U Tube
To see part one of Marc Bousquet’s interview with Cary Nelson, the president of the American Association of University Professors, click on Twilight of Academic Freedom.
Mar 11 2010
System Crash: Risk, Crisis, Literature
Call for Papers
System Crash: Risk, Crisis, Literature
2010 SFU English Graduate Student Critical & Creative Conference
Simon Fraser University: (Thursday June 10th – Saturday, June 12th)
Submission deadline: March 15th
We are surrounded by the language of crisis: financial meltdown (economic systems), environmental catastrophe (ecological systems), terrorist attack (nation-state systems). These crises permeate our discourses of global, regional, institutional, and personal experience. The university is no exception; it too faces crises of disintegrating disciplinary boundaries, collapsing departments, reduced funding, and radical shifts from textual to visual culture. Despite the material (and discursive) specificities of these recent crises, the language of crisis and concomitant sense of immediacy are nothing new; authors, theorists, cultural producers, and readers have always struggled with the crises of their times. Some attempt to contain crisis, while others attempt to incite it; all make reference the fragility of socio-economic, socio-political and ecological systems that are precarious by their very nature. The 2010 SFU English Graduate Student conference asks the question of how literature and culture engage with crisis now. Thematic streams and suggested panels include: Neo-liberalism and the University, Canadian Literature and Borders, Historical Representations of Crises, Subject Matters, Crises of Form. We welcome submissions on these or on related topics addressed in the questions/keywords below:
KEYWORDS: etymology and history of the crisis – economic history – medium/form/genre – language/linguistics – media and technology – mimesis – copyright – property (private and public) – capitalism – the culture industry – the body – food and food production – sustainable development – consumption – faith/belief – subjectivity – neoliberalism – the nation-state – citizenship – immigration – borders – disciplines/divisions/departments – education.
QUESTIONS: What is the history of crisis? How has crisis been represented? What were/are the mediums, forms, and genres used to represent crisis? How has technology altered form, content, and subjective experience? How has capitalism altered our understanding of the subject and its body? How is the body consumed and commodified? How are geo-political borders, crossings and exiles represented in literature, art or film?
The 2010 SFU English Graduate Student conference is pleased to present two events designed to inform, compliment and expand upon the formal panels of Friday and Saturday. The first encourages creative submissions that deal with the art(s) of crisis and the second is an activist plenary (Saturday, June 12th) that will explore possibilities of social activism in the university. Below is an outline and prompt for creative submissions:
Creative Presentations, Discussions and Investigations: Friday, June 11th:
Reading, rousing, and responding to categorical crises, creative texts may incorporate any or all of the above critical classifications. Conversely, submissions to our creative cluster may seek to challenge or disrupt whatever is holding these theories in place—stirring textual crises that tremble from the level of the word and shake loose the binds of social order. Writers should consider: how do we write “going wrong”? And more importantly, why do we try?
The 2010 SFU Graduate conference is also pleased to announce this year’s Keynote speaker, Dr. Marc Bousquet, author of How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low Wage-Nation (2008). Dr Bousquet will be speaking during the first day of the conference, Thursday June 10th.
Proposals for complete panels are encouraged.
Please submit a 300 – 400 word abstract by MARCH 15, 2010 to gradconf@sfu.ca
Mar 03 2010
Edu-Factory Web Journal: Zero Issue
Journal Launch
The innaugural issue of the Edu-Factory Web Journal has been published. You can find the zero issue on the “double crisis” at this address.
After more than three years of vigorous discussion, a collective book published in various languages and countless mobilizations all around the world, the edu-factory collective has decided to adopt a new instrument: a freely downloadable journal. Like all our projects, this journal isn’t simply another publication of experts but an active transnational laboratory founded on open, collective cooperation in both its contents as well as its editing and production process. It is an experiment born from the common production of shared knowledges, and resistance to exploitation inside and outside the universities. Moreover it is a step toward the goal of building up autonomous institutions. The journal has two sections: “occupations” and “anomalies”, which aim respectively to analyze transformations of the university and conflicts in knowledge production. The edu-factory journal has an editorial board,comprising critical scholars,students, and activists from all around the world, and it is open to free contributions.
