Hooverite austerity when it was Arnoldonomics and we oppose even more today, but this means we are now forced into full opposition to the party that has traditionally supported a counter-cyclical public sector to correct market expansion, but that no longer does.

This brings us to the deeper question of why are the Democrats so terrible on stimulus and development issues, so easily talked out of even ordinary support for them?

I. Theory Failure

The easy answer is that like the Republicans, the Democrats are bought and controlled by the finance industry. Finance has indeed successfully persuaded the political class to transform huge amounts of private debt and bad assets into public debt. This process of creating a gigantic overhang of sovereign debt to help banks continues to destabliize Europe and slowed if not blocked recovery in the U.S. Governments are now more likely to fail than are zombie banks, for the simple reason that "markets" will punish with very high borrowing costs any government that show an interest in forcing private parties to share loses on bad bets. One recent book calls this the endgame to our "debt supercycle" in which the most likely outcome is depression spreading in the face of governments deprived of the resources to invest in their own people as either producers or consumers. The housing and banking crises, coupled with continued bulk purchases by bansk of political influence, have finally managed to take out even the residual Keynesianism that offered some counter-cyclical pressure in the form of the Obama stimulus of 2009.

The deeper answer to the question of Democrat weakness is that they have no theory of public investment that would allow them to act differently from Republicans. This would require them to resist the sociopathic special pleading of banking heads, heed the mainstream moderate Keynesianism of Nobel prizewinners like Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz,present to their constituents a national development agenda, and rally popular support for a major rebuilding effort led by government as both coordinator and investor. 2011 showed that Democrats are as unable to command any of this as Republicans, with President Obama as unCommander-in-Chief. The reason is that Obama, like the rest of the party, associates economic development entirely with the private sector. "Our free enterprise system is what drives innovation," Obama said in his State of the Union Address last year. The government's role is to give early-stage money to the private sector, and go away.

Our more local symptom of the Democrats' mental paralysis is Governor Jerry Brown, who spent his first year specializing in cuts to students and the disabled while expressing no overt support for public reinvestment, apparently thinking he could use additional state budget cuts to scare legislators into voting a tax increase measure onto the ballot. Legislators have no reason to care about cuts (Republicans have pledged to make cuts, and Dems, as I'm arguing, are too conflicted to know why cuts are fatal). Brown's strategy failed with the legislature, but lacking a vision of social development, he now plans to use the same fear tactics on the public, to be coupled with the psuedo-sweetener of proposed cuts to public pensions. He will probably fail with tax increases, and probably succeed with the pension cuts.

Lacking a theory of broad public investment, Democrats punt to the same faulty theory of private investment as the Republicans'. This means accepting the orthodox and, indeed, formerly right-wing claim that if government stops interfering with capital markets, they will allocate capital with maximum efficiency, allowing the general welfare the fastest possible advance. This idea makes legions of Democrats into Eisenhower Republicans, as they join Republicans in putting budget cuts ahead of schools and highways and bullet trains and all the other "build America" programs that would still get them elected. In this view, society doesn't need to plan independently of its business interests, nor, through its elected officials, set its own priorities and tax itself to support its goals. Venture capitalists and advanced firms can take care of all meaningful investment in technology once the early, high-risk stage has been completed. To help private capital, in this view, the best things government can do are (a) pony up early-stage funding to qualified high-tech parties, no strings attached, and (b) keep taxes low on investors, e.g. let them redefine their income as carried interest and tax it at only 15%.

The university boom rested on an older vision of general development as an explicit alternative to elite development: a society would be smarter and also richer if you spread knowledge broadly rather than showering all of the best on the heads of the Ivy League few. The swan song of this Democrat-style vision was the Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act of 1978 ("Humphrey Hawkins), which instructed the government to intervene in markets and override or coordinate private firm decision-making for the sake of making the broadest use of the workforce.

In the 1990s, the university became part of a "new economy" that assumed wealth maximization meant unequal concentration of resources in the best financial and technical people. Keynes was replaced by Schumpeter, and the university's research and clinical activities overshadowed instruction and public service even when the latter was instrumentalized as "human capital formation." In a Regents meeting last year, Berkeley chancellor Robert Birgeneau remarked that Silicon Valley gives to private universities like Stanford, but has done very little for the University of California. Their position fits with the consensus logic: for private industry, government should be big enough to offer free R&D funding at the early high-risk stage, but small enough to take no piece of the financial action later on.

We can put the current consensus another way: government funding should go directly to the relatively small elites who will make the best use of it, and not be spread broadly around the population, most of whom will make little use of it. Funds should be targeted carefully to go directly to the enterprise system through programs such as that for Small Business Innovation Research program (SBIR). This is far different, in the current Democratic view, from "entitlements" in their much larger amounts. Targeted tech investment is thought to create wealth and knowledge while general investment in human capability, which is one way to think of education and Medicare and Social Security, seems in this view to be maintenance at best. Put another way, tech investment forms a foundation for private capital, while entitlement spending mostly supports maintenance-oriented consumption. Hence many Democrats, from Erskine Bowles to Barack Obama, are looking for politically-viable ways to cut "entitlements."

We are trapped in a Republocrat consensus view that public investment is maintenance or waste, while private investment builds the infrastructure and new industries that we need for the future. The exception is the small portion of public funding that goes directly into the system of private capital. Over the past thirty years, university research has remade itself so as to appear as part of a private future-value chain. The logic of this model of small-public to enable large-private investment is that universites can survive on much less public money: the latter can be targeted to high-value activities like biotech or nanotech research, while lower-value activities for the masses, like undergraduate education or non-technological research, can be paid for on a discretionary basis by tuition.

In the UK, the Browne Report and Cameron government White Paper make the supremacy of private investment explicit, and one result is the coming elimination of the government support for teaching the arts and humanities in British universities. In the UK and US alike, the alleged necessity of subordinating public to private investment enables the complacency towards public funding cuts that we see in Jerry Brown and many other Democrats, including well placed leaders of higher education.

In the US, the skew towards private control of the economy is a deep cultural bias, and difficult even to address.

II. Market Failure

And yet we must address it. Unfortunately, the idea that private capital produces general investment is false. One way into the issue is the well-studied phenonemon of "market failure" -- markets fail to allocate resources efficiently in various senses, and they systematically underinvest in the creation of knowledge. Mainstream research on the topic goes back at least to the 1950s (e.g. Kenneth Arrow's influential 1959 piece). A key idea is that firms do not spend money on research or development where future returns cannot be calculated, as is the case with all early-stage research, or the benefit to the firm will be small (even if the likely social benefits are very large.) Conservative economists like Milton Friedman did not deny market failure, but countered it with the claim of government failure, thus creating a stalemate with the market failure crew that became a clear policy advantage during the Reagan presidency. The result is that for decades our industry policy has consisted of giving public money as directly as possible to the private sector, very early in the development process, and of nothing else.

Education is a massive bulwark against market failure in the sense that it makes invention and advancement possible everywhere in society. But the kind of broad social development that education supports is exactly what within tech-based finance capitailsm is threatening to the business model.

Debates aside, we can chart the outcome of our private-uber-public model: an investment decline that began before the crisis, around 2005, and that falls as readily as it rises during periods of declining marginal tax rates:

The Atlantic magazine has a chart telling the same story about job creation. Not surprisingly, it turns turns out that rich people don't use their piled higher tax savings to create jobs.

The least we can say is that there is no obvious effectiveness in shifting capital allocation from public to private processes. To the contrary, there's a correlation between the public control of funds through the tax process and ordinary measures of economic well-being.

III. Confronting Subsidy Capitalism

The irony of this bias against seeing the social value of public funding is that it reduces public funding to the status of a subsidy for the private sector.

One obvious example is the mind-boggling public support for the banking sector: CNN Money pegged it at $3 trillion by November 2009, and two years later estimates for a whole slew of non-transparent programs range from $7.7 trillion (Bloomberg) to $16 trillion (cumulative total from the GAO, same source) to an unbelievable $29 trillion. The public subsidy structure appears in various ways, including free profits gained when a bank borrows from the Fed at 0.01% interest and loans it out at 4-5%

Though the context, motives, outcomes and so on are different in banks and universities, the private disposal of public funding is similar. We could offer a range of examples from the university system, but I'll stick with just one, federally-funded research. The National Science Foundation's 2010 Science and Engineering Indicators for 2010. This chart (Figure 4-9) shows where federal R&D funding winds up -- industry, universities, and so on.

Universities have increased their share of federal R&D expenditures by a factor of 4 since the mid-1960s. And yet the largest portion of public R&D spending continues to go to private industry, which uses about 80% of that money for "develoipment" rather than research (Figure 4-5)

Subsidy capitalism means that the public, directly or indirectly, does not participate in the investment, research, and development decisions that remake society year in and year out. It hands over resources and all decision rights at the same time. A recent study by UC Davis researchers Fred Block and Matt Keller shows that high-value research is decreasingly done by large private firms and increasingly funded by government, and yet such research receives a minority of public funds, which flow mostly to the corporate sector. Lacking direct voice over R&D directions, American society loses the capacity for public coordination or even to express common aims, and in compensation we exaggerate the genius of individual private sector leaders like the late Steve Jobs at Apple.

Public funding is not given credit for intelligence and foresight, and has become in our culture of captialism dumb money, an early-stage investor without management control. There is a profound cultural limitation at work here: American leaders see the agencies responsible for social benefits as categorically less insightful than the financially self-interested private sector, even though the latter are focused entirely on their own advantage. As it is now, the future emerges in erratic bursts from the secret development operations at companies like Google (e.g. this radio report on the sudden appearance over Silicon Valley of The Cloud). We are having an increasingly difficult time imaginging a collective future that emerges from common activiity. And even direct donors to the university, about 98% of the time (at UC), restrict their donations so that their money will not flow into the general operating funds that support the generic educational activities of large masses of students. The latter, which has the greatest impact on the wealth and understanding of society, achieved its lofty post-war level of quality entirely through tax-based general funds.

These public funds are exactly what are being withdrawn -- California is a national leader here (see for example this cuts post from Februrary 2009). State and federal tax avoidance remains a central revenue strategy for American corporations. In California, business's share of state revenues is about half of what it was in 1981 (slide 36). The effect on education has been dramatic: California hasn't simply traded in its top-10 advantage for mediocrity. In many measures of expenditures in K-12, it is in a race for last.

Public universities can help build a better and more equitable economy if they start showing systematically that public investment needs now to take precedence over private. If they don't, 2012 will be the first of many reruns of 2011, only worse!

Notes from the Underground: Legislative Hearing on UC Protests

2011-12-22T17:20:00.000-08:00

By Joe Kiskis, assisted by Eric Hays

December 14, 2011

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

Chairs Senator Lowenthal and Assemblymember Block

The hearing was scheduled for two hours but lasted about four and a half hours---non-stop.

There were four panels and a public comment period. Please see the agenda for details.

Panel 1:

From the testimony of Michael Risher (ACLU), it seemed clear that there is plenty of established law concerning the police use of force and pepper spray. Permissible use of force in general and pepper spray in particular is supposed to be evaluated in relation to threat to officers, whether a felony or misdemeanor is suspected, and flight risk. He also emphasized that excessive use of force is intimidating to others and has a chilling effect on the legitimate exercise of free speech.

A counter-intuitive point made later by UC Council Charles Robinson is that in considering the level of justified force, linking arms is considered active (rather than passive) resistance on some campuses. (Why this should vary by campus is unclear to me.) Another later point that fits here is related to the legal basis for the use of pepper spray.

Tom Hayden was the first speaker in the public comment period. He emphasized that there has never been adequate research done to establish the safety of pepper spray, and that it became legal and widely accepted for both police and personal use through mis-steps in the legislative process.

Yudof promised to get UC to do any needed research.

Barbara Attard is a police practices consultant. She emphasized the benefits of transparent civilian review boards. Of UC campuses, only Berkeley has one. There was a comment to the effect that it may be a bit weaker than is typical because it is limited to generalities rather than specific instances.

A point made by Calvin Handy, former UCD chief of police, is that a primary responsibility of campus police is to protect the rights and assure the safety of demonstrators. In Handy's view, the pepper spraying at UCD was an "aberration" in an otherwise exemplary history of police behavior. This was later refuted by students who cited other well-publicized instances of excessive force being used by UC police.

Panel 2:

This included Yudof and Robinson from UC and from CSU EVC/CBO Quillian and Nate Johnson, Chief Law Enforcement Officer.

For the most part, Yudof repeated comments that he has already made in public. In answer to a direct question about possible conflicts of interest for Kroll, he was emphatic in saying that there "There are zip, zero conflicts, and I'm a lawyer." I can imagine that he might be correct in a narrow legal definition of conflict of interest. A better question might be whether Bratton/Kroll are burdened by an overweight bag of biases.

It's worth noting that as of the hearing day, CSU was not going to have the benefit of an outside investigation of the CSU board meeting. The CSU police guy gave an account of those events that was later sharply disputed by several speakers.

Panel 3:

During this panel, the attention of the committee and the press was focused on Chancellor Katehi. Much of her opening presentation is already in the public record. She reiterated that she did not order the use of force or of pepper spray. When asked if VC Meyer did so, she declined to answer. She emphasized that she plans to be more directly involved with student protesters in the future. Toward the end of her prepared remarks, she addressed the underlying issues.

"We will not do justice to our university or to our state if we allow the events of Nov. 18 to mask the reasons students have been protesting in the first place."

"While the images of pepper spray sparked justifiable outrage, the underlying issues go far beyond that one highly regrettable incident. Our students are increasingly frustrated and angry about reductions in state support for higher education. They are frustrated and angry about repeated tuition increases. They are worried about how they will repay their loans and find jobs when they graduate."

"They are justifiably frustrated and so am I."

"I do not mean to diminish the significance of the pepper spray incident, but we all need to work together to make higher education more affordable and accessible, or there will be continued frustration from students: Both from those who protest, and from those who only want to go to class without distraction."

I think this was the best statement by any of the segment representatives. In later testimony, the students were very strong and effective on the point.

When asked what she would do differently if she could go back in time to Nov. 18, she said that if she knew the tents could not be removed peacefully, she would not remove them. On the other hand, a series of questions from Senator Bob Huff (R-Diamond Bar) implied he is worried that UC has been insufficiently prompt and consistent in enforcing rules, e.g. those prohibiting camping.

Panel 4:

This was the students. They were very effective and were even more direct than Chancellor Katehi in stating that unless there are improvements in university funding, student frustration, anger, and protest will continue. As already noted, they convincingly refuted the CSU version of events at the CSU board meeting. They also emphasized that the Governor's tax initiative contains no dedicated funding for CSU or UC.

Public comment:

In addition to Tom Hayden, there were about ten speakers. Several were students, who reiterated points made during the student panel. As the hour was very late, I just briefly stated faculty support for students, remarked on the futility of imagining that policy and procedure improvements will result in protests that follow the rule book, and repeated the theme that the problems can be effectively addressed only through restored funding for public higher education.

There were a number recurring themes during the hearing.

1) How the chain of command should work and what the role of a chancellor should be. Katehi was clear in stating that she does not believe that tactical decisions should be in the hands of chancellors, but if that were to become the expectation, then chancellors would need additional training. Handy's view was that the ultimate responsibility for police tactics lies with the campus chancellor.

2) Another question was whether rules for protest and for police engagement should be the same for students and non-students and on and off campus. A few committee members had a clear preference for uniformity. I do not recall that anyone argued the opposite side.

3) Should UC policy and procedures governing protest and police be uniform over the system or vary by campus? Yudof commented that more centralization might be desirable.

4) My sense was that the policy already in place may be carefully thought out, but is not as well understood as might be desirable on the highest and lowest links in the chain.

5) My sense was that many were looking for a set of civilized rules for protest that would define everyone's roles and would be willingly and consistently followed. To me, this seems like a wish for scripted, sanitized protest that becomes no protest at all.

6) Both Yudof and Katehi were pressed on the timeline for the various investigations. With regard to Kroll/Reynoso, both stuck to the expectation of Kroll finishing around Jan. 1 and Reynoso finishing by the end of Jan. I.e. they neither slipped the timeline nor inserted caveats. Since then, I have heard that the private word is otherwise, and that the timeline might slip substantially.

In raising questions about the timeline for investigations, committee members were clear in their intent to have at least one additional hearing after the reports are available. As another indicator of legislative engagement, Assemblyman Anthony Portantino (D-La Cañada) requested that UC meetings to discuss proposed policy changes be publicly noticed. Yudof agreed.

7) University funding: In their opening remarks, some of the committee members recognized that university underfunding was the underlying cause of student unrest. However, the hearing was about policy and procedure, and most of the discussion concerned those issues. After Katehi revisited the causes and then the students emphasized it, it received more focus. As nearly as I could tell, the view of the Democratic legislators was that increased funding for higher ed is contingent upon increased state revenues.

We Don't Have Teachers at Western Governor's University

2011-12-22T09:47:00.000-08:00

Links for December 20--Special Grinch Edition

2011-12-20T17:08:00.000-08:00

Jerry Brown announced 100 Million cut for UC, 100 Million Cut for CSU and 102 Million Cut for Commuity College System. President Yudof offers his normal stirring response.

UC Berkeley announces fabulous new financial aid plan where middle class families would contribute up to 25% of their gross family income to attend a public university.

Cornell announces new campus in NYC. Apparently, Cornell's president doesn't think that Universities' tech sectors are as subservient to business as they should be.

Nancy Scheper-Hughes reflects on the decline of the public university.

Washington State tries to imitate the UK in having the state and business choosing which subjects students should study. Oh, and they will continue to pay more tuition no matter what they choose.

In Colorado, students are paying more for public universities than ever. And going deeper into debt.

Cooper-Union thinking of rejecting 150 years of history and charging tuition. Sound familiar?

Who’s Really Making Policy at Your Campus?

2011-12-19T13:28:00.000-08:00

By Jorge Mariscal

My pessimistic intellect agrees with our colleague Rei Terada who recently wrote in this space: “A professor who agrees to be on a [Senate] committee thinking that from that position she’ll be able to limit damage and fearing that if she is not on it things will be even worse is not negating the legitimacy of the administration, so that should not be done.”

And yet my optimistic spirit tells me we must continue to fight in the belly of the beast if for no other reason than to force transparency where and when we can, to redirect the wheels of the contemporary version of the odious machine Mario Savio described so long ago, and to support those students who will undoubtedly rise up from January through June to protect their future.

But let’s be clear about what can and cannot be accomplished in the Academic Senate. Whenever I visit local high schools to talk to students about the realities of military service, I run into the occasional young soul who explains to me that his plan is to enlist in order to change the military from within. Although the analogy is not perfect, we might chalk up to the same misguided fantasy the belief that we can change the administrative culture of the University of California from the inside.

