Robert Reich’s Mario Savio Memorial Lecture drew a couple thousand people to the Savio steps last night — fewer than the numbers who had already been there for hours, for the General Assembly of Occupy Cal. When Clinton’s Labor Secretary arrived, old people were really psyched. And surely he said some things worth saying. He was right to note that “the days of apathy are over, folks,” though he was a couple of years behind the curve. A more attentive thinker would have noted that the walkouts, occupations, and police brutality that shuddered and shuttered his campus (and others) two years before were equally large, equally non-apathetic, and declared the exact same concerns. They were perhaps less to his taste then, before they had been validated by a swelling popular movement that provides not just context but a kind of ideological cover for professional ideologues; the sudden discovery of this new movement is in fact a sterling demonstration of cowardice and belatedness.

Here are just one or two Reichian comments worth remarking upon further. “I will believe that corporations are people when Georgia and Texas execute them,” he said, referring to the Citizen’s United decision affirming corporate personhood. It’s a good line, but I will believe corporations are people when damage to their windows is treated as commensurate with violence against people. Oh, wait. By which I mean, if Robert Reich truly wants to distinguish between corporations and people, he needs to recognize that one exists at the expense of the other, that it is already a violent relationship, and that the laws he upholds — the same laws that murder prisoners in the south — offer corporations protections at the expense of people from the front to the back of the law books. Until then, his witty comment is in fact trivial, and as well an insult to those affected by the thoroughgoing racism (among other things) of the legal institution tout court.

But surely Reich’s most troubling suggestion of the evening was that “Every social movement in the last half-century or more, it started with moral outrage…and the actual lessons, the specific demands for specific changes, came later.” The meaning, we fear, is clear enough. There must be specific demands for specific changes. That is the inevitable passage of your sense that something is wrong, deeply and absolutely wrong, with things as they are. This is just a phase, people. And I am here with my understanding, and my belated recognition, to validate you. And once this sense of outrage has passed — moral outrage mind you — and you are ready to see what kinda deal you can cut, we will have achieved a mature movement.

To which the only adequate response is, go fuck yourself, Robert Reich. The outrage may be “moral” but it is also personal, with that special feeling one has for cops that beat you and administrators who lie about that and everything else. It is also intellectual, based on a clear class analysis and a better understanding of the direction of the global capitalist economy that you seem to have, with your dogmatic presumption of some return to a mildly better degree of wealth inequality that should set things to right. Maybe you should specialize in moral outrage, Mr. Reich, since you don’t seem to have much of a handle on the actual situation.

And more importantly, the outrage isn’t going to pass away into a set of banal, kinder-gentler-capitalism policy prescriptions of the sort you have poured into a series of phenomenally boring books. It isn’t going to wait for the opportune moment to sell itself for some trinkets, a signed apology letter, and three new and perfectly lax regulating agencies. Bargain, bargain — that is Moses and the prophets to your type. The limits of your imagination, Former Secretary Reich, are shocking in their obviousness and in their closeness. We do not require your paternalistic validation nor your liberal blandishments, which pretend to support and even to shared outrage, while buttressing ceaselessly the very world we have set out to undo.

But we do need something from you. Sandwiches. We are going to be doing a lot of camping, a lot or marching, a lot of occupying, and a lot of fighting, and we are going to need sandwiches. Please make yourself useful.

Signed, a hungry comrade

On May 17, UC President Mark Yudof delivered the keynote address at the annual meeting of the American Law Institute (ALI) in San Francisco (via). His talk, titled "Whose University? The Decline of the Commonwealth and Its Meaning for Higher Education," is available both in text form as well as in the video above. Those of us willing to subject ourselves to the torture of watching the full speech in the video, however, will discover that what Yudof actually said diverged in some fairly significant ways from the original script. What we want to do here is think through and analyze Yudof's invocation and mobilization of this highly specific language of protest, on which, as the title of the talk suggests, his entire argument turns.

Consider the following passage, which sets up the rest of the talk. We've edited the passage based on the video, striking out the words that were not said and adding in italics those that were inserted. It begins at about 11:05 in the video:

Now, during the many demonstrations against fee increases, students and their allies have consistently taken up the chant: "Whose university? Our University!" In my day, and admittedly when the dinosaurs roamed the earth, the battle cry was "make love, not war," a call to arms which I personally find more alluring. [Laughter]

But I do get the point the current students are trying to make -- that is, that they have a stake in the administration's decisions administration, they have a stake in the university, they have a stake in the decisions the legislature, the board of regents, and others make.