Finally, by experimenting with forms of collective reading, and review, it aims to question the traditional peer review processes, and to open new spaces of thinking, learning and struggle within and against the hierarchies of the global knowledge and university market.
Introduction
Edu-factory collective
The Double Crisis: Living on the Borders
Occupations
Christopher Newfield, The Structure and Silence of Cognitariat
George Caffentzis, The World Bank and the Double Crisis of African Universities
Jon Solomon, Reappropriating the Neoliberal University for a New Putonghua (Common Language)
Stefano Harney, In the Business School
Ned Rossiter, The Informational University, the Uneven Distribution of Expertise and the Racialization of Labour
Anomalies
Marc Bousquet, After Cultural Capitalism
Revista Multitud, The Double Crisis of the Chilean University
Pedro Barbosa Mendes, The Double Crisis of the University
Claudia Bernardi and Andrea Ghelfi, We Won’t Pay for Your Crisis, We Will Create Institutions of the Common!
Lina Dokuzoviæ and Eduard Freudmann, Squatting the Crisis. On the current protests in education and perspectives on radical change
Appendix
Uninomade, Nothing Will Never Be the Same. Ten Thesis on the Financial Crisis
Mar 03 2010
March 4th Strike and Day of Action in California
From: The California Coordinating Committee
Date: Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 9:42 PM
Subject: March 4th Strike and Day of Action
To: CUPE 3903 and YUFA
Via: Bob Hanke
March 4th is before us! This Thursday thousands of students, teachers, staff, parents and workers from all over California, the nation and the world will come together in a show of solidarity that will embody the will and strength of a people ready to take a stand against the attacks on public education and demand their right to a fully-funded, quality education and an end to the layoffs and re-segregation in public education and social services.
Throughout the state of California and beyond tens of thousands of people are organizing for the Strike and Day of Action on March 4th indefense of public education. To get involved and participate in the struggle please join us in the events planned for March 4th — below is an updated list of events that will be happening on March 4th in California. We welcome all to participate in this historic day!
Form San Diego to Eureka, from California to New York, from the Mexico to Brazil, from England to Germany, from Portugal to Greece, from Russia to Japan the March 4th Strike and Day of Action will mark the moment when students, teachers, staff, parents and workers began turning the tide against the attacks on our right to education. March 4th is just the beginning of this monumental movement.
We would like to thank our brothers and sisters from New York, Mexico, Brazil, England, Germany, Portugal, Greece, Russia, and Japan for their words and actions of solidarity.
The updated version of the March 4th list of events and more information on March 4th Strike and Day of Action can be found on our website. If you have any questions about March 4th, please email march4strikeanddayofaction@gmail.com.
Feb 24 2010
Annex Live Event: Exploring the Precarious Margins of Labour
Book Launch
(excerpted from Y-File, February 24, 2010).
York political science Professor Leah Vosko, Canada Research Chair in Feminist Political Economy, explores the precarious margins of contemporary labour markets in her new book, Managing the Margins: Gender, Citizenship, and the International Regulation of Precarious Employment, being launched tomorrow.
The launch for Managing the Margins (Oxford University Press, 2010) will take place Thursday, Feb. 25 at 7:30pm at The Annex Live, 296 Brunswick Ave. at Bloor Street in Toronto. The launch will feature remarks by Deena Ladd of Workers’ Action Centre, Professor Kiran Mirchandani of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, York sociology Professor Mark Thomas and Laurell Ritchie of the Canadian Auto Workers union, as well as a performance by jazz musicians Kye Marshall and Dan Ionescu and a display of photographic artworks by Susana Reisman.
The book looks at how over the last few decades there has been much discussion of a shift from full-time permanent jobs to higher levels of part-time and temporary employment and self-employment, and the result that despite such attention, regulatory approaches have not adapted accordingly. Instead, in the absence of genuine alternatives, old regulatory models are applied to new labour market realities, leaving the most precarious forms of employment intact.