To say so is a bitter pill to swallow for many of us who have wandered too long through the labyrinthine corridors of our campus bureaucracies. “University service,” as they call it, often means spending long hours of uncompensated labor retooling on issues far removed from one’s professional expertise or interests. Learning the intricacies of local campus admissions policies or unraveling complex budgetary matters or reading up on student development theory in order to fend off the enemies of “diversity” will eat up more of your time than the total hours you spent in the archives for your last two books.

What this produces is a situation where most faculty members show up to their monthly committee meeting having devoted minimal energy to understanding the issues about to be decided. An administrator presents a proposal, there are polite disagreements about what the data mean, the chairperson calls for a vote, and voilà official policy has just been made.

Add to this the fact that most campus Senates are the domains of a small group of professors who show up repeatedly on key committees. It may be harder for the 1% to get into heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, but it may be even more difficult for a progressive faculty member, a woman, or person of color to get appointed to CEP, Committee on Committees, CAP or Planning and Budget. Between 2006 and 2010 at UC San Diego, for example, only 17% of CAP members were women and 0% was African American.

If the Academic Senate at most campuses always already functioned as an old boy network of Privy Counsellors, the explosion of the managerial class on each campus has shifted policy-making to an even more select few—a Star Chamber of mostly non-teaching administrators with an unquenchable enthusiasm for new revenue streams, “consolidation,” and the “entrepreneurial spirit.”

The old saw that those looking to make institutional change must work both the inside and the outside rings hollow once you understand that the “inside” in which some of us find ourselves (i.e., Senate committees) is only an outer husk of the real “inside” where the technocrats, in their “Working Groups” or “Tiger Teams” or even on the upper floors of that grayish high-rise in downtown Oakland, have their hands on the policy-making levers. Think the famous pulling-the-curtain-back finale of the Wizard of Oz.

Oh, but there is always a Senate member or two on the Tiger Team, you will be told, and the local Senates have their system-wide representatives to look out for them. But a few token professors are in no position to overturn decisions already made elsewhere. Even Clark Kerr would be astonished to learn that what he called the managerial revolution has produced a top heavy hierarchy loaded with well-compensated insiders at the top who have almost nothing to do with education.

Over the last twenty years while most of us went about our business, a democratic and transparent governance structure maintained by an informed and engaged faculty was slowly slipping over the horizon. Let me offer three brief examples from the San Diego campus:

1) In the wake of the so-called Compton Cookout and other racist incidents on campus, the managers in Oakland put a full court press on San Diego to adopt holistic admissions. Only with holistic admissions, UCSD was told, will the numbers of underrepresented minority (URM) students rise. The local Committee on Admissions eventually rubberstamped the holistic system but it was clear that the decision had been made elsewhere, especially after President Yudof and the Regents “urged” all campuses to adopt holistic. The first trial run of the new system yielded fewer URM students at UCSD.

2) The Committee on Admissions (COA) was presented with a projection of desired increases in the numbers of non-resident students through the 2018-19 academic year. The COA played no role in discussing the consequences of such increases, especially the potential for diminished access for California students, or in setting targets/quotas for non-residents (except insofar as the chair of the committee participated in the deliberations of the Enrollment Planning Committee, a separate group made up primarily of administrators).

3) The Committee on Admissions (COA) was informed that UCSD was receiving too many transfer applications and that it would have to pull out of the Transfer Admission Guarantee program. The matter was urgent COA was told so without careful discussion of alternative ways to deal with the rise in transfer applications, a majority of the committee voted to rubberstamp the move. Clearly the decision to drop TAG, a program designed to facilitate continuation for working-class and first-generation students, had been made elsewhere. Once again, the claim that the Senate committee controlled all admissions decisions was a half-truth at best.

What binds my three examples together is the elaboration of a malleable admissions policy that seems to complement the drive for more out-of-state and international students. Already in early 2008, UCOP officials warned: “Failure on the part of campuses to generate sufficient nonresident tuition revenue means that the University must cut budgets… Campuses can reduce nonresident enrollment, although any such campus would need to adjust its budget to address any decline in nonresident tuition revenue.”

Most faculty members think they are too smart to be outwitted by mere paper pushing, bean-counting, managerial types or even former colleagues turned administrators. Yet as the privatization of the UC system proceeds anon, it is becoming clearer that the managers and administrators have the means, the motive, and the opportunity to implement their Michigan-inspired vision. At the risk of sounding paranoid, one might suggest that this “need to know” system of cut outs, back room deals, and caste-specific information hoarding looks remarkably like Wells’ White Council from When the Sleeper Wakes.

Rudy Acuña, the founder of Chicano studies as a research and curricular area, once hit me with a passing but profound one-liner. He told me that in his four decades of struggling to change the institution the institution had changed him more than he had changed it. As they say in the barrio, this is la neta—the unvarnished truth—that must be borne in mind every time we agree to volunteer hours of our time and psychic energy to committee work at the new neoliberal university.

Debt, Democracy, and the Public University

2011-12-16T11:19:00.000-08:00

by Bob Meister,

Wheeler Hall, UC Berkeley, December 7, 2011: This panel has been asked to talk about how far we've come since the Fall of 2009--and where we're headed.

When I spoke in Wheeler Hall two years ago today, December 7, 2009, I asked Berkeley students to connect the dots between their ever-rising tuition, widening income gaps in California, and the then-dominant belief that educational attainment both explains and justifies these gaps.

For some years, I said, the University of California has been accepting credit for rising inequality (rather than blaming, e.g., capitalism) by arguing that our changing income distribution simply reflects the rising premium that college degrees command in the job market--the so-called “education premium.”

The idea of an “education premium” that would keep on rising was also, of course, the basis for making degrees from public universities tuition-funded rather than taxpayer-funded. Why should those taxpayers who have been left behind continue to pay for a system of public higher education that has become an engine for reproducing and expanding the income disparity between the college-educated and everyone else? And why shouldn't students at public universities be willing to borrow whatever it costs to hedge against being on the wrong side of a growing income gap?

Here we have the kernel of a funding model that allowed public universities to raise prices far faster than the growth of the economy or of median incomes--their prices were, rather, geared to the rapid growth of income inequality This is what allowed both publics and for-profits to think that they could charge higher tuition to a very much larger student body, thus expanding their total revenue from enrollments much faster than taxpayer funding would have allowed.

My argument in 2009 was that in California this funding model reflected a period of transition (1978-98) from a defense-based economy to high tech--a period when all income growth was in the top 20% of wage earners, which just happened to be the percentage of the population targeted by public universities.

The model did not, however, fit the period of 1998-2008--a time of runaway financialization when almost all income growth has been in the top 1% and debt taken on by the top 20% should be considered a form of sub-prime lending (aka “financial aid”) that funded a tuition bubble in higher education that had been leveraged on Wall Street to finance the rapid growth of debt-funded higher education in both the public and for-profit sectors.

I warned in 2009 that focusing on the links between UC privatization, student debt and Wall Street might divide Berkeley students who would rather live in a more equal California from those who are here to benefit from rising inequality, but that we should welcome this debate rather than avoid it. Public higher education has always been a safe space for Americans talk about the issues of class reproduction and class mobility without ever mentioning class—and certainly without discussing class struggle against underlying economic inequality.

My conclusion was that this must change, and that we could not win our struggle to restore the California Master Plan unless public higher education could be defended, once again, as a driver of equality rather than inequality—and thus a partial corrective to the worst tendencies of capitalism.

Then, after I finished, there was a vote to occupy Wheeler Hall, which troubled many of my faculty friends. They believed in their heart of hearts that there would be a backlash against this Occupation--and that backlash against Berkeley radicals in the '60s had contributed to the rise of Ronald Reagan and the decline of public support for free higher education (along with much else that we cherish). Would radicals at Berkeley be blamed for what would later become the Tea Party movement? And for the dark night of reaction that might follow? In 2009 the general public had no models for distinguishing between an “occupation” that was a legitimate form of student protest and an end-of-term campus party that refused to disband. Even the students occupying Wheeler Hall that day were still trying to figure out what “an occupation” really was.

That was before Tahrir Square established, once and for all, the political significance of repossessing public space; it was before the Euro Crisis and the massive protests against austerity throughout the EU (and especially in Greece) reopened the question of who in the world should pay for not devaluing the U.S. dollar as the unit of global account.

It was also before we knew (for sure) that Obama was afraid to find out whether he had Wall Street over a barrel or vice versa.

And it was certainly before there was an Occupy movement joined the jobless and homeless in parks (while bringing their own tents), while articulating how it was the fear of proletarianization that had driven students to take on massive, unpayable, debt--just as it had been the fear of homelessness (living in those parks) that drove workers to take on loans that reached 145% of income in 2008. To pay for these debts Americans denied themselves an ever increasing portion of what would have been their future disposable income in an era when their incomes were stagnant or falling.

Who could have imagined, just two years ago, that we would have the first student movement in memory that has (so far) not produced a backlash, but rather ever-growing popular support?

Who could have dared hope that connecting student debt with other forms of dispossession and foreclosure (including foreclosed futures)--would become a new narrative of what used to be called “the acquisitive society,” and that is now a society in which the need for education, housing and healthcare have become the basis for new forms of indenture/bondage that encumber lifetime earnings and threaten even middle income families with destitution.

Today, most middle-income Americans pay a higher percentage of earnings for debt service than they pay in taxes; many pay more in debt service than Scandinavians pay in taxes to support their still-robust welfare state that provides education, housing and healthcare.

So, after-debt taxable income has become a foreground issue for mobilizing an American left in much the way that after-tax spendable income has been the foreground mobilizing the American right.

III

As the anti-Wall Street movement grows, those of us who study capitalism as an historically-bounded system are racing to make theory catch up with practice.

Careful readers of Marx have always known that the worker who is debt-free but uncreditworthy--and who thus lives entirely off cash wages paid in advance--has rarely existed except in theory. Most wage laborers have had to live on some kind of credit while advancing their labor to the capitalist. And a general analysis of capitalist exploitation must show why this works out on terms favorable to the employer by explaining how the unemployed and the under-employed (Marx's “reserve army” of labor) are partially supported outside the labor market itself.

In 20th Century capitalism the welfare state (high taxes and high government spending) was used to subsidize low-wage workers and support the unemployed and underemployed in countries that we thought of as “developed.” This was possible because of a much lower cost of labor in “underdeveloped” countries, where workers were supported by a subsistence sector that actually grew as the domestic labor market produced export goods that few domestic workers could afford. We on the left used to call this global phenomenon “the development of underdevelopment.” Its peak was in the era after colonialism and before the financial industry achieved global dominance over other industries.

A distinctive feature of 21st Century capitalism is that poor people throughout the world are increasingly supported by credit markets that sell them loans. These loans are not merely consumer goods (wage goods) purchased in slow motion. They are also investments by the financial services industry in the borrower’s future income streams from all sources--not just wages for work but also benefits and other transfer payments.

As soon as these personal loans enter global capital markets, a portfolio of such loans (along with the associated risk of default) becomes one raw materials used to manufacture other financial assets (securities). These in turn can be further leveraged as the collateral for an increased flow of capital into the credit market that then makes new loans available, partly to refinance, at a higher principal, old loans that could not otherwise be paid off. The growth of such financial assets--overproduction in the financial sector--is what causes the supply of credit to increase.

What makes the demand for credit increase?

One factor is that the same financial institutions that produce an oversupply of credit have forced the welfare state to introduce austerity programs that force people to rely on loans to finance their need for education, healthcare and housing.

So here's what the financial markets say to government: “You will not be able to borrow at reasonable cost unless you back your loans with higher tax rates. The alternative is to lower spending by cutting services, which individuals will now have to finance with private debt.”

And here's what the same financial market say to individuals: “You won't be able to pay your debt service or refinance your principal if taxes go up--every dollar of tax increases will reduce your borrowing by multiples of that amount. And you will need this extra borrowing power if your incomes are stagnant and you have to pay for services that were once funded by taxes.”

These two scripts are already on the minds of everyone living through 2011. Our challenge in 2012 is to talk back in ways that address the double squeeze that finance puts on states and individuals.

As of December 2011 the Occupy movement has focused on our relations to capitalism through personal finance, and not mainly in the workplace. It knows that the liquidity of the financial system depends upon highly standardized forms of lending that allow loans to be traded as commodities and pledged as capital to secure other loans.

These standard loan agreements often allow a relatively small non-payment to automatically trigger both a higher principal and a higher interest rate, giving lenders large rewards for even slightly greater risk, while subjecting borrowers to various forms of dispossession if they do not accept, and even welcome, these self-executing features of their loan documents as a way to stay financially afloat.

As long as more credit continues to be available to refinance bad debt the financial system can indefinitely postpone the need to recognize serial insolvencies that would require write-downs of capital assets to a fraction of their present value. This scenario is avoided by redescribing the danger of insolvency as the market’s need for “an infusion of liquidity” so that existing debts can be rolled over.

Ordinary borrowers are beginning to understand that the standardized forms of credit that underlie our fragile financial system could almost certainly be disrupted through spontaneous or organized collective actions, many of which are legally supportable. (One very early gesture in this direction is http://www.occupystudentdebtcampaign.org/). This makes it possible for Occupy movement, or some future version of it, to voluntarily create the same kinds of liquidity crisis that the banks threaten to impose upon us whenever they face what analysts call “heightened uncertainty.”

When you hear such warnings, it’s important to know that the financial literature distinguishes between the “risk” that people can’t pay debt service and “uncertainty” about whether they are willing to do so. Market “uncertainty” is thus a precise technical description of the effect that a movement like Occupy Wall Street would have if many people came to see their debts to the financial industry as a malleable artifact of political institutions rather than a personal and moral obligation.

Protest movements that create too much financial uncertainty are normally crushed by the state—but this is less likely if they also pose a political threat to the state itself. It might then have to broker a class compromise in much the way it did in early 20th century Europe, when coal miners and railway workers could, through collective action, block off the supply of energy to industrial economies.

At the end of 2011 we may be entering another such moment of historical opportunity.

The usual result of a financial (banking) crisis like 2007-2008 is a revenue crisis for the state, which produces a political reaction against the state rather than the people who caused the financial crisis. We saw this in the impact of the Tea Party movement on the 2010 election.

But in 2011 we have developed a large-scale social movement that has implicitly answered the Tea Party by focusing on the right targets (banks) and on the right problem--the financialization of the public sector and of our public life.

As our movement becomes a greater threat to the private power of finance, it will be suppressed by public power, which always rises to defend the interests it truly serves unless its own use of force is also challenged. We have thus seen police use pepper spray on students in a public space at a public university for non-violently protesting the power of banks. And we have seen the banks’ own private security contractor (Kroll) brought in by the university to “investigate” what happened. When such outrages occur, protest movements against the financial sector must also become movements for political rights, such as the right to free speech, in the few public forums that remain.

In defending our very right to protest, however, we must be careful not to lose our focus on the reason for our protest. We protest over the question of economic justice and private power. It is this, and not the question of free speech, that gives our movement ever-growing support.

That said, I want to conclude by making four political points that, for me, are becoming urgent as our movement grows and political repression increases.

1.    The appointment of William Bratton to investigate the Davis pepper spray incident was an unintended gift from Mark Yudof that allows us to connect additional dots—namely the link between the privatization of public universities, the financial services industry and the national security industry.

Since 9/11 the US defense industry of the Cold War has morphed from being mainly in the military hardware business into a new role as global provider of security services that enables government and corporations throughout the world to outsource intelligence, policing, background checks, construction of secure sites and various operations that may need to be deniable—as well as the public relations efforts necessary to support such deniability.

Most Americans do not know that there is a huge domestic market for services provided by the defense industry (which also outsources security for the military itself in Iraq and Afghanistan, where paramilitary contractors outnumber soldiers.) The Department of Homeland Security is a major market for such services, as are banks and other private corporations engaged in controversial activities around the world.

The fastest growing market for the defense and security services industry is in the area of local government and public agencies that feel threatened by political protests, such as the Occupy movement, and that have reporting and other obligations under the Patriot Act. Former LA Police Chief William Bratton was hired to build this market for Kroll Security by its parent company, Altegrity, a defense contractor that is itself now owned by a private equity firm that also invests in both for-profit higher education and financial services. (Regent Richard Blum, the husband of Senator Dianne Feinstein, has also been in all these businesses.)

There isn't time for me to say much more about the role of paramilitary contractors in managing and suppressing domestic protest. I'll simply point out that if Homeland Security, the banks, the cities and our public universities outsource their security to the same private firms, they can avoid a lot of regulatory requirements that protect free speech, including the requirement of disclosure. Let me also say that the security industry rivals the financial industry in its secrecy, and that its size is one of its secrets.

So, the fact that UC is imbricated with these security companies, and that its relations with them have not been disclosed, is part of what we need to protest in 2012.

2.    My second, somewhat broader, point is that (what used to be merely) the defense industry is being hired by banks because the financial stability of banks and of the dollar itself is seen by the Obama administration as itself a matter of national security. Kroll, and companies like it, advise about these choke points in the financial system (and also the Internet and other data systems) as points of vulnerability to terrorist attacks without distinguishing between whether they are attacked by sabotage or mass protest. They rationalize intrusions on protected free speech and political action by pointing out that “innocent” protests (especially when taken over by “outsiders” and “anarchists” with an “agenda”) can become genuine threats to the economy, and that everyone should be afraid of the consequences.

From the perspective of a national security consultant there is no ultimate difference between threats posed by a terrorist and by collective action except for the fact that the latter is likely to have more popular support that needs to be effectively counteracted (perhaps by suggesting possible infiltration by hackers and would-be terrorists). This is what it means for public spaces that were once considered “free” to have been invaded (occupied?) by private security companies—our new Pinkertons--who defend overtly private interests against movements claiming to reoccupy and repossess those spaces for the public.

3.    My third point is that we need to think hard about my previous two points when we talk about extending the Occupy movement into something like a General Strike. My fellow political theorist Tim Mitchell points out that General Strikes became imaginable when coal miners and railway workers controlled the choke points in the economy. They extracted political concessions (such as the Welfare State) by threatening to sabotage industrial capitalism, and ultimately, to shut it down—a threat that became less imaginable when oil companies and oil states controlled the new choke points.

There are clearly opportunities for sabotage in financial capitalism, mainly at the points at which the liquidity of credit markets can run dry. These opportunities have thus far been exploited by the suicide bombers on Wall Street, who threaten to blow themselves up, along with the rest of us, by cutting off credit if their political uncertainty becomes too great—or if anyone suggests that they have the value of their financial assets written down, perhaps by something as simple as devaluing the dollar to stimulate the U.S. economy.