Still, the more I ruminate over the question "Whose university," the more I realize that this chant actually frames a more profound societal question, one with implications far beyond the University of California, or even public education in general.

It's a question for American society as a whole -- how to distinguish between the "public good" versus the "private good," and how to strike a balance between the two. A balance that navigates at least in my judgment a course between JFK's noble call and the rhetorical stance of some politicians that government is never the solution, only the problem.

Apart from his stale jokes, there are a couple things to notice here in the way Yudof frames the meaning of the rhetorical question and answer "Whose university? Our university!" As in the case of the protesters who chant these words, the question for Yudof is a rhetorical one -- the speaker already knows what the answer is. Tensions emerge at the seams, that is, over the path of the lines that we, with these words, attempt to trace between friends and enemies. What is at stake, in other words, is the meaning of the word "our" and, by extension, of its opposite, "them." Solidarity is how we define friends and enemies.

With this in mind, take a look at the gap between the prepared speech and the actual remarks. Yudof invokes the slogan, and goes on to claim that he understands where the students are coming from: "I do get the point the current students are trying to make." What they want is to have a stake in -- and here the speech diverges from the text -- not the "administration's decisions" but the decisions of the administration, the university, the legislature, the board of regents, and so on. In moving away from the prepared text, Yudof expands the political horizon of the students' supposed demands. How do we read this expansion? A generous reading might suppose that Yudof is acknowledging the call, for example, to "democratize the regents," that is, situating the protests within a broad political context and recognizing just how far-reaching these demands can be. (But we know what Yudof actually thinks about democratizing the regents: "I don't like it much personally speaking.")



Notably, one of the institutions that students supposedly want to have a stake in is not like the others: the administration, the university, and the board of regents constitute the governing apparatus of the UC, but to invoke the legislature is to shift the domain of struggle away from the space of the university. While seemingly expanding the political horizon of possibility, this move at the same time attempts to close the door on a set of tactics and strategies that have proven useful to students, workers, and faculty who see the UC administration as a necessary target in the struggle over public education and against austerity.

It is this move, furthermore, that enables the rest of Yudof's speech. The co-optation of the protest slogan allows him to push "far beyond the University of California, or even public education in general" to "American society as a whole." What he's driving at, in other words, is a more general question of political economy that focuses on the relationship between public and private goods. For Yudof, this argument serves a useful purpose because it situates politics firmly within the realm of the state and within the strategy of the vote. Politics is thus reduced to little more than a question of persuasion, of campaigning, of donations -- similarly, it is isolated within the relatively homogeneous field of political parties, all of which, it turns out, are down with austerity.

Yudof has other reasons for abstracting the conflict to an oversimplified discussion of public and private goods -- because his proposal is to sketch out a "balanced" approach or middle ground. This "hybrid university," as he calls it, occupies an uncomfortable position between the two poles. Uncomfortable because of its instability, oscillating from private to public and back again throughout the talk. But these are rhetorical hues -- the hybrid university that Yudof outlines ends up resembling a corporation more than anything else. He declares, for example, that universities must "look at their operations with a 'private' sensibility. They should establish realistic priorities, eliminate weak programs, adopt money-saving IT services, and aggressively reduce waste." Not only must it adopt corporate practices, but it must also be seen and imagined through a corporate, economistic lens:

[T]he university maintains a critical role in this state's wealth creation. Because if the pie doesn't grow, it's difficult to realize the ambition of bridging the divide between our private and public sectors.

So, in order to preserve these missions, public universities must be able to depend on a three-part funding base -- one of student-family contribution, private support and state funding.

The equilibrium of the "hybrid university," balanced between private and public funding, is undone: the "three-part funding base" has overturned the dual foundations that Yudof originally seemed to propose. It is now two parts private (the student-family debt burden along with corporate investment) to one part public (state funding). As Bob Meister has observed, however, the UC administration has a vested interest in shifting away from state funding, which comes with certain restrictions regarding how it can be used:

[A]lthough tuition can be used for the same purposes as state educational funds, it can also be used for other purposes including construction, the collateral for construction bonds, and paying interest on those bonds. None of the latter uses is permissible for state funds, so the gradual substitution of tuition for state funds gives UC a growing opportunity to break free of the state in its capital funding.