The book places this disjuncture in historical context and focuses on its implications for workers most likely to be at the margins, particularly women and migrants, using illustrations from Australia, the United States and Canada, as well as member states of the European Union.
Managing the Margins provides a rigorous analysis of national and international regulatory approaches, drawing on original and extensive qualitative and quantitative material. It analyzes the historical and contemporary interplay of employment norms, gender relations and citizenship boundaries.
Jan 18 2010
TSoC&I Event: Labour Struggles in the Edu-factory
A Toronto School of Creativity & Inquiry Event
In collaboration with Edu-factory and Autonomedia Labour Struggles in the Edu-factory: Discussion and book launch for Toward a Global Autonomous University, edited by the Edu-factory collective
Tuesday, January 26
7:30-9:30pm
Toronto Free Gallery
1277 Bloor Street West (by Lansdowne Ave)
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Jan 04 2010
What is to be Done in 2010?
The President’s “Report to the Community 2009” mentions the 2008-09 CUPE strike once but neglects to consider how the “economic downturn” (aka recession) is giving impetus to the growth of contract faculty (aka adjunct or contingent faculty). Hidden contract faculty at York, both unionized and nonunionized, look forward to the new year and the President’s Task Force on Faculty Life, Learning and Convergence, and its recommendations for transforming precarious into sustainable academic livelihoods. For starters, the Task Force could study and report on an Affirmative Action Convergence Program that would unite YUFA full-time tenure track and tenured faculty and librarians with contract faculty. For qualified contract faculty, the Task Force could recommend that Academic Employee Relations start to define seven years of intensive ”part-time’ teaching as probationary towards tenure. Finally, how about implementing a quota that would limit the percentage of ‘part time’ hires, starting with the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies (FLA&PS), in order to address the casualization of academic labour and the disappearance of tenure track employment?
While we wait for this Task Force to be struck and redefine the possible, the good news is that there is no shortage of money at York. According to Shoukri’s report, “Despite challenging economic times, the campaign has raised more than $190 million towards its $200 million goal.”
While CUPE Unit 2 members may look forward to initiatives that address the sustainable livelihoods issue, we can read the news that is fit to print in the Education Life section of the The New York Times:
The Case of the Vanishing Full-Time Professor
By Samantha Stainburn (excerpted from The New York Times, December 30, 2009)
THE REALITY
If you’ve written a few five-figure tuition checks or taken on 10 years’ of debt, you probably think you’re paying to be taught by full-time professors. But it’s entirely possible that most of your teachers are freelancers.
In 1960, 75 percent of college instructors were full-time tenured or tenure-track professors; today only 27 percent are. The rest are graduate students or adjunct and contingent faculty — instructors employed on a per-course or yearly contract basis, usually without benefits and earning a third or less of what their tenured colleagues make. The recession means their numbers are growing.
“When a tenure-track position is empty,” says Gwendolyn Bradley, director of communications at the American Association of University Professors, “institutions are choosing to hire three part-timers to save money.”
THE PROBLEM
While many adjuncts are talented teachers with the same degrees as tenured professors, they’re treated as second-class citizens on most campuses, and that affects students.
It’s sometimes harder to track down adjuncts outside of class, because they rarely have offices or even their own departmental mailboxes.
Many patch together jobs at different colleges to make ends meet, and with commuting, there’s less time to confer with students or prepare for class. It’s not unusual for adjuncts to be hired at the last minute to teach courses they’ve never taught. And with no job security, they may consider it advantageous to tailor classes for student approval.
HOW TO
Colleges tend to play down the increasingly central role of adjuncts. This fall, the American Federation of Teachers complained that some top-ranked universities exaggerated the percentage of full-time faculty to U.S. News & World Report for its rankings. U.S. News declined to investigate.
Another source is the “Compare Higher Education Institutions” search tool at A.F.T.’s Higher Education Data Center. These are the stats that colleges report to the federal government.
Ask admissions officers point-blank: what percentage of classes and discussion sections are taught by part-timers and graduate assistants, and are they required to hold office hours?