If and when the Occupy movement approaches the point of a debtors’ revolt and/or a General Strike in the credit markets, it will need to be aware that the choke points it identifies in the banking system may, indeed, become the very points of vulnerability that companies like Kroll are hired to protect.

How do we identify, and act upon, such vulnerabilities in ways that require open collective action and the legitimacy of a mass movement? How do we distinguish our tactics from hacking, sabotage or terrorism that require secrecy and that could also bring the system down? Identifying our movement with seizures of power that are not intrinsically connected with a struggle for justice (and could just as well be used by terrorists) could turn the general public, once again, into terrified supporters of politicians who would defend the system we have at all costs.

4.    My final point is that there's an elephant in the room--the 2012 Presidential election. Will Obama run as the guy who can crack down on the Occupy movement because Geithner persuades him that the banking system is so vulnerable to attacks that the prudent thing is to occlude the distinction between effective protest (the kind that Rei Terada calls speech out of its proper place) and acts of financial sabotage. This is a question we will inevitably face in 2012 as the movement marches from public parks to banks and foreclosed homes while Obama tries to run for reelection as the only true Republican in the race.

What should we expect of Obama at such moments?

There's not just a Tea Party any more. But our President--and he is ours--is still acting as though he needs to make accommodations only on his Right.

Why don't we demand something more of him, starting now, that can become an issue in this election?

Two Totalities of Crisis

2011-12-15T20:10:00.000-08:00

By Lyn Hejinian

Two and a half years ago, in July 2009, the Regents of UC granted emergency powers to UC President Mark Yudof under the guise of freeing him to deal with an ostensible budget crisis.

There are a number of ways to frame what has transpired—ways to plot the diverse elements and track the various trajectories set in motion by the actions undertaken in the name of this budget crisis and in opposition to them.

And there are a number of ways to categorize or label or, to use the terminology I offered elsewhere, a number of ways to caption the situation in its totality or to caption notable moments, elements, and/ or events in it.

There is something we can call “the situation in its totality.” This situation is constantly in flux and changing with what seems like increasing velocity; it is unstable, largely unpredictable, more turbulent than fluid. And, though recent months and, even more, recent days have made me feel almost buoyant with optimism and elated with admiration for what the Resistance Social students in their assiduous intelligence and courage and persistence and patience and indefatigability have achieved, nonetheless this “situation in its totality” is a very dangerous one. It is clear that a social uprising is underway, and it has been proven that a militarized police can be called up to suppress it. It is impossible to know at this point what caption to affix to a picture of this past fall. We have been presented not with just one “situation in its totality” but, roughly speaking, with two.

Not only worry but hope springs from the fact that one of them is less a situation than a movement, that exists in utter contradiction of the other. The still dominant arrangement can be identified within the terms of late capitalism, to use Ernest Mandel’s term—capitalism in productive and destructive turmoil, flourishing while also cannibalizing itself, producing enormous profits and catalyzing global crises, a source of seemingly infinite possibilities and a prison-house. This turmoil can readily be translated into a portrait of the apparently dysfunctional government of the US, as well as the apparently, albeit somewhat differently, dysfunctional but functioning government of California. And it can be translated into a portrait, though different yet again, of the university.

As we know, global capitalism, has an insatiable appetite for profit and a concomitant never-ending need to keep its capital flowing. Capital, if it is to remain capital rather than merely cash, has to be producing more economic value than it has to start with. To produce this economic value, it has to be invested. It can’t lie still. Insofar as its rapaciousness has now turned to higher education in the US, which is what we are here to think about, we need to recognize that the merry-makers who invested in sub prime mortgages, having sucked the housing markets dry, and have left homes in shambles and their former owners in the streets have found a new enterprise to prey on: namely education.

As I see it, profit-taking from education is happening in four ways: through corporate investments in research and development facilities (buildings but also the human and other resources that work in them to the benefit of the corporations); through for-profit universities whose courses are conducted almost entirely on-line; through restructuring in the name of efficiency and austerity; and through student loans.

Among these terms, only “for profit” might strike one negatively, and probably only because it is applied to education. “Research and development,” “efficiency,” “austerity,” “student loans”—these labels connote generally positive values in a society as deeply rooted in Protestantism as this one is. But, if they were termed “exploitation,” “diminishment of resources,” “exploitation,” “dismantlement ”and“ debt for profit,” more people would see that “situation in its totality” for what it is: a prolonged situation benefiting “disaster capitalism.” For “disaster capitalism” uses an apparent or manufactured economic crisis as an excuse for a restructuring whereby profit can be more readily directed into the pockets and purses of the profiteering class—what has come to be known as the 1%, functioning to oppress, impoverish, restrict, disempower, stymie, alienate, and exhaust—and thereby control—the rest of the population. In a UC context, that population consists of students, staff, workers, and most members of the faculty, whether they are paying attention or not.

And this brings me to the other part of the “situation in its totality,” the movement that has emerged to offer adamant resistance to the university administrators who attempt to turn the University ever more completely into an institution of global capitalism. Those same alienated, oppressed, impoverished, restricted, and exhausted students (along with long-embattled workers and their unions and a handful of staff and a few—though now perhaps less few faculty) are now the creators of an anti-capitalist practice—one which exists as a serial, open-ended, always already accomplished totality, which eschews being summed up, though it insists on perpetually taking place.

I am speaking, of course, of the Occupy movement, but I want also to acknowledge its local and immediate and fledgling manifestation on the steps of Sproul Hall as the Open University.

The Occupy and Open movement is a manifestation not of a political body but of a polis per se—like that which flourished in the agora of ancient Greece, only better. The Greek polis, after all, although a social space in which equals appeared reciprocally and freely before each other, mutually acknowledged and acknowledging and reciprocally attentive to each other’s ideas and opinions, excluded women, non-land-owners, and all workers (who, bound to tasks required for keeping life and limb together, were by definition unfree).

Virtually all initiatives undertaken by the UC administration in the last several years have been financial; it has articulated no other visions and seems not to have any. The fetishism of efficiency seems to be its major accomplishment, and once set in place economic efficiency almost always serves ultimately as an engine of profit. On the Berkeley campus it is also a source of financial and intellectual and psychic impoverishment. And it has contributed just as much as the police have to the prevailing climate of fear.

The Occupy and Open movement, meanwhile, has established a model that stands as a radical counter to efficiency. It has leaderless encampments without demands. Wherever Occupiers gather is an encampment, an assemblage. They practice radical democracy, off-the-grid and non-predatory living, in an awkwardly benevolent climate fostering mutual aid, cooperation, debate, and slow-living. It is non-ideological—the assemblies work to distribute ideas not to instantiate them, and discussions in the general assemblies demand prolonged and repeated rethinking. Social value here is located in and as social, and sociable, action—as a process of living and working together, animating singular and collective possibilities.

Students and workers are discovering and repeatedly affirming new capacities for agency and also new agential contexts and goals—even as their agency, or their freedom, especially insofar as it can be termed economic freedom, is being curtailed.

It is possible to think about the praxis of protest—and particularly the modes of protest that have come into play this past fall—from an aesthetic point of view—as a praxis committed to the good and, in a metaphorical as well as literal sense, to the beautiful. The values that are being elaborated in the Occupy and Open manifestations of the current anti-capitalist movement are embedded not in products but in activities and ways of carrying them out. Its ideals are a spirit of creative experimentation, immanent to which is an historical sense—perhaps not articulated but present nonetheless—of our living in a shared world.

For a period in the early 1960s, the great photographer Ansel Adams was commissioned by then UC President Clark Kerr to take photographs reflecting UC as it was and as it might be. When Clark Kerr was fired by the Regents—spurred on by then governor Ronald Reagan, who pursued accusations that Kerr was a communist—Adams’s commission was terminated and the 6000 or so photographs that he had taken were shelved. They have only just been rediscovered in the UC archives. I’ve seen only a few, on Professor Catherine Cole’s laptop, but they are beautiful. And, as she herself pointed out, they seem often to have been shot with the camera angled upward, toward a far horizon.

For me, however, the focus on the future should be directed toward the ground, where diverse manifestations of the Occupy and Open movement are unfolding, now, in present and real time, fostering immediate care, humility, curiosity, and love.

The Occupy movement does not have an ideology; what it has, rather, is a poetics.

The late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish once remarked that “A people without poetry is a defeated people.” I am optimistic that it is also the case that a people with poetry can not be defeated.

Delegitimate UC Administration

2011-12-14T08:35:00.000-08:00

By Rei Terada

The moment we’re in right now is auspicious, fragile, and surprisingly well-defined. The thing that strikes me most about the moment is how much it is a particular moment, with specific characteristics and borders. It appears as the clearest-looking and most pregnant moment since students starting taking action in Fall 2009. It’s the moment we’ve hoped to attain since Fall 2009. And now that it’s here, it won’t last long.

In Fall 2009, UC’s upper administration must have assumed that they could wait out the student movement. This assumption has been proven false by a relatively small core of student activists who weathered a very difficult year in 2010-2011. What resources does the administration have for surviving the student movement, so that it can go ahead with privatization? (1) The frequent and intimidating use of the UCPD; (2) the criminalization of protest, including prosecution in criminal courts; (3) control of the UC bureaucracy; (4) a media strategy of deflecting attention to the Legislature (a strategy whose logical end would be the headline “Regents On Same Page with Angry Mob”); (5) unlimited funds at their disposal to pursue 1-4.

But we have seen the weaknesses in these strategies.
Policing and criminalization have not stopped the protests. In fact, they have got in the way of the UC media strategy, as public attention has turned from the budget shortfall to outrages that UC administrators themselves are ordering. This means that two of the five fronts that UC administration has controlled have shifted, and their media strategy is damaged. They realize this, and they’re not sure what to do about it. The cancelled CSU meeting, semi-cancelled Regents meeting, new rules for protesters issued by UC Riverside, the responses of the Regents to the interruption of their meeting, the response of UC San Diego to students breaking into their library on Monday, and the various appointed commissions are all examples of administrative reaction to the transformation of the police and criminalization arenas. One thing that can be gleaned from the assorted reactions is that it’s likely to be a long time before police do anything incriminating on camera again. I think activists realize that in future, UCPD is not likely to offer up such means for galvanizing campus solidarity as the pepper spray video has been. Of course, I’m not saying that UCPD is going to be non-violent now, but rather that it’s not likely to be the kind of violence that you can photograph. We’ll need to find other ways to photograph privatization, and other ways to continue trying to get through to the media what privatization is.

In order to explain why I think getting through to the press matters, I need to go back to my list of UC administrators’ resources. Of those categories of resources, their strongholds are their ability to fund infinitely their usurpation projects and their control of the bureaucracy. What is a UC administrator? What makes Dean Edley possible? Where is Dean Edley manufactured? I’ve been a department chair, if of a small department, and in my experience the existential substance of an administrator depends on (a) funds and (b) the internal politics of bureaucracy understood in terms of detachable self-interests, otherwise known as: what other administrators think. In my time as a chair, the only way it was possible to get anything to happen was to make or threaten to make one administrator look bad in the eyes of another. It’s to this extent that administrators care about the media: when they look bad in the press, it matters because other administrators are watching.

The Regents have defined their funding as private funding, and given the confluence of their interests and the interests of their private funders—who are often enough one and the same, as in the person of Richard Blum—they’re never going to run out of it. However, attacks on the salaries of the administration are worthwhile. They’re worthwhile not because they solve the budget crisis, as the Regents like to say, but for every other reason: first of all because they speak to justice and the broader Occupy movement and the press understands that; secondly because the funds are real and certainly would be more useful almost anywhere else; but also because we might take the administration at its word and consider the possibility that “talented people,” by which they mean themselves, would flee the UC system if their salaries were lowered at all. If upper administration cares about its salaries so much—enough to keep incurring bad publicity, which they also care about—we should keep attacking their salaries, and most of all, their ability to set their own salaries.

But that’s a minor point: the goal is not merely to pick off Regents but to change social relations.

So now I come to the last resource they have, control of the bureaucracy through control of the support of other administrators. At this point, UC bureaucracy has a complex relationship to faculty governance. Upper administration has avoided and circumvented faculty governance to advance privatization, for example by operating through appointed task forces interpolated into the system of standing Academic Senate committees. Yet they still rely on faculty to staff these task forces and to deliberate on and implement their conclusions. Thus, it remains inescapable to consider the role of the faculty and the question of the relation of representational procedural democracy to the movement to Reclaim UC. My impression is that so far, most UC faculty have considered it their role—our role?—their role—to fight privatization through the given governance and social structures, regardless of what their political beliefs are off campus. In other words, people who aren’t proceduralist liberals off campus or in their writing on campus fight privatization through Senate committees, faculty associations, and social groups committed to a dialectic of recognition with the administrators as antagonists. The idea is that even as direct actions by students are going on, these representational and discursive realms remain worth intervening in and reflect a kind of division of labor between students and faculty. (It’s also not a negligible factor that the Faculty Code of Conduct may be even more repressive than the Student Code of Conduct.)

I’d like to suggest that given the significance of bureaucracy as an administrative stronghold, the arena of bureaucracy is worth intervening in if and only if the legitimacy of governance by upper administration is negated by the intervention. A professor who agrees to be on a committee thinking that from that position she’ll be able to limit damage and fearing that if she is not on it things will be even worse is not negating the legitimacy of the administration, so that should not be done.

But a resolution introduced in the Academic Senate, or issued by an individual department, stating that the Regents should not be allowed to set the salaries of upper administrators would reject their legitimacy and would be worth doing, not least because it would be news. A resolution by the Riverside Academic Senate, or individual departments, rejecting the brutish rules for protest that UCR’s Dean of Students has just invented would negate their legitimacy and would be worth doing. One of the remarkable things that happened quietly a couple of weeks ago which shouldn’t be lost amid the spectacular things that also happened is that the departments of Asian-American Studies, English, and Physics, as well as a group of historians, at Davis released statements expressing no confidence in their chancellor autonomously, without going through a given bureaucratic structure for resolutions or comment. Nor did they speak as atomized individuals gathered temporarily on a petition. Rather, they identified themselves as un-Chancellor-friendly ongoing spaces and created a new form of relation to Davis administration. Further, they pulled the Law faculty into responding to them in kind.

The faculty response at Davis was the first instance that I know of that the Administration’s hold on the bureaucracy itself—its structure and its hegemonic representative capacity for faculty—could be weakening. If they lose their grip on the bureaucracy, the upper administration will be exposed to the contempt of their national peers; and being administrators, they would experience that as an existential threat.

So I’m brought around to something I never thought I would recommend: faculty reinforcements—faculty participation of a targeted sort—in the movement to Reclaim UC, so that we can follow these departments at Davis into a new area of contestation. Public response to the acts of Berkeley professors Celeste Langan, Robert Hass and Geoffrey O’Brien, who were beaten alongside student protesters by Berkeley police on November 9, show that professorial participation in anything that delegitimates the Administration is disproportionately effective. The disproportion is disturbing because a faculty body seems to be worth more than a student body. That’s a problem. But only their participation could bring that problem to light where it otherwise would have remained hidden. In order to keep and increase pressure on the administration at this moment when the police front may be disappearing from visibility, one thing we should do—faculty and students (and here I have just used a version of the first person plural that I thought no longer existed)—is negate the legitimacy of the police-related commissions, especially the ones farcically composed by Yudof. Their egregiousness is legible, even to the uninitiated, even to the press; and for that reason they are an excellent introduction to privatization and anti-privatization.

The People’s Police Review Board deploys a principle we all need to support. If faculty show up at a stop of Dean Edley’s listening tour among protesters making it clear that it’s outrageous that the event is happening at all, that will be disproportionately useful. Boycotting the events, making it clear why not to show up, would also be useful. Instituting an actual alternative review board on whatever collective level is possible would be excellent. Why wait for Yudof to withdraw his appointments? Why shouldn’t faculty and students form an alternative body and demand that the witnesses responding to Yudof’s review respond, while they’re at it, to our own?

What matters here is form and principle. The outcome would not be merely the propositional conclusion of the investigation, nor UCPD’s refusal to comply with one, and the corresponding demands these events would generate. Rather, what’s important is the capacity of self-respecting communal forms to dramatize the administration’s illegitimacy using Yudof’s commission as an illustration. Given that faculty bodies are worth more to the University and media than student bodies, students are going to have a much harder time delegitimating the administration without this particular kind of faculty support: the kind that involves professors’ asking themselves, What are we doing to legitimate and delegitimate privatization?, ceasing to do the former and making sure to do the latter. The grievable faculty body reaps advantage every time faculty appear in the service of delegitimation, and only then.

To sum up, then: many areas of the struggle are changing rapidly and some may be vanishing as we have known them. These sudden shifts in terrain reflect the pain the movement is inflicting on the Administration and the unevenness of its reactions. Things are moving so rapidly that we could easily fail to adjust. If that happened, it could be difficult to get into a similar place again. So winter quarter is the time to expand into the very areas into which the Regents have retreated by undermining the conditions that support administrators as administrators, and which are their main refuge, and making this effort literally visible (everything now should be photographed and filmed as artfully as we can manage it). Funding they will always have; but with their contacts, they can just as well have it somewhere else, and I suspect that thought has flitted through the mind of every UC administrator. Contesting administrators’ control of bureaucracy matters because they experience that control as the anchor of their identity, and this is one of their limitations, a soft spot in their mental and material organization. My philosophical emphasis is on non-instrumental and negative thought and non-teleological self-constitution, so it may seem to go against the grain to have offered reflections that are so prosaic. But this is a matter of historical and perceptual scale. There is a degree of magnification, a middle distance, that is always prosaic even as it is surrounded by an infinite and unsystemizable complexity. Needless to say, all of this is worth doing regardless of what happens after.

When The Public University Can No Longer Afford Itself: The Impending Crisis in UC Graduate Programs

2011-12-13T08:17:00.000-08:00

By Wendy Brown

Most recent concern with increasing tuition at the University of California has focused on undergraduate access–how the middle class is being squeezed out of quality higher public education, taking on preposterous levels of debt, or both. And most recent concern with retaining excellence at UC has focused on faculty compensation issues–how to maintain the salaries, pensions and perks that will allow UC to compete with the best of the privates for top research faculty. The commonsense view at UCOP and in the upper echelons of the UC Senate links the two concerns this way: however lamentably, we must keep raising tuition in order to fund faculty compensation...because faculty hold the key to UC’s excellence, and competitive compensation holds the key to securing us. As Daniel Simmons put it back in 2010, “If faculty quality and prestige erode, UC becomes just another state university. We can fix access and affordability if the state decides to fund us, but if we fail to protect the faculty, we are not going to get them back.” (3)

This logic occludes the serious crisis for graduate programs produced by skyrocketing tuition, a crisis that exposes the folly of privatization strategies and that cannot be solved by intensifying them.

