November 19, 2009, 12:57 PM ET

California Is Burning

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.

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Comments

1. rbrunson56 - November 20, 2009 at 05:51 am

Hi Marc,

You offer an interesting mix of information. Not quite sure of the correlation of some of it though. You suggest that some individuals in the financial world are corrupt. I wholeheartedly agree. That's an indictment of the individual, or groups of individuals, not capitalism itself.

You then attempt to draw a correlation to tuition increases in California, when no correlation exists. Whether and how California funds education is an unrelated issue. The lack of understanding of the masses, held by those in power, is common, whether in finance or education. Once again, however, that is not a function of capitalism.

That lack of understanding applies to almost all situations at all times, education, government, business, finance, etc., and is a function of being human, not a particular economic system.

Wishing you well.

2. janiszewski - November 20, 2009 at 09:57 am

Stunning comment, mgozaydin. No...I can't speak to having actually experienced the happiness of Communism. My guess is 100 million voices silenced under "the experiment" would unanimously disagree with your assessment. Comments to the effect that millions have been crushed under the wheel of Capitalism don't seem to temper that fact all that much.

3. v8573254 - November 20, 2009 at 11:10 am

"I'll be giving thanks for disobedience." Great line! I'm brining it to my Thanksgiving table, and, fortunately, my hosts will agree me.

You're using Prof. Fish as a standin, of course; he's beyond worrying about tenure.

4. siguccs - November 20, 2009 at 11:18 am

Marc, do you have anything original, interesting, or useful to say?

5. _juggernaut_ - November 20, 2009 at 11:24 am

Mgozaydin - You're lack of understand about communism, and the true form of capitalism is disheartening. America has, for some time now, existed as a synthesized version of capitalism and socialism. That is why we are experiencing the issues we are today.

Beginning in the early 20th century with Woodrow Wilson, the underlying philosophy of American domestic policy changed forever. The truest form of capitalism, that existed for close to a century, began to encompass more and more progressive ideas and principles. With the implementation of the income tax, social security, unemployment benefits, and medicare/medicaid this country has not been strictly capitalistic for some time. This country needs to reflect on its own history, and the history of other nations to find out when, where, and under what economic and social system the peoples of a nation prospered the greatest. Capitalism works.

6. paulfain - November 20, 2009 at 11:54 am

So to Bousquet, capitalism bad - militancy good. He's gotten that point across in many Brainstorm paeans to civil disobedience. But his personal agenda adds little substance to the debate over budget priorities for California's public universities. Bousquet talks about a "pillar of fire" racing across the state. He's right when it comes to overheated rhetoric, particularly his own.

7. laoshi - November 20, 2009 at 12:26 pm

It's the fascism, stupid! Now that Big Government has taken over Wall Street, with a pending takeover of the student loan racket, all the financing lines the pockets of bureacrats and politicos. If we had capitalism, universities would be privately subsidized, and price their tuitions according to the marketplace.

You all voted for change, now suck it up!

8. gtkarn - November 20, 2009 at 03:59 pm

Greetings from Oregon where, finally, the disturbances in California have received publicity. Meanwhile...

Here the latest really big news is the proposal by Mr. Frohmeyer to turn Oregon's state system into "public corporations" since the current system is so woefully underfunded by the state. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the idea of a public corporation (Would it be like PBS? Would colleges do fund raisers? Pass the hat at sports events? Would individual "programs" be sponsored by private corporations or foundations? Would that be such a bad thing?).

Anyway, this idea is receiving lots of attention and many see it as the next big thing to rescue higher ed. If anyone has any insight about this "university as public corporation" idea, could you share it, please, along with any thoughts you may have about whether "public" education is still a viable concept. I remain concerned that with the reduction of accessibility, those profiting most from the cost of higher education are the lenders who enjoy increasing student debt.

9. aslade - November 22, 2009 at 07:30 pm

from one temporary lecture who went on strike despite the danger to my employment, i just want to say thanks for a great article. its surprising to see more wisdom and bravery in the Chronicla of Higher Education than I've been seeing from my co-workers and classmates, but nice nevertheless...

10. haohtt - November 23, 2009 at 09:46 am

Communism is not the answer to higher education's woes. As long as those of us who are in the public college/university arena believe that the only sources of funding are 1) state/federal allotments; 2) limited term grants and 3) tuition, then we will never resolve this issue. One thing missing from these kinds of discussion is the fact that the biggest budget item at colleges and universities is personnel salaries and benefits and when we take these off the cost-cutting table, we have relatively little elbow room to cut. Faculty going on strike force administrators to promise salary hikes based on money that they do not have (much like our Congress). No wonder they "quickly cave" (also like our Congress. Lacking any sense of entrepreneurship or business sense (which is why we cannot get corporations to fund what they perceive as a wasteful and inefficient system with no accountability), public colleges and universities see no alternative than to raise tuition (eventually, the money must come from somewhere). Also, for those who love to pick the low-hanging fruit of criticizing corporate salaries while exalting unions: How about using those wonderful research skills to investigate the salaries, benefits, travel, vehicles, cell phones and other compensation for top union officials? How many of those "live like teachers and nurses"?