For entry-level classes — the ones tenured faculty famously don’t want to teach — the squeaky wheel often gets a full-time professor, says Harlan Cohen, author of “The Naked Roommate: And 107 Other Issues You Might Run Into in College.” “If you’re not thrilled with your adjunct professor,” he says, “go to the head of the department and see what options are available. They may put you in a different section.”
CAVEATS
If you take a strict anti-adjunct stance, you may miss out on some star instructors — Barack Obama taught a seminar on racism and the law at the University of Chicago Law School as an adjunct. Professoring part-time is a hobby for overachieving architects, graphic designers, lawyers and entrepreneurs, all of whom can share insights from real-world experiences that full-time academics haven’t had.
“Before making assumptions that an adjunct is bad, Google them,” Mr. Cohen says. “You may find that real estate teacher is one step removed from Donald Trump, and these are the types of people you want to meet.”
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Dec 03 2009
Students Shouldn’t Pay for Crisis
Underfunding shortchanges students
by Mark Langer, President of the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations
(excerpted from the Toronto Star, Wednesday, December 2, 2009)
In the recently published book, Academic Transformation: The Forces Shaping Higher Education in Ontario, co-authored by Ian D. Clark, Greg Moran, Michael L. Skolnik and David Trick, the authors argue that the current model of university education in Ontario is “unsustainable.”
They conclude that our university system can only be sustained if we create a new model, with new universities that offer just undergraduate degrees and employ faculty who spend the majority of their time teaching, performing little or no original research. The book is thoughtful and well-written. But the conclusion it reaches, simply put, is wrong.
It’s not our university model that’s the problem in Ontario. It’s the funding, or more accurately, the lack of funding. For more than a century-and-a-half, Ontario has been a world leader in providing affordable public education to all, but it is abandoning that commitment.
The Ontario government’s per-student funding to universities has fallen since the 1970s from $6,500 to $4,200 (in current, inflation adjusted dollars), a full 35 per cent, more than a third. California, by way of comparison, invests twice as much as Ontario per student: $9,500.
The results are stark. Skyrocketing tuition, enormous classes, fewer courses, impoverished libraries, outdated labs and equipment, shabby facilities – and most troubling of all – the underpaying, undervaluing and sheer exploitation of a generation of new faculty who work on short-term contracts for poverty wages, with no benefits and no job security.
Faculty share the authors’ concerns about the state of higher education in Ontario and have been warning about its deteriorating quality for years. But the authors’ proposal is not about offering a better education, or even the same quality of education. They want us to offer a cheaper education by way of lower-paid, teaching-only faculty.
The authors assert that university teaching is not enriched by university professors conducting original research in addition to teaching. But their assertion is belied by another publication from the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario, the same body that commissioned Academic Transformation. This publication points to a number of empirical studies demonstrating that university teaching and university research are related. It also points out that there are a number of studies which demonstrate that students support this view.
University research and university teaching depend on one another. Mutually supportive, together they enrich the students’ classroom experience while enlivening faculty research. So, contrary to the authors’ assertions, their model is not going to offer our students a better quality education. It will not even provide the same quality of education. It will give students only a lower-cost education, a degree on the cheap.
We can’t do university education on the cheap and do it properly.
Where will the necessary funding come from? There are really only two sources of base funding for Ontario universities: tax dollars from the province or student fees. Consequently, there are only so many policy options available to the government.
It can continue to underfund universities and force students to make up university budget shortfalls. (Today’s students are paying 43 per cent of university operating budgets, up from 15 per cent in the 1980s.) Or it can provide lower-quality education by creating universities whose lower-paid faculty are not robustly engaged in original, teaching-enhancing, research.
Or it can increase public investment in our university system.
Ontario’s gross provincial product grew at almost twice the rate of inflation between 1983 and 2008, meaning our wealth almost doubled. But we have not invested in our public services. Quite the opposite: the Mike Harris government’s tax cuts – mostly favouring the well-off – are costing Ontario’s fiscal capacity $11 billion a year.