Most faculty at research universities care as much about working with excellent graduate students as they do about any other element of university life. First-rate graduate programs are crucial to faculty research, teaching, prestige and general satisfaction. Take them away and both new faculty recruitment and existing faculty retention will be severely challenged.

So what are the ingredients of the current crisis? Rapidly escalating tuition rates means rapidly rising costs of PhD programs. Competitive doctoral programs usually offer five-year funding packages to admittees--a combination of stipends, research and teaching assistant positions. These packages cover most tuition costs as well. So who pays the tuition? Whether it is funded “centrally” as was long the case, or “devolved” to departments, as contemporary neoliberal governance has done, and whether its source is the state, a grant or a gift, tuition is paid from funds that could be used (and in the past have been used) by the university for something else. Thus, today, the university faces the same problem in sustaining graduate students that middle class families face for undergraduates: it must pay for skyrocketing costs of graduate training, and, given shrinking revenues, it can less and less afford to do so.

Here are some rough numbers that make the point. In the 2000-01, when in-state tuition/fees were about $3400 and non-resident tuition/fees were $13,700, and when competitive fellowships were a bit lower than they are now, supporting a grad student who was a California resident cost approximately 21K annually and supporting one from Chile cost about 32K (This is the combined cost of tuition plus a fellowship, or tuition plus a GSI-ship or GSR-ship.) Today, with in-state tuition/fees at 15K and out-of-state tuition/fees at 30K, it costs approximately 36K/year to support the Californian and 51K/year to support the Chilean. If the UCOP-planned tuition increases occur over the next four years, in 2016-17, the cost would be over 42K/year for the California resident and over 55K (possibly as high as 60K) for the non-resident.

Thus, in 2000-01, for an entering graduate student cohort of fifteen, the cost of supporting a class of thirteen non-residents and two California residents for a year was approximately 458K. Today, that cohort costs approximately 735K and in 2016-17 it would be approximately 900K, almost twice what it was at the beginning of the century. On the other side of the ledger, allocations for graduate programs are shrinking, not growing. Indeed, part of the way that UC is managing budget cuts is by cutting funding to graduate programs.

The increase in graduate student cost and decrease in allocations for graduate student funding means that departments are now looking at admitting and enrolling cohorts of less than half the size of a decade ago. Moreover, they can no longer afford non-U.S. students (who never become eligible for in-state tuition rates) and are eyeing affirmative action for Californians (who cost significantly less in their first year). The elimination of international students and growing preference for Californians presents the wonderful irony of departments trying to end-run the revenue-generating strategies of their own institution. (Neoliberal entrepreneurial strategies produce great numbers of such ironies.) But it also represents another serious blow to UC graduate programs on top of shrinking cohort size. While UC’s undergraduate mission should be aimed at Californians, strong Ph.D programs must attract and enroll the best students in the world–that is what secures their excellence and renown. But the opposite is happening in each case: UC seeks to enrich its coffers by decreasing the proportion of Californians in its undergraduate population while graduate programs aim to cheapen costs by favoring Californians and eliminating foreign students.

The effects of the crisis for graduate programs resulting from tuition increases are just beginning to be felt but departments are panicking as they take them in. Smaller and weaker graduate student cohorts will have multiple ramifications: Faculty will have fewer graduate students to mentor, do less graduate teaching and work with less talented students with lower placement prospects. This will drive away the best UC faculty and make it difficult to recruit the best new faculty talent. Together these effects will lead to drops in department rankings which will further dampen interest in UC by superlative faculty and applicants to Ph.D programs. At this point you can see the whole downward spiral–there goes the quality that UCOP and the UC Senate were trying to preserve. Undergraduate education too, will be effected by declining quantity and quality of graduate student instruction, which will surely lead some excellent would-be UC undergraduates to go elsewhere for their education.

Of course, some might argue that the shrinking market for Ph.Ds warrants a compression of graduate programs. But the demand for Ph.Ds is probably changing more than it is shrinking. Certainly faculty research positions in the letters and science will constrict, but massive numbers of Ph.Ds will be needed to staff the on-line and other factory-style undergraduate courses looming on the horizon. The soon-to-be lower-ranked UC graduate programs would be just the right source for such workers.

What a sad end to a century in which some of the best graduate programs in the world were germinated and harbored at public institutions. Indeed, this story amplifies a prediction offered by Frank Donoghue that the chasm between the elite privates and degraded publics is likely to grow ever wider until the two kinds of institutions shed most traces of kinship. As Donoghue tells it in The Last Professors, at the undergraduate level, the elites will continue to cultivate the future 1% in the liberal arts while the “publics” will increasingly offer technical and professional training to working and middle class students who will be “job-ready,” if not especially broadly or deeply educated, when they graduate. What is the corollary at the graduate level? The elite privates will train future research faculty while the publics train adjuncts and on-line course staff.

To conclude where I began: In raising tuition to generate revenue for faculty compensation, market-oriented UC leaders have assumed that such compensation is the most significant issue in sustaining UC excellence through retaining excellent faculty, a rationale that comes from the private sector. The result has been cannibalization of features of the institution that will drive the best faculty into the arms of the privates regardless of what UC pays them, and also drive down the research and education quality of the institution as a whole.

The impending catastrophe for UC graduate programs is but one moment of an institution imperiled rather than protected when submitted to market metrics. It reveals the folly and destructiveness, not only the anti-egalitarianism, of privatizing a great public university system.

Debt, Democracy, and the Future of the Public University: An Introduction

2011-12-12T11:17:00.000-08:00

By James Vernon

The restructuring of higher education and the privatization of the public university has operated through a series of vectors: the push for online education, the challenges to access and diversity, the tremendous increase in studentfees and student debt, the growth of management bloat. It has been met—point by point—by a politics of protest. These protests have made clear that those defending Public Higher Education at UC must confront a number of problems. I’ll highlight just three:

Firstly we must recognize that whatever the particular nature of the crisis at UC it must be understood as part of a broader transnational restructuring of higher education and the privatization of public goods.

Secondly at the heart of this resistance is not simply a critique of the corporatization or privatization of the university – for these have a deep history – but a diagnosis of a new and distinct mode of contemporary transformation: the financialization of university. Universities are now in the grip of a culture of finance that produced a global recession and an insistence upon austerity cuts to public services, while redirecting the burden of higher education on to student debt through the very type of sub-prime loans that got us in to this mess in the first place.

And thirdly, as I suggested above, our current crisis has been a catalyst for critical thought and has been generative of new forms of politics on and beyond our campuses. It is no coincidence that the humanities have been central to the debates over the future of the public university. The value of the humanities seems at best precarious in the new financial culture of higher education. But as has been continually shown, humanities scholarship remains analytically and politically necessary for our universities and our democracies.

But we are here today less to discuss the content of arguments already made than than to take stock of where we are now as the restructuring of higher education proceeds apace and has been met these past months by the Occupy movement and the criminalization of protest on our campuses.

In that spirit let us begin.

There Are Alternatives to the Yudof Privatization Story

2011-12-12T11:15:00.000-08:00

by Chris Newfield

UC Berkeley Forum on Debt, Democracy, and the Future of the Public University, December 7, 2011

November was a good month for the free speech dimensions of the Occupy movement. Police brutality at UC Berkeley and UC Davis was denounced on an international scale, the outrage forced formal investigations to be convened, administrators at Davis suspended several police perpetrators, the Berkeley faculty senate censured some administrators, and the University president and the chair of the Board of Regents affirmed rights to certain kinds of protest.

Beneath the surface, protest and speech issues have not been resolved. Four days after the Davis incident the Riverside campus proposed protest guidelines that demand prior approval for everything including the size of protest signs (you can sign a petition protesting the protest guidelines). UC officials still reject occupations. And November was a very bad month for Occupy encampments around the country and for American civil liberties on a number of fronts.

At UC as elsewhere, the assertion of speech and protest rights is bound up with demands for full participation in policymaking and governance. This time around, the Chronicle of Higher Education spread the word that many students were fed up with what one called “a false dialogue with a body, the UC regents, that is not democratically accountable to the students or [to] any members of the community.”

Student speakers were also fed up with a budgeting policy that has clearly failed to sustain public revenues. As UCLA graduate student and grad union president Cheryl Deutsch put it to the regents, “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.”

This is where we are now. We are in an unchangingly bad budget situation. The financial managers of the university have no realistic plan for fixing it. Just as importantly, senior managers are facing no pressure from the university faculty to come up with better solutions. I have the impression that most faculty are resigned to a high-tuition UC, are mollified by UC officials’ denunciations of the legislature, are hoping some public money will come back, and are OK with the general direction of current UC funding policy—all in the mode of hoping for the best.

There are in fact better budget plans, two written by UC faculty, that aren’t getting UC faculty support. First there is the work of the iconic independent faculty budget analyst Charles Schwartz, who presented a 12-step proposal to the UC Commission on the Future in December 2009. It has been completely ignored.

Secondly, there is the Council of UC Faculty Associations analysis by Stanton Glantz and Eric Hays, whose report shows that a full restoration of public funding is affordable. One of their main findings is that all three segments of California higher education could recover to their 2000-2001 levels of state funding (adjusted for inflation) with a surcharge on the median taxpayer of $49 per year. A second finding is that this additional amount would allow UC tuition to be rolled back to its 2001 level of a bit over five thousand dollars per year, or around 40% of today’s level.

The Schwartz and Glantz-Hays reports should be required reading for all UC officials. They should be widely discussed, refined, and injected into the statewide policy discussion. They should eventually be implemented in some form. But in our world UC officials treat alternative budget work as though it doesn’t exist.

Just as importantly, the faculty is letting them. We share responsibility for the limits to the open democratic dialogue that senior mangers are currently willing to allow, limits which excludes budgeting from below – and the open, collaborative, democratic, participatory procedures that would allow them.

We in the UC community might be more willing to tolerate exclusions from senior management’s budgeting were their results successful, but they are not successful. They have lost nearly 2/3rds of per-student state support over the last 20 years. They regularly ask for far less back next year than we have lost in the current year, whatever that year is. They are projecting a $2.5 billion structural deficit by 2015 (display 12), for a core budget of about $6 billion. On the campuses, we are in the position of a grinding mitigation of the effects of cuts that get us nowhere, for they are part of a budget strategy that will never work.

Why is UCOP insisting on a budget strategy that locks in decline? One reason is the anti-tax position of the top 1%. The Glantz-Hays proposal was reportedly shelved at UCOP when senior managers noted that additional taxes for higher ed were far higher for the upper brackets. Annual income for the top 1% starts at $386,000, and they would pay nearly $3000 a year more in taxes for 2001-levels of funding at the three segments. The tax tide may have turned for the public as a whole, but this has probably not happened for UC’s inner circle of business leaders.

The deeper reason why UC’s senior managers ignore proposals for rebuilt public funding is that they are pursuing a different strategy – to build what UC President Mark Yudof once called a “hybrid” university. The meaning of this concept can be found in many of Yudof’s statements, including his recent speech to the California Chamber of Commerce in San Francisco, entitled “A Baker’s Dozen Myths about Higher Education.” Mark Yudof formally opposes privatization. And yet his budget narrative describes the leveraging of public funds for purposes increasingly defined by private partners.

Here are his budget narrative’s official plot elements. The first is that tuition goes up because state funding goes down – “plain and simple.” It’s the state’s fault, and UC officials have played no role at all – there is no feedback loop. Cuts are fate. Cuts are inevitable.

The second element is the claim that a wealth and abundance of financial aid programs offset all tuition increases for all affected students (#8). The supposed proof is that UC student debt is below national norms (#10). In other words, for Yudof’s UCOP, there is simply no cost problem for students – except for some middle-class students just above the no-tuition cap of $80,000.

The third element is that low tuition is not good but bad. Yudof explained to the Chamber that low tuition hurts the middle class because it is a “massive tuition subsidy to the wealthy” (#9). So if you care about social justice on planet Yudof, you must favor high tuition.

The fourth element of the UC budget plot is our old friend: “you can’t just take money from laser research and give it to a professor of Portuguese” (#12). This is President Yudof’s way of saying that what he calls the university’s businesses make money and the academic core loses money. This is false, once you factor in cross-subsidies and calculate net revenues, but it allows President Yudof to frame university education as a drain on university revenues, which are sustained by its businesses.

The fifth element is that although private fundraising is 98.4% restricted (Yudof’s figure), fundraising is the university’s cherished activity – “phenomenally important” in his phrase (#11). In his account, the public university has always and will forever depend for its development on private fundraising, which is a remedy for and not a cause of its fiscal crisis. The particular fundraising program Yudof celebrates here is the “corporate scholarship program,” as originally advocated by leaders of the Berkeley campus.

All of this is tied together by permanent austerity. President Yudof presents UC's steady reduction of its “costs” as a great achievement. Austerity may not be desirable, but it works – the Chamber is told that the University spends less and does just fine. Yudof was in effect opening to the door to continuing austerity demands from audiences like the Chamber of Commerce as the price for their participation in programs like corporate scholarships. Austerity is the past and present of UC, and in this kind of a presidential lecture, it is also UC’s future.

In short, the administration’s defense of UC’s budget has the same logic as that which all over the Western world is lowering living standards for the 99%. UC leaders continue to envision cuts for the student and employee majority, more control for the corporate minority, and no big university missions for society as a whole. The public university exists always on the defensive, always begging for its health. We’ve lived the whole of the new century under this cloud. This has to stop.

There is enormous intellectual work to be done, involving analysis, writing and posting and publishing that I would like to invite you to do – on our blog and on the others represented here. But I will end with a separate proposal. If we believe that we, all of us, are the university; If we believe it is our university, ours who work and study here and ours, members of the state population who support it; if we believe we should govern it as a community; if we believe we know how to do that; If we know the conditions and the funding levels; if we dedicate the University to the most complete development of the human capabilities of the whole society; then we should do the following. We should write a confidence letter to Mark Yudof. We should say our confidence is conditional on you administering the university on behalf of the future society. We should specify what we mean by this in terms of governance, in terms of freedom of speech and protest, in terms of the financial model.

If there is no positive response, we would say, President Yudof, if you are unable to do this, our no confidence measure will shortly follow. We do not consent to our “collective impoverishment.” Help us instead with the rebuilding we need to do, Mr. Yudof, or we will find somebody else who will.

"Debt, Democracy, and the Future of the Public University": A Series

2011-12-11T22:05:00.000-08:00

Last Wednesday (December 7) qui parle, Reclamations, and Representations organized a public forum on the present crisis, ongoing protests, and future prospects of the public University. Each Journal has recently put out a special issue on the topic: qui parle's "Higher Education on its Knees," Reclamations' "Generation of Debt," and Representations' "The Humanities and the Crisis of Public University." But the talks were not simply about the special issues. Instead they ranged farther afield to address the questions of where we are and what is to be done.

We will be publishing texts of talks from the Forum this week. We will begin tomorrow (December 12) with James Vernon's Introduction to the Forum and Chris Newfield's presentation, and then followed up the talks of Wendy Brown, Rei Terada and others. Please check back for the actual papers and please use the comment space as a way to further discuss and extend the issues raised.

Links for December 9

2011-12-09T18:05:00.000-08:00

Occupy Davis dismantling for winter break.

Linda Katehi offers her take on the Context of Student Protests. Of course, that doesn't address the fact that UC has a longer history of police violence.

In California the middle class is shrinking. Oh, by the way, so are corporate tax payments.

Across the country, administrators are unhappy that students hold them responsible for tuition increases. They don't think that is fair!

Universities await new rulings from federal agencies on indirect cost reimbursement. But everyone thinks that ICR will get cut no matter what.

GAO reports that For-Profits can't blame demographics for their higher dropout rates.

In England, anger over Government's assault on universities continues to grow.

Links for December 7

2011-12-07T15:51:00.000-08:00

There is now a petition demanding the withdrawal of UCR's recently announced protest guidelines. You can sign it here.

Mr Yudof Goes to San Francisco: Addresses Chamber of Commerce on the logic of his liberal privatization scheme. Still doesn't recognize that it is making the University worse.

CSU applications at record levels. Aren't they cutting back on faculty?

You will be stunned to know that large California corporations are paying very little in the way of state taxes.

Arne Duncan joins President Yudof in thinking that Universities are "graveyards."

Texas urges Supreme Court Not to take up case challenging UT Austin's use of race in admissions.

Even Knights of the Realm are coming out against the English Government's plans to turn universities into shopping centers.

"Universities Should not be run for Profit."

New Study suggests continuing problems with for-profit schools.

Labor Department proposes new rule that might strengthen the hand of private college labor unions.

Links for December 5

2011-12-05T14:27:00.000-08:00

UCSD Students reclaim closed Library.

Yudof names Task Force to investigate Davis police violence.

UCR Dean of Students issues proposed guidelines telling students, staff, and faculty the proper etiquette for protest. FreeUCR responds.

The Occupy movements are expanding into new areas and tactics.

CHE has new data on how much private university presidents make. Hint....it is a lot.

Obama preaches austerity. Public University Presidents nod and agree.

James Vernon discusses why public funding for higher ed in England has collapsed so precipitously.

David Cameron wants to bring Big Pharma into closer contact with Universities in England. Oh, and income inequality is growing faster in England than anywhere else in the OECD.

Merkozy agree to new treaty to punish everyone but the banks.

An English professor claims literary research is really expensive -- in apparent ignorance of how much other research costs.

Charlie Schwartz prints his futile efforts to communicate with actual Regents via their secretary

Protest: Only the "Pro" Not the "Test"

2011-12-05T14:06:00.000-08:00

The Dean of Students at UCR has distributed a draft for new rules concerning protest on the Riverside campus. They are actually quite remarkable. Under the tag line "Your voice matters. Make an Impact" the Dean is proposing a system where only the most regulated protest activities are allowed on campus. Not only is Riverside proposing the usual "time, place, and manner" restrictions but they are demanding that all protests be cleared with the administration two weeks before they are to occur, insisting that protesters clear with the administration any movement they plan across campus, make sure that your protest has been "approved," and don't use sticks with your signs (i.e. the conventional way that placards and signs have been held for the last 100 years or so).

Riverside is pushing these rules shortly after the Regents' November Meeting and in anticipation of the Regent's January meeting at UCR. Clearly, at least some administrators are unwilling to meet the students except in situations where they define the rules. These rules with their "checklist" sound like planning for a high school dance. Is that really how Riverside's Dean of Students conceives of free speech and protest about matters of concern to the community? Is President Yudof's notion of the "DNA" of the University really that protest is only allowed when it meets the approval of the authorities? Is that the lesson in Free Speech the University wants to teach?

But rest assured that they are happy to have your voice heard in the precise way that they want to hear your voice.

