Dreaming of public universities for the public

“Many of us who labour in the university do so because we believe (or hope) that it is somehow different than working for exploitative corporations. In the US, the ideal that citizens should receive free education – further extended through land-grant initiatives of the late 1800s that granted states federally controlled land for the express purpose of building universities to give access to and teach all citizens practical arts and the classics – allows us to believe that public universities are indeed for the public, and based on the mission of providing knowledge and resources for the public good. However, even those of us organizing during the strike quickly realized that mantras of ‘Keep the University of Minnesota Public’ were misguided as the University of Minnesota and most public institutions have never really been public and have systematically excluded groups. A liberal arts education, even in the paradigm of land-grant institutions, has always been defined as the knowledge of elites, thus we cannot continue thinking about the university as an idealistic space, or that there is something that we nostalgically want to return to. We cannot continue to fetishize the roles of students and faculty as pursuers of knowledge when it is clear that knowledge has a price and is marketed as a product. Clearly, we must redefine the space of the university, our labour, and the relations between workers. These are the parameters to build solidarity: all as workers differently situated in the same economic/factory system.”

- quote from:
Amy Pason “We Are All Workers: A Class Analysis of University Labour Strikes”, Ephemera, volume 8, number 3 (august 2008) (pdf file for article),
- an article in the new issue (8.3) of ephemera: theory & politics in organization entitled 'University, Failed' -- just released at www.ephemeraweb.org.
Quote:
This issue is a call to discussion regarding the modern university, and what we seek to achieve with it is to highlight the discussions already taking place within the university, and to spurn on some new ones. Yet, as the entrance to today's Humboldt University tells us, such interpretation is not enough. What counts is change. Such change cannot, we believe, be achieved solely by the university itself. This insight creates huge challenges for other issues and interventions regarding the university of tomorrow: to open the discussion to other shareholders and constituencies within the knowledge factory, to pave ground for other residuals, where a university may take place.
Where are these places? And what do 'the people' – the students, the politicians, the medias, the immigrants, the elderly, the people – want with the university? Underneath the seductive toasts and touching speeches that the university enjoys again and again, unmistakable signs of mistrust secrete. A dialogue about this mistrust (which dwells well, also, within the university itself) may be what lies ahead, meshed up with the ongoing grand failure of the university.
Journal’s special issue site; download the whole special issue.

From the staff and students of The University of Paris VIII Vincennes-Saint Denis

This post is forwarded from the edu-factory list and can also be seen at the Crafting Gentleness blog.
- - -
I'm passing this along from a friend at paris VIII involved in the
recent actions against the LRU there, and the subsequent effort to
reinvent the university taking place among the students and faculty...

for some more info (mostly in french) see
http://universiteparis8engreveactive.org/

-john

For seven weeks, a massive movement has been growing within the French
University system, uniting professors, students and staff in a struggle
against Sarkozy's new university reform law, the law concerning the
"Liberties and Responsabilities of the Universities" (LRU).

The University of Paris VIII Vincennes-Saint Denis, with the support
of University administration and personnel, has been on "active
strike", offering alternative classes and workshops open to all. Today
the movement is at a turning point, revealing the depth of the crisis.

In most of the French Universities, with the exception of our own due
to this administrative support, riot police are present on the
campuses and their buses line the surrounding streets. Aided by
private "security" guards, the riot police have entered the campuses
in order to violently break the strikes, occupations and picket lines.
Plainclothes police patrol the corridors. During the protests,
students have been targeted, beaten and arrested, sometimes resulting
in major injuries. Some of the University presidents are therefore
closing the campuses preventatively, while others call upon such
public or private "forces of order", and create a climate of
fear. Despite this situation we are confronted with a near-total media
blackout, as to the movement's size and its demands (the abrogation of
the law LRU), as well as the violent repression, due to the fact that
the dominant media are friendly with the government.

The law LRU was adopted by Parliament on August 10, 2007, in the
height of the summer vacation, without consulting the university
community. It attacks the foundations of the French University system
as a public institution with a scientific and cultural
mission. Although the system is arguably far from perfect, it has
remained an institution of higher learning that is accessible to all,
without entrance examinations or elevated tuition.

This law imposes the logic of the market onto the Universities, on
many levels. It forces them into competition with one another for
students, financing and prestige, thus turning them into enterprises
and creating a classist hierarchization between campuses. The few
democratic administrative structures that currently exist will
disappear, centralizing power in the hands of the president and a
board that will include representatives from private firms. Professors
and staff will be threatened with job insecurity, with the new
possibility of hiring adjuncts and temporary workers. Even the
academic departments are forced to compete with one another for
students and financing, allowing private interests to help determine
course content, and offering classes in function of the needs of the
current job market. The door is opened to elevated tuition. Students
thus become clients, and the university an enterprise. We believe that
a democratic society needs public universities whose mission it is to
develop the critical spirit of all citizens, and that access to the
university is a fundamental right for all. This is why our movement is
essential for the future of the University, in France and beyond.

We are therefore calling upon you to ask for your solidarity and
support, by inviting you to take part in our movement. At the
University of Paris VIII Vincennes-Saint Denis, a university with a
radical history and situated in the richly diverse North-eastern
suburbs of Paris, we have set up an "open university". We would like
to invite you to come and lead a workshop, consisting in giving a talk
and opening up a debate. Your work has inspired us and we have taken
it seriously; we therefore invite you to come and put it into practice
with us. Together we can discuss issues relating to the University
even beyond the abrogation of the LRU. Your particpation would be a
great help to our movement, which is in need of exterior support.

We thank you very much, and greatly hope to receive your positive
response.

Sincerely,

The collective of students, professors and staff of the University
Paris VIII Vincennes-Saint Denis