Ontario needs to offer our students – not to mention our families, our society, our communities and our economy – a high-quality, world-class, university education. We don’t need to make our university system “sustainable” by sacrificing the next generation of students and the next generation of faculty. We just need to invest in higher education in a way that recognizes its importance to our future. We can afford it.
In fact, given the uncertain times we live in and the challenges ahead, we can ill afford not to.
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Nov 15 2009
Selling Out the Public University
Corporatized universities devalue education
by Howard Woodhouse (excerpted from the Toronto Star, November 15, 2009, p. A21)
Governments, corporations and most university administrators regard Canadian universities as “engines of economic growth.” Their function is no longer the search for truth, but to increase global competitiveness.
Critical questions about this new orthodoxy are rarely raised. The goal of education, after all, is the advancement and dissemination of shared knowledge, whereas the goal of the corporate market is the maximization of stockholder value. Unless these opposing value systems are recognized, the distinctive features of education are subjugated to the demands of the market.
Some university presidents have expressed skepticism toward the market model of education. Several years ago, Colin Starnes, then president and vice-chancellor of University of King’s College, argued that underfunding by the federal government over a 20-year period (amounting to 30 per cent on a per student basis) combined with increasing student enrollment (more than 60 per cent) had resulted in “a rising tide” engulfing universities.
Two related currents in this tide particularly concerned Starnes: The pressures and benefits of a vastly increased research agenda had, in turn, created a new environment in which undergraduate education was being “privatized” in the form of a dramatic increase in tuition fees. The distinctive features of openness, accessibility and quality were under threat. The net result was that the Canadian university system was becoming much more like that in the United States.
The pace of privatization has since increased, including further increases in tuition fees. The federal government would now have to invest an additional $4 billion a year in universities just to return to the funding levels of the early 1980s.
The Innovation Agenda was first introduced by the Liberal government of Jean Chrétien in the late 1990s. The panel which designed the initial report comprised CEOs of private banks and corporations in addition to the president of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council. Not a single faculty member was included on the panel of “experts.” The report defined innovation in exclusively economic terms as the overriding need for universities “to bring new goods and services to market.”
As a result, the federal government required universities to produce research that primarily serves the needs of the market. Matching funds for such research must be found from the provinces and the private sector. Universities and provincial governments have been forced to comply with an Innovation Agenda that undermines the institutional autonomy of universities.
The explicit goal of the Innovation Agenda was to have Canada move to fifth place in the world – from its position as 14th – in research support in order to increase economic productivity. But the agenda has failed to achieve its goal. Canada has not moved into the top five countries in the OECD, our capacity to compete in the global market is much the same as it was, and universities remain chronically underfunded.
A reasoned response would be for university presidents to call for a reassessment of the Innovation Agenda together with a large increase in government funding. But the presidents of the so-called “top five” universities (Toronto, British Columbia, Alberta, McGill and Montreal) have done the opposite.
They want a larger share of existing research money and graduate education for themselves. They believe that other universities should focus on undergraduate education, which is seen as a lesser activity. Indeed, University of Toronto president David Naylor has called for more “differentiation” among universities – just the kind of system which Starnes and others have been decrying.
In order to counteract this trend, faculty, students and the general public must remind governments of their responsibility to fund the entire university system as the only place in society where the critical search for knowledge takes precedence.
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Howard Woodhouse is professor of educational foundations and co-director of the University of Saskatchewan Process Philosophy Research Unit. His book, Selling Out: Academic Freedom and the Corporate Market, was published by McGill-Queen’s University Press.
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Oct 22 2009
Save the University
Can we see the future of York University in the University of California?
SAVE the University is a UC Berkeley faculty group dedicated to preserving student access and academic quality at UC. Both are imperiled by a UC leadership that has systematically failed to stand up for state funding.
Save the University, Wendy Brown, Part 6, is a YouTube talk by Professor Wendy Brown, Political Science, UC Berkeley, from a a Teach-in on the UC Crisis, September 23, 2009, on the meaning of the privitization of higher education and ten things that privitization generates as it brings market principles into the very heart of the university.
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