Links for December 2

2011-12-02T11:15:00.000-08:00

As the UC Turns

Ignore those raises behind the curtain: Regents manage to find money to raise salaries of high administrators.

On Tuesday, Students and Faculty at Davis debated what is to be done. 242 Davis Professors Sign Letter in Support of Katehi.

Birgeneau canceled his scheduled appearance at the Graduate Student Assembly on Thursday.

Occupy Cal presses UCPD Review Board to act on November 9th events. Board demurs.

These are the Colleges of Your Lives

Despite faculty opposition, CUNY administration revamps GE requirements.

The NSF lays out its priorities for social science research.

Duke's Faculty Council approves Business degree to be offered in China.

Students in NYC are protesting their increasing debt load.

All My Crises

Is the US going to become a neo-Third World Country?

Paul Krugman wonders if European leaders have the wisdom not to destroy the European Economy. He doubts it. Apparently, Angela Merkel wants to prove him correct.

Digby has the latest on the GOP's effort to suppress voting rights so they can win in 2012.

While Marcy Wheeler relates the latest steps Michigan's governor is taking to take self-governance from half of the state's African-American population.

American Airlines will probably use bankruptcy to ditch its pension liabilities. How much leeway do companies have to abrogate previous benefits agreements?

November's Steps toward Democracy

2011-12-01T13:19:00.000-08:00

The many UC crises this November have prompted challenges to longstanding prerogatives of unilateral governance among UC's senior managers. In the aftermath of both cases of police violence last month, members of the UC community identified the real problem as a chronic governance failure and then directly inserted themselves into the governance process.

On the police front, UC officials have long affirmed the generic value of peaceful protest while carefully protecting UC managers from its effects. In the contemporary protest period that began in September 2009, campus officials have allowed most temporary protests while blocking occupations, and have gone to great lengths to insulate officials from direct contact with protesters.

The police arrive for the UCLA section of the Regents meeting on November 28th.

UC police protocols vary by campus, but at least some, like UCLA's, authorize the use of pain compliance techniques even against passive resisters (at 300.3.3). In my reading, they appear to offer police officers and their administrative supervisors wide discretion in the use of force even when protestors pose no threat to police. We will be hearing much more about this during the upcoming investigations.

At the Berkeley campus on November 9th, the police were met with a line of protesters on which one of them led a baton assault. Some of the victims wrote statements that not only rejected the violence of the moment but the top-down command structure that had allowed it to happen (e.g. Nicole Lindahl, Celeste Langan). At another point, the police struck the wife of renowned poet and Berkeley faculty member Robert Hass. In Hass's account,

My wife was speaking to the young deputies about the importance of nonviolence and explaining why they should be at home reading to their children, when one of the deputies reached out, shoved my wife in the chest and knocked her down.

Moments later, the police, "using their clubs as battering rams, began to hammer at the bodies of the line of students."

When his wife fell, Hass had shouted at the police that they had knocked down his wife, for chrissake, and is seen around the same time in another tape trying to head off a police attack by talking to them. (The tape, which looks like it was shot by the ghost of Orson Wells, starts about 3:50). Hass was shouting

Use your head! Use your head! There’s no reason to hurt these people. There is no reason to hurt these people. Use your head! Nobody there wants to hurt you. They’re not going to hurt you.

Mr and Mrs. Hass were in effect attempting spontaneous shared governance with police over whom the UC community normally has zero control. Their efforts were not well received by their police audience.

In the wake of these incidents, the UC Berkeley Academic Senate moved in the same direction as the Hass, seeking a renewed shared governance over police conduct in a resolution that "Condemns the UC Berkeley administration’s authorization of violent responses to non- violent protests over the past two years." The resolution further "Demands that Chancellor Birgeneau, Executive Vice Chancellor Breslauer, and Vice Chancellor LeGrande take responsibility for and repudiate such policing as it occurred over the past two years." The measure passed on November 28th by a vote of 336 to 34.

Another resolution, starting from recitals that include that "Police violence against non-violent demonstrators has been consistently and repeatedly perpetrated over the last two years in at least five separate incidents on the Berkeley campus," spelled out a series of measures the administration should follow to correct the problem it had perpetuated. It passed by the same vote, and sent the same message about the right of the UC community to set the rules by which it should be governed.

The right of officials to use force to decide when, where, and how protest will occur was challenged with equal profundity in the wake of the polnt-blank pepper-spraying of seated, passive protesters at UC Davis on November 18th. Lead sprayer Lt John Pike's unhurried contempt for his targets sparked an artistic renaissance in which he became an emblem of the enforcement function waltzing through world history blasting whatever it feels like.

More literal responses included a massive call for the resignation of UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi (110,000 signatures as of this writing), as well as resignation calls from individuals and at least two academic departments on campus. It has forced two high-level inquiries into the Davis incident in particular and into UC use-of-force policies in general. More on this in another post.

The hallmark of the opposition to unilaterally imposed policing was renewed assertions of co-governance, accompanied by negations of the right of administrators to simultaneously preside and do nothing to prevent problems. One of Nathan Brown's paragraphs is a case in point:

I am writing to tell you in no uncertain terms that there must be space for protest on our campus. There must be space for political dissent on our campus. There must be space for civil disobedience on our campus. There must be space for students to assert their right to decide on the form of their protest, their dissent, and their civil disobedience—including the simple act of setting up tents in solidarity with other students who have done so. There must be space for protest and dissent, especially, when the object of protest and dissent is police brutality itself. You may not order police to forcefully disperse student protesters peacefully protesting police brutality. You may not do so. It is not an option available to you as the Chancellor of a UC campus. That is why I am calling for your immediate resignation.

More remarkable than the call for resignation -- which in itself is not a solution -- was Brown's assertion of his own authority as a regular member of the UC community to set standards for how that community will function. This involved a negation of administrative autocracy: "You may not order police to X or Y" is a reversal of the top-down command-and-control to which we have become accustomed. Obviously rule-setting would be a collaborative and not a unilateral act of this or that faculty member in replication of a similar move from a senior manager. The value here lay in the directness of the refusal of our standard managerial sovereignty as a first step in the creation of collaborative governance.

In an open letter to her students, UC Davis professor Cynthia Carter Ching noted that policing and other decisions had become unilateral because the faculty had withdrawn from governance:

We thought it would be fine, better even. We’d handle the teaching and the research, and we’d have administrators in charge of administrative things. But it’s not fine. It’s so completely not fine. There’s a sickening sort of clarity that comes from seeing, on the chemically burned faces of our students, how obviously it’s not fine.

So, to all of you, my students, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry we didn’t protect you. And I’m sorry we left the wrong people in charge.

Ching followed the apology for not governing with a call to the faculty overall:

And to my colleagues, I ask you, no, I implore you, to join with me in rolling up our sleeves, gritting our teeth, and getting back to the business of running this place the way it ought to be run. Because while our students have been bravely chanting for a while now that it’s their university (and they’re right), it’s also ours. It’s our university.

Running the university collaboratively and democratically is a long way off, and the exact forms that will take are obscure. But in November a good chunk of the UC community felt the desire and expressed the demand for full participation in the decisions that have in recent years forced the university way up the creek.

These poor decisions have marked budget policy as much as they have police policy. I'll turn to this issue in my next post.

Links for December 1 (Updated Below)

2011-12-01T09:06:00.000-08:00

More questions about Bratton. He urged Brown University to arm its police. And in case you missed it here is the CUCFA letter to Yudof opposing the hiring of Bratton. Oh, and the Atlantic weighs in.

Rei Terada and Michael Meranze point out the larger problems exemplified in the Bratton, Robinson, and Edley appointments.

CSU Trustees postpone decision on executive compensation because of fear of protests. They try to make it sound as if their plans make sense.

Jerry Brown to propose a tax hike on highest earners along with an increase in sales tax.

LAPD deploys overwhelming force against Occupy LA. Some Photos.

Arne Duncan focuses on college prices: not surprisingly his suggestions favor less human interaction.

And here is some of the latest on the Eurozone Crisis. In case you were hoping for some calm.

Update: Unions Challenged by Tenure Track/Adjunct splits.

Protest Links-Delayed by Our Day Jobs Edition (Updated Below)

2011-11-30T10:42:00.000-08:00

At Monday's Regents meeting, Mark Yudof holds a giant copy of the ReFund California Pledge. It is apparently too big for the UC Regents to sign. But they were able to give some administrators pay raises.

While the Regents were meeting and being protested on Monday, the UC Berkeley Academic Senate passed resolutions demanding non-violent police responses to protesters-occupiers and condemning administrative policy. The vote was 336-34. The Daily Cal's story has some sound links, and here is a much longer recording of the meeting. UC Irvine professor Jon Weiner blogged on it at the Nation when it was still a no-confidence resolution.

On the police front, Governor Brown has requested that the relevant state agency review use-of-force guidelines regarding political protest.

On the budget front, the Regents did approve Mark Yudof's proposal asking for $400 million or so in restored state funding

At the Regents' divided-into-four meeting: UCLA coverage from the LAT and KPCC. UCSF and Davis were covered by the SFC. The Washington Post has an overview of the protests and the UC Davis strike. UCSB had a sympathy protest

The Regents meeting was interrupted by protestors. Here are some pictures. (Hat tip for meeting links to Bob Samuels.)

The protestors challenged the legitimacy of the Regents.

Jennifer Doyle has a powerful piece on California's war against students.

Which reminds me, on November 22 Cambridge University students occupied a talk given by the UK Tory government's university and sciences minister and privatizer-in-chief David Willetts. Hang in for the auditorium recitals in the video here. Arrest methods injured five protesters.

The Chronicle of Higher Education's coverage of the "uneasy spot" in which university presidents find themselves received a rejoinder from higher education scholar and activist Gary Rhoades: the deeper problem, he said,

is the pattern of university presidents seeing themselves more as CEOs of individual firms than as academic leaders of universities that have a social responsibility to serve the broad public interest, of the 99%, not of the 1%. Rather than commiserating about the difficulty of the university presidency, and how protesters should be "handled," it is time to change direction and open a broader, genuine dialogue about university policy and practice in ways that truly include the views of students, faculty, and staff.

Members of the UC community are starting to scrutinize their individual campus police procedures manuals. Here's a post on UC Irvine's with a link to the manual. UCLA Faculty United has a follow-up on their Open Letter on police procedures, and links to other campus manuals.

And the MLA announces a 5% uptick in literature jobs this year - leaving the profession still deep in the hole.

Update: Millions of Public Sector Employees Strike in Britain to protest austerity.

Update: UAW President Cheryl Deutsch demands that Regents join Refund California and actually defend the University.

Democracy in 60 Seconds

2011-11-28T13:25:00.000-08:00

Students Protesting at UCLA

Despite the Regents' absurd attempt to limit speakers to 60 seconds each (and the even more absurd rule penalizing people who wanted to pool their time to allow for more thorough statements), students, staff, faculty, alumni, and ex-Regents all seized the public comment period at this morning's Regents Meeting to make a series of important democratic points.

Running throughout the comments were at least 2 overriding messages:

1) That the time was long past for UCOP and the Regents to think that expressions of regret or surprise were enough: if words are not followed up by concrete actions they will seem little but efforts to divert attention from the University's real problems

and

2) That the administration (especially UCOP) and the Regents have lost their legitimacy within the University... And it is up to UCOP and the Regents to prove that they deserve to have that legitimacy back.

Speakers made these points clear through a series of interlocking points.

It makes no sense for the Regents and President Yudof to claim to be surprised at the recent police violence at Berkeley and Davis. This violence has been going on at least since 2009. At this point such claims are reminiscent of nothing so much as Captain Renault's shock that gambling was going on at the Casino as he pocketed his earnings in Casablanca.

The Regents can no longer pretend that they are powerless people overwhelmed by state politics. As speaker after speaker emphasized, the Regents contain some of the most powerful and powerfully connected financial, corporate, and political leaders in the state. If they are truly concerned with the public trust of the University rather than protecting the interests of finance capital in the state they WILL SIGN THE REFUND CALIFORNIA PLEDGE and then lobby and speak actively on its behalf. The Speakers presented the Regents with copies of the Pledge so it is now in their hands to do so. The time has come for the Regents to declare which side they are on.
It is time for President Yudof to deliver budget transparency and to begin to acknowledge the reality of University finances and his administration's choices. Speakers pointed out over and over that, as with the economic crisis more generally, the burden of UC's budgets problems have been falling disproportionately on those least able to afford it while administrative salaries remain high. Moreover, while UCOP continues to insist that philanthropy, technology, and technical efficiencies are the key to the everyone now knows that this is wishful thinking.
The recent police violence has made even clearer that there is a crisis of governance in the University. Speakers demanded that police violence be ended, that free speech rights be preserved, and that the role of the police within the community be subject to open democratic debate. Once again, speakers--especially students--made clear that words of regret were not enough. A changing of the rules and practices are required.

Whether the Regents really understood what they were being told is unclear. Chair Lansing promised to start a program of coming to the campuses but reverted to a request that students join the Regents in a march on Sacramento.

President Yudof, after announcing that former Justice Cruz Reynoso will head up the inquiry at Davis also displayed his usual tone-deafness when issues of his oligarchy arise by assuring everyone that Robinson and Edley would provide objective evaluations. He doesn't realize that his commissions can not have legitimacy until he appoints truly independent people from outside of his inner circle.

The Regents claim they have heard the demands. People are waiting. But it was clear that they won't wait long.

Live blogging regents as best we can

2011-11-28T09:20:00.000-08:00

9:18 president yudof speaking. Claims that due to ucop cuts and efficiencies if the state gives back some funding there will not be tuition. Not sure how he figures that. Then assures us all that we are all on the same side and he wants to protect dissent.

9:20 student regent speaking. Wanted part of meetng at davis so students could be heard. But there were few regents at dsvis to avoid large police presence. Asks students to speak. Student regents horrified by police actions at davis and berkeley. Acknowledges passion of protesters. Student regents moving on legislative front. "world is with students." But mist remain non-violent.

9:24. Speaker Perez speaking. Appalled by the police action. "unacceptable police response." police undermined claim to believe in first amendment. Were the police acting within policy? "inspired" by student response. Bratton commission cannot address the issue of the broader question of why students are protesting. Recent state budgets have lost sight of core values. Opposes the whole idea of tuition. Should only be old fees not an embrace of the notion of tuition. Pledges to work for more progressive tax system and use extra resources to fully fund higher ed. Thanks the students.

9:30 chair lansing claims to agree with perez.

9:31 perez responds by pointing out that UC leadership leadership needs to step up.

9:32 Lansing again proclaims her commitment to open debate.

9:41 criticizes inequality of chancellors' salaries when students can't afford tuition.

Rules limit public comments to one minute.

At ucla can hear chants of "our university" through the walls.

9:35 public comments begin. Criticize regents and uc for betraying the master plan and for creating an undemocratic and hostile environment.

9:42-9:45 crticizes the fact that chancellors are getting raises while students can't afford tuition. Also demands truly indepent investigation of police.

9:47 demands redirection of funds from prisons to higher ed. Challenges perez and regents

9:48 tuition going up every year. Challenges raising tuition. Students will not be able to afford uc.

9:50 police violence especially espects students of color as will the tuition raises.

9:50 graduate student researcher in solidarity with undergrads. Tuition increases limit access. Administrators salaries go up so does tuition. Demands regents change this pattern and recognize that the whole world is watching.

9:55 not interested if regents feel bad. Demands that there br no fee hikes. Regents must give priority to public not private interests.

9:58 AS Merced student reads whereases in favor of regents efforts (i think).

10:00 students should come first they are the future.

10:00 challenges regents to hold tuition down. Regents need to do more.

10:02 UAW speaker calls for regents to sign the refund california statement and commit to greater transparency. Millions are spent in unclear ways.

10:03 Thelma Montoya speaks to Uc's failure to protection of free speech and uc's failure to protect students from discriminatory harrassment.

10:05 UAW president: regents must make a choice between empty words and behaving like regents of a public trust. Regents have to decide who is going to pay for the mess they have created.

10:07 charlie schwartz talking about the mess of university finances and how much students are being charged.

10:10-10:55 continuing demonstration of regents' lack of legitimacy. More later.

Links: National Security Edition (Updated Below)

2011-11-27T10:03:00.000-08:00

Uncivil Procedure has posted Behind the Curtain: their analysis of the history of police violence at Berkeley over the last several years.

Here is the final version of the proposed Berkeley Senate Resolution condemning the recent police violence on campus.

When Altegrity hired Bill Bratton. A little context.

A Petition has been started demanding that President Yudof withdraw his appointment of Bratton to head investigation.

Will Los Angeles' deadline for the removal of Occupy LA create a crisis where there was none?

Reclaiming the First Amendment.

In light of all of the intersecting Police Work here is the ACLU's warning about "Fusion Centers."

Update: Patricia Williams wonders if we have lost the right to privacy outside our homes.

Update: Just for the record we are relinking Dave Zirin's article on Penn State and Davis.

Update: Edley's Allies? How online companies are trying to seize control of K-12 education.

Breaking the Cycle of Violence

2011-11-26T12:41:00.000-08:00

by Catherine M. Cole, Professor of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies, UC Berkeley

Violence breeds violence. And that's why we must never tolerate violence at the university.

UC Berkeley’s recent pattern of violence started on November 20, 2009. The perpetrators were heavily armed police who assaulted unarmed bystanders located in a zone of free speech. These bystanders--unlike those who seized rooms in Wheeler Hall--were not doing anything illegal at all.

The Police Review Board’s (PRB) investigation into this incident should be read by all Berkeley faculty and Administrators:

The PRB report presented two overlapping theories of what went wrong that day.

One theory placed blame with the “miscalculations, missteps, and inaction -- by both the police and the Administration – [that] converged to convert an animated but essentially non-violent protest into a raw power struggle between demonstrators and police.”[1] The second theory focused on the protesters outside who, while largely peaceful, where nevertheless infiltrated by a “smaller, more calculating (but perhaps no less sincere) group” that “set out to instigate confrontations with the police – to engineer challenges to their authority and to erect obstacles to their plans in order to provoke them into high-visibility over-reactions that could be used to inflame the crowd and escalate its aggressiveness" (10). After acknowledging that there is some truth to both theories, the report advances a third claim:

"After studying the roles of the demonstrators, the police, and the Administration, we realized that, on November 20th, all three shared one significant and dysfunctional characteristic. In ways we detail in our narrative, each of these groups was ‘center-less’ for much of the day. To the extent this characterization is accurate, the shapelessness of the story, and the virtual randomness of some of the actions by which it was marred, can be understood as byproducts of the interplay (sometimes collisions) between three center-less spheres" (11).

