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Subject: <edu-factory> 'California is Burning' - Chronicle of Higher Ed
California Is Burning
By Marc Bousquet
Yesterday the University of California Regents walked into a room packed
with gasoline and nonchalantly lit their cigars -- handing down tuition
increases that will hike 2010 rates 44 percent over 2008, turning higher ed
into a gated community for the offspring of California's "Real Housewives"
class. Their bet is the usual bet made by the comfortable: Someone else will
get scorched.
Why wouldn't they feel safe? We live in an upside-down world where bankers
-- not the capitalists, just their paid lackeys -- get bonuses larger than
the deficits of entire states, and the money pimps at The Wall Street
Journal are saying, yeah, take it, citizens, take it, ha-ha! And say thank
you, too!
The misery of tens of millions in every sector of the public -- in
education, health, income security, could be swept away if we forced more
bankers and executives to live like teachers and nurses for a year or two.
California Is Burning
That pent-up misery is volatile, though, and starting to flow around the
feet of the bankers. More and more of us are waking up to one thought: It's
the capitalism, stupid!
For over a year now, students, faculty, and parents across the globe have
been turning out by the hundreds of thousands to protest American-style
"reforms." You know: junk curricula, volunteer teaching, the return of
indentured servitude, corporate domination of research, ruthless
administrator control. The New York Times serving up Stanley Fish ("Do your
job, punk!") as the face of higher ed.
Today, American students, staff, and faculty are protesting American-style
education. Led by staff strikes and student occupations, a pillar of fire is
racing across the California desert toward the huge air-conditioned
mausoleums of the trustee class.
No question, it's not yet an inferno.
But last month's occupations featuring a few dozen are now occupations of a
few hundred: 500 students have set up barricades at UC Santa Cruz; hundreds
more marched chanting through hallways at San Francisco State, taking over
an administrative building.
At least a thousand students and faculty will face off against riot police
and join staff picketing the Regents in Los Angeles.
Yesterday 14 students were arrested for chanting and singing "We Shall
Overcome" during the regents' theater piece ("we're having a meeting here
and trying to pretend that the outcome is in doubt!")
At 6 a.m. this morning, two or three dozen students stormed UCLA's Campbell
Hall, chaining the doors.
Give Thanks for the Disobedient
This has actually been a season of swift victories for faculty and students
-- wherever we've seen truly organized and militant faculty, as with
AAUP-Oakland in Michigan in October, or grad students, as at Illinois this
week, the administration has quickly caved.
Of course the administrators caved -- the real power is where it's always
been, with the mass of us, if we can just keep ourselves together long
enough to say "no" in one breath.
The California situation is bigger and more complex.
And the faculty with the loudest voices, those in the tenure stream at the
UC campuses, aren't unionized: Most of them and many of their students have
little experience with solidarity with other education groups, much less
other labor sectors.
They're doing their best, but they can't help themselves. So far it seems
they want to save their idea of Berkeley and other public research
universities -- and just don't care all that much about Cal State-Fullerton,
third-grade teachers in Modesto, or the nontenurable faculty they work with
every day.
Because, honestly, if they did care about other educators and workers,
they'd have been out in the streets long ago! And not too many of them are
in the streets right now.
The biggest problem with this California movement is that the folks who are
actually in the streets -- staff, especially, but grad students, contingent
faculty, and undergraduates -- are letting the tenured do the talking for
them.
I mean, these are decent folks doing the talking. Don't get me wrong. Still,
why not shut up and hand the mike to the militant, articulate, intellectual
staff, for a change?
As higher ed becomes a mass experience -- as more and more workers in all
sectors become highly educated, whether they learn in schools or on the job
-- it is harder and harder to pretend that higher ed is just about the
reproduction of the Bush family's privilege. Today, higher ed is a field of
working-class struggle, and one of the reasons it's still hard to see that
is the hierarchical, undemocratic tendency represented by handing the mike
to Judith Butler. Again, no offense to Butler and other mike holders. (After
all, I'm holding one right now, aren't I?)
This could be a moment where the tenured might -- just might -- have
unexpected humility thrust on them and achieve enough overnight wisdom to
subordinate their Stanley-Fish-sized egos and take leadership from
pipefitters, nurses, and food-service workers.
We'll see.
In the meanwhile, I'll be giving thanks for the disobedient, those chaining
themselves to doors and shutting down the absurdity of business-as-usual
while thugs in suits hand over our future to yet another movie actor.
Marc Bousquet is the author of How the University Works, which exposes the
seamy underbelly of higher education-a world where faculty, graduate
students, and undergraduates work long hours for fast-food wages.
- Marc Bousquet
Chronicle of Higher Education
2009-11-19
http://chronicle.com/blogAuthor/Brainstorm/3/Marc-Bousquet/81/
Monty Neill, Ed.D.
Interim Executive Director
FairTest
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Boston, MA 02108
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