That the Police Review Board deemed a student crowd fueled by anger over rapidly escalating tuition and fees to be “center-less” and thus vulnerable to manipulation by a few deliberate agents is hardly damning: these were students, after all. They hold little power, were not bearing arms, and are not responsible for having a coherent underlying political structure. However, that the PRB found the Administration of the nation’s preeminent public university to be “center-less” in fulfilling its foundational duty of ensuring a safe campus is a far more damaging accusation. Given the Administration’s responsibility for the campus, its internal operations and discipline, the Administration must accept full responsibility for the consequences of a “center-less” environment on our campus that day. It was therefore deeply dismaying to see that in the Administration’s response to the Police Review Board’s findings, the closest it came to accepting culpability for what happened on November 20 was to say: “We accept responsibility for the assessment of the administration’s shortcomings on this day”—which is only to say, literally, the administration took responsibility for having commissioned the Police Review report (Admin response to PRB).

The aftermath Wheeler November 20, 2009 was then followed a few weeks' later by more violence--retributive violence in the form of an attack on the Chancellor's house. This violence was both predictable and dismaying. The result: property damage. The resistance movement also forfeited the one source of power it had: the moral high ground--even if it was only a small faction of that movement along with rogue non-affiliates who perpetrated that deed. It also lost the sympathy, respect and participation of many faculty.

Similar actions of vandalism transpired in February 2010 when a small group seized the renovation site of the historic Durant Hall, smashing windows, tagging it with graffiti, and then later continuing with a chaotic and destructive wilding escapade on Telegraph Avenue (see Lee Finnegan coverage). The center-lessness of both student activism and the Administration, as well as the escalating nature of the actions and confrontations pulled faculty into a reactive, mediating role, whether we wanted to play that part or not.

And then on November 9, 2011, the Berkeley Administration once again lit in to unarmed student protestors with violence, this time whacking them full force with truncheons, cracking ribs, bruising bones, and throwing unarmed students, faculty, poet laureates and their loved ones to the ground. Where as activists have tended to perpetrate violence against property, the Administration has consistently perpetrated violence against bodies. But violence is a cycle, not a competition.

In light of this cycle of violence at Berkeley, it makes the recent UC Davis student protesters skillful and committed use of non-violence all the more impressive (e.g. Kristin Stoneking ). And it makes the ignorance of the practice and history of non-violence by Berkeley’s administration all the more shameful.

The way to stop violence is through the practice of nonviolence. What is needed at this moment is restorative justice. Whereas retributive justice seeks vengeance, restorative justice seeks to repair the harm caused by crime. Restorative justice restores the humanity to both the victim and the perpetrator. It is within UC administration's power to be an agent of restorative justice and nonviolence.

The teacher is responsible for setting the tone of the class. Likewise the Administration sets the tone for the campus. The tone that has been set since November 20, 2009 has been a trigger-happy resort to riot police and an utter failure to engage in any kind of meaningful dialogue.

Another way is possible. The PRB report provides a script (119-122). The Administration should proactively convey to peaceful demonstrators that it wants “to learn what their message is and to learn their perspective on the issues that concern them.” Show respect. Do so by initiating communication and being visibly present. “By being visibly interested we communicate that we see the speaker as someone capable of teaching us something and we acknowledge the speaker as sharing a connection or commonality with us at a fundamental level. Demonstrating an interest in listening to others also evidences an openness of mind that is central to the mission of the University and that might be essential to inspiring others to have confidence in our leadership.”

The Administration’s failure to engage in dialogue and meaningful conversation can be dated back to the September 24, 2009, the State-wide “Walk Out.” Over 5,000 students, staff and faculty on the Berkeley campus turned out for this event, a day that seemed to inaugurate of new level of grassroots and broad-based activism throughout all segments of higher education, from the vast community college network to the more rarified strata of the elite UC’s. Such sizable crowds had not been seen on Berkeley’s historic Sproul Plaza over 40 years. And never before had the three segments of California’s higher education mobilized to this degree around a common cause. Berkeley’s rally on that glorious September day culminated in an exuberant procession through the campus and the streets of Berkeley, with colorful improvisational protest actions along the way. The massive mobilization of students--powerfully fueled by the rocket booster of Twitter, Facebook and tiny URL’s--gave many of us hope and inspiration, even in the face of the long entrenched problems we face in California.

Of the September 24 Walk Out, Berkeley’s Chancellor Robert Birgeneau told the New York Times: “We are operating on the assumption that the state’s disinvestment will continue,” a statement that echoed the defeatist resignation heard so often heard from UC Office of the President. The Administration says it has done everything it could to try to persuade the legislature, but, in the now infamous words of UC President Mark Yudof published that very day, the “shine is off education,” for it had been “crowded out by other priorities.” Yet in September 2009 when thousands assembled on Sproul Plaza and, indeed, on campuses throughout the state, one couldn’t help thinking: Our leaders haven’t yet tried this: they haven’t yet tried to mobilize and harness the power, the populist strength, the sheer numbers of students, staff and faculty who are currently located within public higher education in California and who are prepared to take action to preserve their fine institutions.

UC Administrators weren’t on Sproul Plaza that day: they were locked way in their offices. Lower level staff peered out of their windows like captives as the parade of ebullient protestors passed through campus. When a reporter later asked UC President Mark Yudof where he was on September 24, he answered, “I actually think, I may have been out of town. Remember, I don't live on a campus. I live an ethereal life: no students, no faculty, no classrooms, no residence halls. I may have been out of town, I'm not sure" (see Buckwald, Daily Cal). While the large and peaceful protest actions of September 24, 2009 reverberated in the media and throughout the country and abroad, these actions did not touch the UC Administration, which seemed to be located in some parallel universe, a kind Bermuda triangle somewhere between Bancroft Avenue and downtown Oakland.

After the September 2009 Walk Out, the UC Berkeley students grew frustrated with the Administration’s failure to acknowledge much less engage with their actions. It seemed the Administration had decided protestors were unworthy interlocutors. In order to make their demands heard, protestors turned up the volume. Illegal building occupations became the tactic of choice.

There is a way to stop this cycle.

To the Administration both at Berkeley and the Office of the President I say: leave your bunkers and come talk with us. Do so regularly, with an open mind, in person and without a police escort. Why not begin by holding regular office hours in public spaces on our campus in the coming weeks and months?

UC Trunchon and Pepper Spray Response Roundup (Expanded 1)

2011-11-25T11:33:00.000-08:00

SOME DAVIS FACULTY GROUPS CALL FOR CHANCELLOR'S RESIGNATION

English Department (Wa Po coverage)
Physics Department (partial)
Davis Faculty Association Board

The overall petition for Chancellor Katehi's resignation is nearing 100,000 signatures.
The Davis Enterprise has an Occupy Davis timeline

UC FACULTY STATEMENTS

UC Academic Council (Robert Anderson to Mark Yudof)
UCD's Nathan Brown (Katehi Must Resign) Rally Speech Nov 21
UCD's Cynthia Carter Ching (We Faculty Let Students Down)
UCI Academic Senate Chair Craig Martens
UCLA English Dept (Solidarity with UC Berkeley English)
UCLA Faculty United (On Removal of Occupy UCLA)
UC Merced Academic Senate Chair Susan Amussen
UCSD Faculty Association (Power of Collective Action)
UCSB Faculty (Letter to Chancellor Yang - Renounce Police Response)
UCSC Academic Senate (Statement; also Chair Susan Gillman on "Rebenching" as an underlying protest issue)
UCSC Graduate Student Association (Demonstration in Support of UC Davis faculty 11/28)

SUPPORTING STATEMENTS FROM OFF-CAMPUS GROUPS

AAUP
California Scholars for Academic Freedom
CUCFA (petition version),
Middle Eastern Studies Association
USC Faculty Statement on UC Police Conduct

CAREFULLY WORDED STATEMENTS FROM UC CHANCELLORS

Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, Berkeley campus (Nov 14 and Nov 22, on Berkeley police violence Nov 9)
Chancellor Linda Katehi, Davis campus (Oct 26 Principles of Community; Nov 18, Nov 19, Nov 21 apology, Vimeo apology;
Campus Protest News)
Chancellor Michael Drake, Irvine campus.
Chancellor Gene Block, Los Angeles Campus
Chancellor Dorothy Leland, Merced campus
Chancellor Timothy White, Riverside campus
Chancellor Marye Anne Fox, San Diego campus
Chancellor Henry Yang, Santa Barbara campus.
Chancellor George Blumenthal, Santa Cruz campus

NO-CONFIDENCE VOTE, BERKELEY DIVISION

No-confidence resolution (Profs. Brown, Thorne, and Butler)
Three competing resolutions

Links--November 25

2011-11-25T09:37:00.000-08:00

Chancellor Katehi insists that the police were told not to use violence. Many remain unconvinced.

Occupy UC Davis remaining over Thanksgiving Break.

The Agenda is up for Monday's now you see us now you don't Regents meeting. The Committee on Finance will be shaping the future in under 2 hours.

"Think Long" plans to undercut funding for public education.

According to a Federal Inquiry For-Profits violated regulations on grading, credits, and and student support.

Krugman reminds everyone how bad income inequality really is in the United States.

Merkel Sticks to Austerity; Seems willing to have the European economies collapse.

"Bargain Hunter" pepper sprays other customers to get better deals.

Links--Thanksgiving Edition

2011-11-24T10:46:00.000-08:00

Dave Zirin in the Nation lays out further intersections between the scandals at Penn State and at Davis. It turns out that President Spanier and Chancellor Katehi were both involved in the "National Security Higher Education Advisory Board, which 'promotes discussion and outreach between research universities and the FBI.'”

David Simpson writes on the recent events at UC Davis in light of the larger transformations in policing and America's political culture.

Occupy Davis continues: and they are getting even better organized!

At Berkeley, student sets up tent and silent vigil on lawn of Chancellor's house.

Davis Drama Continues (Updated Below)

2011-11-23T11:48:00.000-08:00

Crank up the damage control: UC President Mark Yudof appoints William J. Bratton, former chief of NYPD and LAPD to review UC police procedures and to report in a month.

Yudof also appointed a systemwide policy review panel, to be headed by UC General Counsel Charles Robinson and UC Berkeley School of Law Dean Christopher Edley Jr.

UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi now says police defied her orders when they used pepper spray. UC Davis police chief blames pepper sprayer Lt. Pike. Students are not impressed. See Katehi's speech to students on Monday, and UC Davis's California Professor coverage, e.g. "What Katehi didn't say."

Meanwhile, Lt Pike's fame grows and grows. He is now the most viewed pepper sprayer in world history. See the piece linked also linked above for Pike's mixed record as a UC cop. On the other hand, kudos are offered UC Davis police by a reader in Bakersfield.

UC Davis had a strong turnout for the tuition protests in November of 2009. I don't think it has every seen crowds like the 5000 on Monday (h/t CA Prof), and may never be the same again. It is now on the global protest map (e.g. Sueddeutsche), has a range of strong and militant voices, and has a growing reputation for protest ingenuity as can be heard in various call-outs to the police in the lead-up to the pepper-spraying.

Update: The debate continues to grow on the spread of the use of Pepper Spray to subdue protests. Even the originator of the technique has his doubts.

Update: Linda Lye points out that "Police crackdowns on Occupy camps are real threat" to democracy, and public health and safety.

Update: State Board forces out President at University of Oregon. He wanted too much autonomy and also gave faculty raises. Faculty and Students are dismayed.

Update: Faculty and Students at UCLA's English Department have sent a letter of solidarity to their comrades at Berkeley.

Update: UCSD Students Mic Check Chancellor Marye Anne Fox.

Links for November 22

2011-11-22T20:51:00.000-08:00

DAVIS: THE CRISIS CONTINUED

Pepper Spray Off Campus: Letter Calling for Chancellor Katehi to resign. And Facebook page. Katehi addresses campus as outrage grows. Audience unconvinced.

UC Davis Student Leaders condemn use of pepper spray.

UC Davis Strike Call.

CHALLENGES TO UCOP

Susan Gillman: Police Violence and University Finance.

Yudof appoints William Bratton to head inquiry into Pepper Spraying. Really? And he appointed UC Counsel and Christopher Edley to look into systemwide police protocols. Really???

UC Struggles with protest. Administrators remember Kerr.

Chancellor Yang "responds" to police violence and "defends" academic freedom.

Legislature to hold hearing on police response to UC protests.

IT REVERBERATES BEYOND UC

"From Cairo to California": Police turn to chemicals to control protests.

Fox News seems to think Pepper Spray is like Broccoli.

In fact, it is a dangerous chemical compound.

There is debate whether the use of pepper spray is even legal in the Davis situation.

Nationwide Faculty Open Letter on Police Violence and Free Speech.

OF COURSE THIS DIDN'T START WITH DAVIS

The Chancellor and the Police: Birgenau wrote a statement explaining police actions in 2009 before the action occurred. More on the Berkeley Administration's script to control 2009 protest.

UC Davis Continued: the Links

2011-11-21T11:36:00.000-08:00

UCLA Faculty Open Letter on Police Violence. The Daily Bruin has more.

"The Turning Point": On the example of UC Davis Students.

Cynthia Carter Ching: An Open Letter to Students and Faculty.

Civil Libertarians and experts on Campus Policing appalled by recent UC Behavior.

"An Internet Meme": UC Davis's Lt. Pike plays various Masters of the Universe.

Is the First Amendment only important in other countries?

UCSB Faculty Letter on UC Davis Police Violence

Links--Special Sunday Edition (Updated Below)

2011-11-20T11:09:00.000-08:00

UPDATE: Yudof to convene Chancellors.
Academic Council Letter to President Yudof

STRUGGLES OVER FREEDOM OF SPEECH AT UC CAMPUSES CONTINUE

After expressions of outrage, Chancellor Katehi begins to walk back her statements on Police Pepper Spray. The SacBee has more details.

Students impose silent criticism. More here.

Robert Haas points out that UCPD has given new meaning to the term "beat poets."

Davis Faculty Association calls for Katehi's resignation.

The Council of UC Faculty Associations Calls for an end to the violence against protesters.

CRITICISM OF UC POLICE CONTINUES TO POUR IN

Even the MSM is taking critical notice. Here is the Atlantic with a lot of links; Forbes calling out the militarization of the police; even CNN seems disturbed.

Commentary on how "brutality becomes banal."

Bob Ostertag on the Militarization of Police.

Glenn Greenwald weighs in on the attempt to intimidate the citizenry.

"Pike's Pique."

BUT THE CAMPUSES ARE NOT THE ONLY POINTS OF CONFLICT

Police Force Occupy Oakland to leave their newest encampment. SF Police arrest six Occupy protesters.

1% propose a new tax plan for California. Guess who benefits.

CA voters on the other hand are willing to pay more taxes to help education.

UPDATES:

Charles Schwartz: "Where does the violence come from?"

More on Pepper Spray: It can be very dangerous in case you were wondering.

Cathy Davidson: This is a "Gettysburg Address Moment" for Higher Ed.

Links--Special Weekend Edition (updated below)

2011-11-19T13:17:00.000-08:00

DAVIS DECIDES TO COMPETE WITH BERKELEY NOT ONLY FOR STUDENTS BUT IN POLICE VIOLENCE

Uc Davis Police Pepper Spray Peaceful Students.

The Sac Bee has the story. So does the SF Chronicle. So does the Huffington Post. Not to mention Salon.

Chancellor Katehi tries to Justify Police Actions. Nathan Brown points out that her response doesn't make sense and calls for her resignation. Firedoglake picks up the story.

Is Berkeley Moving Backwards? "Our Campus is Not a War Zone": An Open Letter to Birgenau.

Pepper Spray is a torture device. But the police were threatened by peaceful students!

The Portland Police don't want to be left out I guess.

BUT THE PROTESTS CONTINUE

Hundreds injured in Cairo.

Occupy UK converges on London. UK teachers vote to strike November 30.

Occupy UCLA sets up peaceful protest. Police still force them to leave and arrest 14.

Don't imitate OWS to death: Innovate.

Tents in the Air.

Music With Its Sleeves Rolled Up.

NOT THAT THE 1% GET IT

CSU Trustees Will Not Reconsider to vote to Raise Tuition.

Lobbyists with ties to financial industry and John Boehner outline $850,000 plan to discredit OWS.

Regents to meet in multiple locations on November 28th. But want us to know they are committed to open debate.

Corporate Power Ascending.

WHILE THE ECONOMY CONTINUES TO STRUGGLE

California adds some jobs. Still a long way to go.

UPDATES:

Update on Davis: Other Video. Some Photos Here.

Update: More on Pepper Spray.

Update: Angus Johnston has a lot more on Davis.

Update: Photos of Occupy UCLA. Notice how violent those tents are acting!

Downed Tents and Eyewittnesses

2011-11-18T10:39:00.000-08:00

Nicole LIndahl, Berkeley Law, describes her first direct experience with police brutality at Occupy Cal.

The petition calling on senior officials at UC Berkeley to resign has over a thousand signatures.

UC police attack more tents, the revolutionary symbol of our time, in a pre-dawn raid at UCLA.

President Mark Yudof "unequivocally support[s] students' right to protest peacefully."

There is no news of disciplinary action for the UC police who prevented students from protesting peacefully.

The UC Regents' meeting has been rescheduled for November 28 -- for four hours, in four different places linked electronically.

Hundreds are arrested at Occupy sites across the country. Occupy San Diego occupied a bridge.

Cal State faculty struck at the East Bay and Dominguez Hills campuses. Teri Yamada describes the shutdowns and the 93% CFA strike vote leading up to it.

Occupy Wall Street is planning a national campaign for Student Debt Refusal. Student debt is helping to propel economic malaise, among other ills.

Fire Dog Lake covers Occupy Madison, complete with quotes about the practice of occupation dissolving stock political differences.

Minor science wars here at the American Anthropological Association Meetings in Montréal

Students study more than was thought (National Survey of Student Engagement).

The Modern Languages Association calls on Congress to keep student debt within strict limits

Congressmen study less: US Rep from Viriginia likens science cooperation with China to a "bilateral pact with Stalin." Science funding may keep up with inflation.

Report gives 3 for-profits rock-bottom fiduciary ratings.

Finance blogger Felix Salmon reminds us our economy is held hostage by crooks.

He posts useful charts on the falling corporate share of tax payments that drives our imposed austerity. See Kevin Drum's version. (h/t Pax)

Links for November 17

2011-11-17T09:22:00.000-08:00

Cal State Trustees flee meeting room: still vote to increase Fees by 9%.

Student Regent speaks out against the postponement of this week's Regents meeting.

LAO predicts low revenue: Huge budget cuts are on the way. LAO estimates up to 2 Billion in cuts. Dan Mitchell looks down the road at the likely effects.

Occupy Cal Reminds teaches the Administration some History. And some poetry as well. (t/h the 2 Cs)

UC Berkeley calls in police from surrounding towns to clear out Sproul Plaza. More here with pictures.

Now we know why Birgenau wasn't paying attention last week: Berkeley signs agreement to establish an engineering center in Shanghai. (t/h CC)

Most Californians think Higher Education is heading in the wrong direction. The definition of the problem is mixed.

Community College Students find it increasingly difficult to get into the classes they need.

Campaign to refuse student debt.

Cutting Public Sector is Killing the Job Market. And with it the economy.

More on the Federal Role in the crackdown on Occupy encampments. Mayors and Police Chiefs reportedly coordinated tactics and plans. And who is paying for the raids?

Occupy Wall Street marches on Wall Street. Returns to Park.

Occupy movement Subject Guide.

Occupy UCLA.

Job Prospects for College Graduates expected to improve slightly.

From the Way-Back Machine: Berkeley Faculty Condemn Outside Political Interference in the University's Business. (t/h CC)

Links for November 16

2011-11-16T09:32:00.000-08:00

Huge Protests at UC Berkeley. Here is a slideshow. General Assembly votes to rebuild encampment. Here was a live blog. Protests across the CSU and UC systems: UC Davis with a slideshow. Occupy Northridge.

Robert Reich: "The Days of Apathy are Over." With Video. Even NPR realized it was important.

UC Berkeley Law Professors Condemn Police Violence.

Nathan Brown: Debt, Privatization, and Police Violence.

CSU Fees still going up.

Occupy Wall Street Looks to the Future as it debates its next steps. Looks like the smearing of the Occupy Movement may be having some effect on its public support.

Here is more on the press repression at the invasion of OWS. Of course the NYT is still trying to pretend it was all thoughtful and considerate.

And more data on wealth inequality.

Duke and Harvard making the Berkeley administration look even worse.

And in other news:

NSF Funding may receive a boost.

Links for Tuesday November 15th (Updated Throughout the Day)

2011-11-15T10:25:00.000-08:00

Day of Action Live Blog November 15th (Daily Cal)
Regents' cancellation coverage: LA Times; San Jose Mercury News (with UCPD chief quote that the protesters "chose physical confrontation")
Regents Cancellation doesn't slow protests at UC and CSU.
NBC LA says "leave the powerless Regents alone"
Occupy Student Debt
Decade-old decline in Illinois college attainment, which once led the country (Penn study).
Washington governor proposes an additional 15% cut for state's higher education system
Mayors coordinated on how to move against Occupations in their cities. NYPD moved against press as well as protesters. Was the Federal Government part of the planning?
Large Protests and Open University at Berkeley.
Occupy Movement spreading on California Campuses.

Resolution to Be Presented to the Berkeley Academic Senate in Response to Recent Acts of Police Violence

2011-11-15T10:01:00.000-08:00

The following is a resolution--drafted by members of the Berkeley faculty--to be presented for a vote at the Berkeley Academic Senate Meeting November 28th.

Resolution on Administrative Authorization and Justification of Police Violence

Against Non-Violent Campus Protestors

Whereas, Non-violent political protest engages fundamental rights of free assembly and free speech, and

Whereas, November 9^th efforts by protestors to set up and remain in a temporary encampment near Sproul Hall constitutes non-violent political protest, and

Whereas, These non-violent actions were met with a brutal and dangerous police response (see, e.g., http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buovLQ9qyWQ&feature=share), a response authorized in advance as well as retroactively justified by Chancellor Birgeneau, Executive Vice Chancellor Breslauer and Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs LeGrand, and

Whereas, This is the third time in two years that such police violence has been unleashed upon protesters at Berkeley, with resulting bodily injuries to protestors, student and faculty outrage, a series of expensive lawsuits against the university, a tarnished university image, and a severely compromised climate for free expression on campus;

Therefore be it Resolved that the Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate has lost confidence in the ability of Chancellor Birgeneau, EVC Breslauer and VC LeGrand to respond appropriately to non-violent campus protests, to secure student welfare amidst these protests, to minimize the deployment of force and to respect freedom of speech and assembly on the Berkeley campus.

Links for November 14th

2011-11-14T14:37:00.000-08:00

REGENTS POSTPONE THIS WEEK'S MEETING
Skepticism is expressed about the official explanation of cancellation

Occupy Cal call for Tuesday's strike and other actions. Further Information can be found here.
CFA on the CSU November 17th Strikes.

UC Berkeley Chancellor Birgeneau describes November 9 video of police attack on protesters "very disturbing"

Student Activism on Margo Bennett and UC Policy.

Hundreds of Berkeley Teachers sign letter condemning last week's police violence.

Members of the Free Speech Movement speak out.

Hundreds of Police move against Occupy Oakland. More here. Occupations are still growing despite official opposition.

UCMEP announces Mockupy Cal in solidarity with Birgenau and the Plutocracy.

CFA on the growing campus inequalities and declining services under Chancellor Reed.

Gary Rhoades: "Enough is Enough."

New Study debunks the claims that Texas professors don't work.

Dean Baker points out why socking the middle class to pay down the deficit is not necessary despite what the political class wants you to believe. He also talks about why economists believe in myths.

You will be shocked to learn that in Britain private Academy Schools are receiving public funds and giving executives and administrators huge salaries.

Heat Teachers' Union in England vote to go on strike for the 1st time in their 114 year history .

One of Cameron's Ministers suggests that the Government would be okay with it if workers only went on 15 minute strike later this month.

Glenn Greenwald revels in the media's reverence for meritocracy as evidenced by NBC's hiring of Chelsea Clinton (as well as Jenna Bush and Meghan McCain).

Why I Got Arrested with Occupy Cal--and How

2011-11-13T14:54:00.000-08:00

By Celeste Langan

I participated in the Occupy Cal rally on Sproul Plaza on November 9 (my sign, "We're Afraid for Virginia Woolf," made it to the Daily Cal’s top 10) and stayed for the general assembly. The organizers of Occupy Cal asked those who were willing to stay and link arms to protect those who were attempting to set up the encampment; I chose to do so. I knew, both before and after the police gave orders to disperse, that I was engaged in an act of civil disobedience. I want to stress both of those words: I knew I would be disobeying the police order, and therefore subject to arrest; I also understood that simply standing, occupying ground, and linking arms with others who were similarly standing, was a form of non-violent, hence civil, resistance. I therefore anticipated that the police might arrest us, but in a similarly non-violent manner. When the student in front of me was forcibly removed, I held out my wrist and said "Arrest me! Arrest me!" But rather than take my wrist or arm, the police grabbed me by my hair and yanked me forward to the ground, where I was told to lie on my stomach and was handcuffed. The injuries I sustained were relatively minor--a fat lip, a few scrapes to the back of my palms, a sore scalp--but also unnecessary and unjustified.

I do plan to file a complaint with UCPD, less because I desire particular police officers or their supervisors to be reprimanded or penalized than because I want to initiate a review of the police action. They could have taken the time to arrest us without violence for refusal to disperse, but instead seem to have been instructed to get to the tents as quickly as possible, regardless of the consequences to the protesters. Since the tents posed no immediate threat to public safety, the officers’ haste and level of force were unwarranted. They could have led me away by my proffered hand, rather than by yanking my hair.

As to why I was there: as a tenured professor (and tenure can be defined as a right granted to occupy a position on campus without threat of eviction for expressing dissent) I wanted to express my concern about the double threat posed to the ideal of liberal education by the rising cost of tuition and, more generally, the burden of debt. On the one hand, as many have pointed out, rising costs limit access. On the other hand, the debt students incur as they pursue a liberal arts education also poses a threat to free inquiry, that central value of democratic society. Students are so concerned about their economic futures that they sometimes feel constrained in their choice of courses and majors, too anxious about acquiring the proper credentials for employment to explore areas of intellectual inquiry that might interest them but don't appear to have an instrumental value. When I was teaching Walden last month, I couldn't help but notice how incisively Thoreau diagnoses the effect of "insolvency" on the capacity to think and live freely; the time people spend reading and thinking, he suggests, is increasingly regarded as time "stolen" and "borrowed" from wage-earning.

I note the same narrowly pragmatic thinking in the haste with which the police acted and Chancellor Birgeneau's justification for his decision to authorize the police action: "We simply cannot afford to spend our precious resources and, in particular, student tuition, on costly and avoidable expenses associated with violence or vandalism." No one wishes to "waste" resources in this climate. Yet if one follows this logic one can see the looming threat: lawful assembly, peaceful dissent, and free inquiry—even so-called “breadth requirements”--can all entail some cost. They interfere with “getting and spending.” Dissent, like free inquiry, is sometimes inefficient. Dissent doesn't always have a "deliverable." But it takes time to determine a just answer to “What is to be done?’.

In my opinion, time to think is exactly what gives liberal education the value that it has. It appears that Chancellor Birgeneau does not always recognize this value. At the very least, his (unwarranted, unjustified) assertion that linking arms "is not non-violent civil disobedience" suggests that he has not taken the time to engage in a conversation with Berkeley scholars in various departments who have thought long and deeply about the nature of violence and non-violence and the difficulty of making such a distinction. The police, who are given the impossible mission of using "minimal force"--a concept with similar conceptual ambiguity--in the pressure of the moment, also did not take time to think, to consider a response appropriate to the circumstances. But I noticed that after the arrest, they took sweet time—something like four hours—to write reports and “book” us, and then, after another four or five hours, to release us from jail. The delay was caused in part by the initial haste: the officers trying to write the reports had no idea who the arresting officers were, and therefore no idea of what we should be charged with. According to the ACLU, they then violated procedure by not releasing us immediately after issuing the misdemeanor citations. There was another delay in releasing my bookbag, which had been confiscated at the arrest; when I tried to retrieve it on Thursday morning, I was told that it had to be “processed” as evidence and wouldn’t be released until Monday; only after members of the Faculty Budget Forum complained on my behalf did I get a call from the UCPD saying that I could pick up my bag on Friday. (The students who were arrested were still unable to retrieve their belongings.)

The contrast between the haste of the arrest and the delay of the aftermath suggests that the problem isn’t so much a lack of time as one of its distribution. A “solution” to the global crisis of insolvency may depend on a similar change of perspective: from "lack" to the distribution of resources like time, land, water, wealth, and education.

Account of UCLA Protests; ACLU Complaint to UC Berkeley; Call for General Strike

2011-11-12T13:01:00.000-08:00

Toby Higbie's account of UCLA's November 9th protest is below. With additional links 1.

Video on Occupy Cal and the General Assembly. Good discussion, very large crowds.
The Occupy Cal General Assembly called for a general strike (education sector) for this Tuesday, November 15th. The strike is " in opposition to the cuts to public education, university privatization, and the indebting of our generation."
The UC Davis Faculty Association has endorsed the OccupyCal strike call.
In an open letter to UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, Teachers at UC Berkeley condemn police violence.

The spectacle of police brutalizing members of our community does inestimable damage to our integrity, our reputation, and our standing as a public university.
We are appalled by the Chancellor’s account, in his November 10 “Message to the Campus Community,” that the police were “forced to use their batons.” We strenuously object to the charge that protesters—by linking arms and refusing to disperse—engaged in a form of “violence” directed at law enforcement. . . .

In a letter to the UC Berkeley chancellor and police chief, the Northern California ACLU demands an independent investigation of police treatment of Occupy Cal (letter here). This is accompanied with Public Records Act requests for twelve categories of records.
A UC Berkeley police captain claims linking arms is not non-violent, cited by Digby.
The Daily Cal published an op-ed calling for UC Berkeley administration accountability for police actions - including the use of Alameda County sherriffs on campus.
A UC Berkeley spokesperson promises an investigation of police violence (with additional video footage).
Steven Colbert covers it too.

There will be cuts: California's revenues are off by $1.5 billion. They will be off by an additional $1.7 billion if Jerry Brown's assimilation of local redevelopment funds to the state budget loses in the state Supreme Court.

ReFund California Rally and March at UCLA
by Toby Higbie, Department of History, UCLA
Pictures

About 300 students, faculty and staff gathered on the UCLA campus Wednesday, November 9th for a rally and march sponsored by the anti-austerity groups ReFund California and Make Banks Pay. The noontime rally on Bruin Plaza featured speakers the academic student employees union (UAW), UPTE, and undergraduate students. The message was consistent: budget cuts and tuition increases are becoming intolerable. The crowd was predominantly undergraduate students, along with a handful of faculty and folks from AFT, AFSCME, and the skilled trades. The rally was more informal than similar events in the past, suggesting to me that students (rather than the unions) were the driving force.

Members of the Los Angeles janitors union (SEIU) were on hand in solidarity, and later to provide security for the march. Speaking in Spanish, with translation by union staff, they connected their own workplace struggles to the defunding of higher education. As low wage immigrant workers, their American Dream is not simply to get higher wages, but also to send their children to college. That was an inspiring message for the university crowd, reminding us that higher education is relevant to people well beyond the campus community.

Following the rally, demonstrators marched south along Westwood Blvd, taking up the entire southbound lane, on their way a Bank of America branch. While the crowd chanted “Banks got bailed out, we got sold out” organizers draped ATMs with caution tape and posted the ReFund California Pledge to the front door. The march then continued to the busy intersection of Westwood and Wilshire where it blocked six lanes of traffic. There were some tense moments as drivers, frantic to get wherever they were going, weaved through the crowd and some of the braver demonstrators stepped in to block their way.

As the police arrived in large numbers, about a dozen protesters, apparently all students, sat down in the middle of the intersection beginning a long standoff. Those who did not want to risk arrest stood on the sidewalks, dividing the crowd across the four corners of the vast intersection, but setting up spirited call-and-response chanting that echoed off the walls of the corporate office towers surrounding us. In the center, the dozen expecting to be arrested sat in a circle facing outward, chatting with police and the National Lawyers Guild and taking interviews from the news media. After a long, long wait, 15 or 20 unmarked police cars pulled up and disgorged the tactical team that would eventually perform the arrests. Apparently, this is standard procedure with LAPD: overwhelming numbers to prevent any trouble. Completely professional, but it seemed like overkill. The crowd was militantly peaceful, and the only danger of violence came from the bankers and brokers angry that their commute would be delayed by a display of democratic citizenship. After the arrests, the remaining 50 or so students marched together back to campus, stopping briefly to protest once more at the Bank of America.

All in all, it had the feeling of a dress rehearsal for something bigger.

Another Reality (Remarks at UC Irvine Protest, 11/9/11)

2011-11-11T09:21:00.000-08:00

By Rei Terada

In March 2010, about a thousand people at UC Irvine marched here and on the street, on University Avenue. I was amused that a couple of commentators wrote afterward that UCI students were “protesting reality.” Someone headlined a blog for The Atlantic, “Students Protest University Cutbacks, Reality”. This remark assumes that once reality has been determined, you have no right to say anything further. That assumption can be refuted in a number of ways, even if—and that’s an “if”—we don’t dispute the amount of the state budget shortfall since the recession of 2008. First of all, anyone who cares about reality should always ask, what makes the reality the way it is? What are the conditions on which reality depends? That is the question known as “critique,” and critique is the mainstay of the Enlightenment education that Universities historically support.

The condition of the reality that UCI students protested in 2010 is that the state has been defunding public education since before the global financial crisis. The UC Regents claim that this in turn is another inalterable and involuntary reality that they can do nothing about, but that’s not true. A few years ago it would have cost the median California taxpayer $32 to return UC funding to 2000 levels. Since then the economy’s grown even worse, and now it would cost $49. The UC Regents’ point of view is that the California taxpayer is ignorant or selfish, and should just cough up the $50—that the Legislature should impose a tax. But by doubling tuition since 2000, long before the global financial crisis--last week proposing to raise it again, 16% a year for the next four years--and giving almost a third of the places (31% at Berkeley now, for example) to out of state students paying $36,000 a year, the UC Regents give California taxpayers no reason to fund an education that they’re being told is no longer for them. Middle-class Californians can’t afford the tuition increases; they can’t bear to take on any more debt; and they have no reason to contribute when qualified students are no longer guaranteed a UC education.

The leadership of the university bears the responsibility for these community-destroying policies. The more they turn from public to private money, the less incentive the legislature has to raise revenues on the university’s behalf; and the more they privatize the university, the more middle-class tazpayers are right to feel that this whole project is no longer theirs. These arguments have been made in financial detail by Robert Meister of UCSC and Christopher Newfield of UCSB. UC Administration is turning the wheel in the wrong direction; and they have hired a president, Mark Yudof, who came in with a template for privatizing the university before the global financial crisis had even happened. President Yudof stated in print in 2007 that he intended to raise tuition by 32%--exactly the amount that the Regents did raise it in a first so-called “response” to the crisis: a response that predated the supposedly inevitable problem. The condition that supports our current reality of massive tuition increases and cuts is a program of privatization that actively weakens the foundations of citizen support and then blames the citizens for not being supportive.

Our reality would have been different if instead of making students pay—-and pay-—and pay—-and pay again, the leadership of the university had said something like the following:

“The state has been decreasing funding for decades, and we can’t go on any more. Now we’re in crisis. And in crisis the education of students and the well-being of our community comes first. The educational part of the budget will be the last to be cut. We will not be asking more from our lowest-paid and most vulnerable workers than we ask from our highest-paid workers. We will not be laying off janitors and food service workers while giving expensive raises to ourselves. We’ll be cutting from management. We’re asking for salary reductions from everyone making over $100,000 a year. We’re trying to renegotiate our contracts so that private money donated to us for non-educational purposes, such as construction, can be turned toward education and student support. And the cuts that we do have to implement will be shared equally, because every part of the university is equally valuable. To do otherwise would be crazy: it would pit groups of people against one another at the time when they’re most stressed. If everyone shares the cuts equally, everyone will realize that this concerns them personally. And we’ll restore the resources if and when our situation gets better. Nothing that currently exists is to be closed down permanently, even if we can’t run it right now. By staying together, we can affirm our community, whatever the practical hardships might be.”

That’s what I would have liked to hear in another reality, and that’s why this reality is well worth protesting.

You might think that even if reality is worth protesting, protesting doesn’t work to change it. My impression, for what it’s worth, is that student protests have slowed down the process of privatization, and in fact are the only thing that has had any impact on the process. It’s also clear that student protests globally have, along with Tunisia and Egypt, created the conditions for the current Occupation movement--California student protesters especially. Protesting reality today is no longer a joke in the way commentators thought it was in 2909-2010.

All of that said, however, it also makes sense to think of what the community wants to do in a way that goes beyond what it wants someone else to do, whether that’s the State or the UC Regents or local administration. It’s good, in the manner of Occupy, also to ask what the community wants to do regardless of what others think. It’s not just a matter of being in a terrible situation, but of how you want to live it. Just as there are things that money can’t buy, there are things that cuts can’t take away if you don’t let them. You can cancel a philosophy class, but you can’t defund critique--not against informed resistance. In the future it might become the case that you have to organize more of your own education; if classes you want to take no longer exist, you may need to connect with other people who want to learn it and teach it, and with their help take initiative to make it happen. While UC is pushing toward online classes for pay, we could make our own courses and post them online for free. Professors could allow in their classrooms UC students who are no longer enrolled because they couldn’t afford to pay or because they couldn’t make it academically because they were working so many hours. Students could donate their used textbooks to an exchange where you could leave an expensive textbook that you no longer needed and pick one up for free that you did need, instead of selling books back to the bookstore.

The fact is that UCI students already do a lot of things like this. There are already entirely student-run concerts and student-run lecture series and panels and radio stations and poetry societies and magazines to which the official culture of the university pays no attention, but this unofficial culture is thriving nonetheless. There is hardship involved in this--that is, doing these kinds of things is a lot of work and time, and it’s never for pay. But they make this time and place something that the plans of administrators are incapable of recognizing. What I’m describing now is not so much protesting reality as modifying it while continuing to protest it. The possibility of doing more of that, on the horizon now maybe by necessity, is the hidden potential of our lamentable situation: the possibility that students might transform the university at the moment when it’s being abandoned by its managers.

Officer 14 Tweaks on the Line- Occupy Cal 11/9 (UPDATED ACROSS THE DAY)

2011-11-10T09:57:00.000-08:00

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Penn State students riot for football coach fired in coaching staff molestation scandal (grand jury report). The Nation follows up with a comparison of Berkeley and Penn State.

Crowds at Occupy Cal - Daily Cal Coverage. Mercury News coverage with photos. SF Chronicle story and slideshow. The AtlanticWire has a digest of news coverage.
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Occupy Santa Cruz. Occupy UCLA. Occupy UC Irvine, Occupy San Diego

And here is a first-hand report from Irvine:

Report from Irvine by anonymous
"We had a spirited teach-in and march in which about 400 participated, followed by a General Assembly in front of the administration building. TA and lecturer union reps, librarians, queer student groups, graduate and undergraduate students, and faculty spoke at the teach-in. Between the teach-in and the GA the students marched into ongoing classes and through the science library and the UCI bookstore. They chanted "Students' needs, not corporate greed" and "Educate, Occupy. Take back UCI." The OC Register has of course written us up with special attention to our profanity. (At one station of the march, a student began his speech with "My name is Alexander, I'm a student here and I'm fucking pissed off!")"

Berkeley City Council has decided not to renew mutual aid agreements with UCPD and neighboring police forces in aftermath of recent police violence. h/t CC

Thousands March in London.

OWS and the Reeducation of Desire.

Links for November 9

2011-11-09T20:30:00.000-08:00

Students, staff, and faculty engaged in protest across the UC and CSU systems today. So far I've tracked reports from Berkeley, Channel Islands, Davis, Fresno, Irvine, Long Beach Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego, Santa Cruz, and Sonoma State. I'm sure there will be more news as time goes forward.

Protests in London. Surprise, Surprise, the Police were there as well.

CSU threatens to raise tuition next year by 9%.

Yudof starts to walk back early reports of tuition freeze. Now it depends on receiving large infusion from the state.

Did you notice that the state budget is looking really bad for next year?

The LAO responded to Brown's pension proposal.

Links for November 8

2011-11-08T20:21:00.000-08:00

Yudof announced no mid-year tuition hikes. I wonder if he is nervous about protests at the Regents' party next week?

UC Davis plows ahead with plan to increase out-of-state and international students.

Bob Samuels discusses the rising inequality at UC here and here.

CSU faculty, librarians, and coaches to hold 1 day strike at two campuses.

As the CBP notices, some of California's wealthiest are CEOs of corporations that pay no federal income taxes. Somehow I suspect that is not because they don't make enough to pass the threshold for taxation.

Ohio voters reject GOP effort to attack collective bargaining. Even the NYT notices.

Remember all those conservative claims that the poverty statistics overstated poverty? Well the newer method has taken a look--and the numbers are even higher especially among the elderly. Of course you can't convince a University of Chicago economist of the facts..

Check out our new Documents for Dissidence box in the upper right. It provides announcements and background information and analysis that might be useful for upcoming protests.

The Story that Needs Changing

2011-11-07T07:49:00.000-08:00

In the last few weeks I've given a number of talks on college campuses about the self-feeding devolutionary spiral in puliic university funding. I've tried to describe the mechanisms that are continuing to accelerate decline, and identify points of resistance that could help with rebuilding. The goal must remain mass quality rather than limited access to premium content. Our higher ed system is stratified enough as it is, and "private good" solutions only make it worse.

Robert Mejia offers an overview of my "Rebuiling the Public University" talk at the University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign. By coincidence, I spoke in the same room a few hours after UI-Urbana faculty had met their new systemwide president for the first time, and heard him speak directly about his plan to take control of enrollments away from each campus and centralize them systemwide. This struck me as the kind of administrative exercise that makes an executive's mark without improving the institution itself, and that distracts attention from the deeper issues of rebuilding funding and upgrading academic goals.

An example of the deeper issue occurred the day after the coverage of the Illinois faculty meeting, in an article in the Los Angeles Times on how California public universities are leading the way in public tuition increases averaging over 8% last year. The article started with a causal connection between legislative cuts to public funding and increases to student tuition. But it then cited an expert saying that the real problem wasn't public funding cuts but public campus inefficiencies, particularly the inefficiency of faculty who don't teach enough.

My critique of the elements of this damaging story is posted on the University of Illinois Faculty Association page. I would like such critiques to be part of a broader effort to change the public narrative about the everyday work of public universities, so that yahoo solutions can't so easily get dropped into the middle of articles to distract the reader from the real issue.

The real issue is that imposing higher teaching loads and more on-line instruction on public universities won't reverse the relentlessly growing gulf between elite privates and their once-elite public peers. The economists Robert Archibald and David Feldman, in their recent book Why Does College Cost So Much?, note that the inaugural, 1987 edition of the U.S. News and World Report rankings had eight public universities in their top 25. In 2010 the top-25 includes exactly 1 public university (UC Berkeley, at #21).

The rankings are of course rather silly, but they do include measures such a per-student expenditures and average student-teacher ratios. On these measures of quality, public universities have been allowed to decline for decades. The decline is directly connected to falling public funding, which has never been replaced by the private sources so ardently discussed, in spite of the decades their advocates have had to achieve this replacement.

The result is stark, in Archibald and Feldman's terms:

In 1980, public universities spend roughly seventy cents per full-time equivalent student for every dollar that private schools spent. By the middle of the 1990s, that figure had fallen to fifty-three cents per dollar. These changes have consequences (p. 237)

We already know where the combination of cuts and "efficiencies"is taking us -- towards a class hierarchy of private over public, in which the latter, who teach close to 4/5ths of all college students, are forced to lower quality further while pretending they are not.

Teaching processes can always be improved, but public university executives need a much tighter focus on closing the funding gap with private universities so that we can close the gap in quality of service. Playing around with alternatives to rebuilding funding will only make the public-private gap that much wider .

Links for November 4

2011-11-04T15:16:00.000-07:00

In Oakland, Occupy supporters and city officials debated at a public meeting. And you can get more information here.

Assembly Budget Committee expects 5-8 Billion dollar deficit next year.

Students and professors are trying to steer graduates to useful work, offering alternatives to Wall Street.

Silicon Valley Investor donates $150 Million to Stanford Business School for program to fight poverty; proves irony is not dead.

Harvard Students Walk Out of Economics lecture class because they want education not propaganda. Not sure what else they expected from Harvard economics though.

In Texas, one community college system board is debating whether to end tenure, they have already set up rules to punish tenured faculty from "grumbling" about superiors.

Occupy Wall Street is organizing a march against the bogus bank fraud settlement. Greg Palast has the latest on Goldman Sachs' effort to pressure OWS's bank. They are using taxpayer money to do so by the way.

Dean Baker points out that, despite some improvement in the latest job figures, at this pace it will take 33 years for the unemployment rate to return to pre-recession levels.

Thousands are moving their money to credit unions.

NYT tries to claim that poverty isn't so bad. No joke.

Have a good weekend.

Links for November 3rd

2011-11-03T21:29:00.000-07:00

#OccupyOakland closes down nation's 5th biggest port. UCOP appears to have asked its employees to stay away from the office, located near the occupation, and to work from home.

Colorado votes down a tax-increase measure for education. The state governor wants to balance the budget by cutting higher education but much of the legislature is resisting. The governor is a Democrat, and those opposed to higher ed cuts are Republicans.

In Wisconsin, Gov Scott Walker is targeting the UW system, with 7% of the state budget,for 38% of the cuts.

Bob Samuels analyzes UC compensation data, with special attention to salaries over $200,000.

Average student debt is also up 5% this year, to over $25,000. The figures exclude debt incurred by students at for-profit colleges, as only 5 of 471 for-profits reported student debt figures. Parental loans push the average to over $34,000. California remains a "low debt state" (a bit over $18,000) (the report is here).

Higher Ed Watch discusses a cause identified in a recent Department of Education report: "the country’s public and private four-year colleges are now spending a greater share of their institutional aid dollars on trying to attract the students they desire than on meeting the financial need of the low- and moderate-income students they enroll."

Those mulling the fate of public pensions get a good reminder from David Atkins of the incentives in the financial community for putting public assets into play.

Students of management mishaps should make sure they didn't miss this NYT piece on cognitive fallacy: decision-makers routinely ignore evidence of the failure of their decision processes (h/t to Marcia). One apparent cause: "people who face a difficult question often answer an easier one instead, without realizing it."

The three buildings at UC Davis with the top platinum rating from the Green Building Council are Gallagher Hall, home of the UC Davis School of Management,the Robert and Margrit Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science, nd the Tahoe Environmental Research Center in Incline Village, Nevada.

Links for Wednesday, November 2

2011-11-02T19:18:00.000-07:00

Occupy Oakland Schedule for General Strike. Live updates. Other information. Video.

Colorado Voters say no to increasing taxes to pay for education.

Texas Board of Regents invests in company that trolls for course grading data; mandates that campuses sign on to it.

Regional Public Universities are lessening research commitments.

Universities intensify efforts to break into commercial world.

We Can Restore California's Higher Education...If the Leaders Lead

2011-11-01T20:39:00.000-07:00

By Stanton Glantz

cross-listed from KQED

Conventional wisdom says the UC and CSU funding crises are the inevitable result of recession-driven budget shortfalls, and the only solution is to soak students and their families.

But it's bunk. Shifting costs from the public to students is a deliberate act of public policy.

Well before the recession, Arnold Schwarzenegger and the UC and CSU presidents signed the Higher Education Compact. UC and CSU accepted huge cuts in state support and agreed to rapid annual tuition increases in exchange for a broken promise of future financial support.

And, though a Democrat, Jerry Brown is accelerating the transformation of higher education from a public good the people of California provide for the benefit of all to a private good students buy.

This is a radical reversal of the spirit that built California. But what's been done can be undone.

In fact, it would not cost much to push the "reset" button on California's entire higher education system, from community colleges to UC's graduate programs. We can roll fees back to 2000 levels, restore state funding and accommodate the students who've been forced out. And it would only cost the median taxpayer $49.

To today's jaded sensibilities that sounds far-fetched. But it wasn't so long ago that a passion for that kind of thinking built California in the first place.

This affordable "reset" will never happen unless university officials stop acting like highly-paid executives at financially failing corporations, start behaving like stewards of a public trust and start making the case to do it.

Links for Monday: Trick or Treat Edition

2011-10-31T21:25:00.000-07:00

Is that a costume you're wearing? Gov. Jerry Brown comes as the Honest Republican, proosing that California seek another Bottom-5 ranking, this one for oldest workforce unable to retire on their pensions.

The relevant UC Senate committee comes as the Partner in Reform, responding that the many good parts of Brown's proposal are the same as recent UC pension changes.

UCLA Management professor David Lewin comes as a Mangement Consultant, but offers the most incisive perspective on pension reform, similar Republican measures in other states, and the downside for both the economy and future retirees.

Digby comes as the Angry Middle, tracing one-way austerity to hijacked tax policy.

The UC Berkeley Labor Center comes as the Debate Reframer, analyzing how the systematic destruction of retirement risk-pooling has spread retirement insecurity

Coming as the Pained Observer of Endless Non-accountability, David Dayen chronicles the nothingburger of non-penalties for massive mortage fraud, with ominous forebodings of a non-recovery in mortgage Chernobyls like California.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities comes as the Party Pooper, noting Democrats throwing away their high card on issues like Social Security -- cost-sharing for better overall social results.

My friend Jan comes as the Angry Trader, wondering when they'll spin a UC campus off as a Special Investment Vehicle so she can short it.

President Emeritus of St Lawrence University Daniel F. Sullivan comes as the Higher Learning

Happy Halloween!

Links for Friday, October 28th

2011-10-28T16:28:00.000-07:00

Student Regents speak out on rising tuition. Daily Cal has an interview. And here is a presentation.

Brown Proposes reducing pensions for public employees. LAT can only discuss it in terms of politics.

Gavin Newsom vows to change the narrative on higher education cuts. Do you think the Regents would even understand the concept?

The NYT wants to know: Is the Obama proposal on college debt any good?

Republican Presidential Candidates oppose Federal Support for College Students.

Texas starts eliminating Physics departments.

Texas regents are eager for "accountability" for others. For themselves? Not so much.

The Obama administration is going to let Jerry cut Medi-Cal benefits.

Have a good weekend.

Links for Wednesday, October 26

2011-10-26T13:26:00.000-07:00

There are more concerns being raised about the proposed Negotiated Salary Program.

Surprise! Higher Ed costs continue to rise. More data can be found here.

An even bigger surprise: California leads the nation in tuition increases.

States have been shifting burdens not only onto students but onto the Federal Government.

Obama is going to announce some rules changes for student debt.

Occupy comes to UCLA. Oakland Police Tear Gas Occupy Oakland.

Clair Potter thinks about the relationship between academics and the rest of the 99%.

UK cuts in Education spending are the largest since the 1950s.

Links for Monday October 24

2011-10-24T17:12:00.000-07:00

Not to worry: Dan Greenstein and other proponents of UC online assure us that it will maintain quality and not be used to downsize faculty.

Students are confused by UC's new admissions guidelines.

Task Force recommends changing the priorities of California's Community College System.

Mark Sumner has some history on the attack on public employee pensions.

No wonder Eric Cantor was scared to face the public at Wharton Business School. Oh, and that doesn't count his telling students to work multiple jobs because he can't be bothered supporting Pell Grants.

Rick Scott wants to be Rick Perry: Now he is going after Florida's Public University faculty.

Speaking of Rick Perry: it looks like the Texas Miracle was dependent on the expansion of public sector jobs. Now that they are being cut I wonder what is going to happen to that jobs record?

Senate Panel moves to lessen Federal role in K-12 education.

Schools across the nation are bracing for more cuts.

Obama administration working on mortgage repayments to help the ~~banks~~ borrowers.

Dick Walker and Martin Bennett propose a new New Deal in response to the jobs crisis.

CUNY has expanded its remediation programs.

You will be shocked to hear that at Division 1 schools spending on athletics grew at double the pace as spending on academics.

In the run-up to fee increases, UK college applications have dropped 12%.

NSP: Eroding the Salary Scales, Undermining Faculty Governance

2011-10-22T11:27:00.000-07:00

By Joe Kiskis

A previous post here provided a brief description of the proposed APM 668 Negotiated Salary Program (NSP) and comments from Professor Stan Glantz on the detrimental consequences of the similar Health Sciences Compensation Plan (HSCP), long used in the UC health system enterprises. In this post, I offer comments directly related to language of the proposed NSP policy for the general campuses.

The merit and promotion academic personnel system at the University of California is a great asset of the institution. It is a well-documented and carefully followed system that closely associates rank, step, and salary with accomplishment in teaching, scholarship, and service as evaluated by faculty peers.

For many years, UC salary scales have lagged those of comparable institutions. To partially compensate for this, there has been a growing use off scale salaries, which are set on an individual and ad hoc basis.

It is now widely recognized that this decoupling of salary from advancement in rank and step is undermining unique strengths of the UC academic personnel system, and there have been repeated calls to reform the salary scales so that the traditional value of the merit and promotion system is re-established. Unfortunately the proposed NSP would not be a reform but rather an additional administrative mechanism that circumvents the merit and the promotion system.

The proposed APM language delegates important decisions on how or even whether to implement the NSP policy to chancellors and permits fine grained rules with potentially wide variation between campuses and academic units.

Although it is often assumed, and it is the case in the examples accompanying the draft APM, that the money used to pay a faculty member a higher salary will be very closely associated with non-state funds generated by that faculty member, in fact, there is nothing in the draft APM that makes that association.

Since tuition is non-state money, it or other non-state UC general funds could be diverted to pay NSPs to individual faculty members at the discretion of administrators.

Since almost all faculty would be "in good standing," and thus, in principle, eligible for an NSP salary increase, essentially everyone would have an incentive to constantly petition their department chair and dean for an NSP. The new process for determining an NSP requires proposals and review with participation from the faculty members making requests, department chairs, and the EVC/Provost. Of course this is in addition to the administrative overhead of the existing personnel processes.

The policy is vague on the role of the Academic Senate in the process. In a fine grained implementation, this could vary by campus or even by college or school. Over time this is likely to further undermine the merit and promotion process and make salary increasingly unrelated to academic accomplishment as evaluated by faculty peers.

The policy creates additional incentives for the pursuit of external funding with the likely consequence that research directions will be further determined by funding entities rather than by faculty creativity and initiative.

The proposed APM includes a provision for a "contingency fund." This is mentioned but not described in the proposed policy language. Implementation of this fund is another item at the discretion of chancellors. From the material accompanying the proposed policy, one concludes that the purpose of the contingency fund is to serve as an insurance policy. In the examples in that accompanying material, there would be a tax on the state-funded, pre-NSP base salary of participating faculty members (3% in the examples). The combined money thus collected would make a campus contingency fund that would be used to continue the NSP for any faculty member for the duration of the NSP agreement even if the external fund source from which the NSP is drawn disappears. So state money is set aside to insure that the salary increases of NSP participants are continued even if the external funds are not available.

Thus the proposed APM 668/NSP goes in the precisely the opposite direction of reform to the processes of salary determination at UC. It would further undermine the merit and promotion system and institutionalize a "system" for determining salaries that is non-transparent, arbitrary, inequitable, open to abuse, and decoupled from peer evaluation of accomplishment in teaching, research, and service.