In attempting to shift the location of "Our university!" to the broad terrain of democracy and the "American public in general," Yudof constructs a unified "we" that seeks to conjoin the administration with the protesters, blurring and diffusing the tensions between these structurally opposed positions. Against this "we," presumably, stands the "them" of the state. But we know that those who run the UC are the state: Yudof himself was appointed by the Board of Regents, each of whom was directly appointed by the governor, commonly in return for political favors. Sacramento is everywhere. Yudof's "we" thus serves to confuse and disrupt our lines of solidarity. In the end, it is the UC administration that is to be held responsible for the tuition increases, for the layoffs, for programs eliminated, at the same time as they increase their own ranks and salaries. They are austerity; they are our enemies.

Austerity, of course, is implemented at the barrel of a gun. Behind every fee increase stands a line of riot cops. It goes without saying that Yudof is well aware of this. Returning to his speech at ALI, we find the following paragraph early in his prepared remarks:

I've been forced to preside over the furlough of employees, myself included, and a 40 percent increase in tuition. I've faced a variety of demonstrations -- a rich cornucopia of folks exercising their free speech rights. It's certainly given me a new perspective on my First Amendment course.

But what he actually says is this (starting at 9:10):

I've been forced to do some things which I daresay have not been popular with the faculty, the staff, and the students. I've presided over furloughs of virtually all of our employees, including me -- that really hurt, they celebrated my furlough days at the office; a 40 percent increase in tuition in three years; and I've found . . . that I always had an enthusiasm for the First Amendment. I taught a course on it, Constitutional Law. What can I say: California is a rich cornucopia of folks exercising their free speech rights. [Laughter] It's certainly given me a certain perspective on the Constitution: if I ever go back to law teaching, which I expect, I'm going to start with the Second Amendment, that's my plan. [Laughter] And I may deal with quartering of soldiers, I don't know, Letters of Marque and Reprisal, there are all sorts of things I could deal with. [Laughter]

This is lawyerly humor of the pathological variety -- it's no wonder the lawyers in the audience crack up. Yudof's response to the protests is not, as he suggests in the earlier passage, to "ruminate" on the students' demands, but to rhetorically draw his gun and quarter his soldiers (UCPD) on university grounds. This is the kind of leadership that ends in Jared Kemper pulling his gun on unarmed students at the UC Regents' meeting in November 2010; and police surveillance and infiltration of student groups across the UC system.


And those Letters of Marque and Reprisal?

In the days of fighting sail, a Letter of Marque and Reprisal was a government license authorizing a private vessel to attack and capture enemy vessels, and bring them before admiralty courts for condemnation and sale.

What we have here, in other words, is a declaration of war. But this war takes a very specific form: the state-sponsored and -authorized expropriation and privatization of enemy (in this case public) goods. In this little bit of improvisation, Yudof reveals, if not the administration's strategy of counterinsurgency, then certainly the violent logic of austerity in its clearest form. Behind heavily-armed and militarized agents vested with the full juridical authority of the state, austerity advances slowly but steadily.

* * *

What we mean when we shout "Whose university? Our university!" has little to do with the legislature or the American public in general. It has to do, as one might expect, with the university. It is our demand that those work at and use the university, those who make it run, those who schedule, teach, and take the classes, those who advise and provide support, those who maintain its spaces -- in short, everything but the bloated administration -- are the ones who should run the university. "We" face off against "them"; they are the management, the administrators. In the end, they will be abolished, as we have no need for their dismal cutbacks, their prefabricated capital projects, their rules of conduct, or their police. They are useless to us.

WHOSE UNIVERSITY? OUR UNIVERSITY!

There are currently about 15 union members in the UAW statewide office, located at 2070 Allston way, suite 205 in Berkeley. A rally is scheduled for 11:30 on Sproul Plaza, and will turn into a march over to the union office to support and/or join the occupation. We will continue to provide updates as the day goes on.

Here's an email from Mandy Cohen, current head steward for UAW 2865 and running for recording secretary on the AWDU slate, announcing and explaining the action:

This weekend I witnessed one of the craziest things I've ever seen in my life. On Friday the counting of votes in our union leadership election began in LA. I drove down with other Berkeley and Santa Cruz AWDU members when we heard that all of Berkeley's votes had been challenged (meaning they might be invalidated). We arrived in the early hours Saturday morning and were able to help count the votes for Santa Cruz, Davis, Irvine, San Diego, Riverside and Santa Barbara. by 5pm all of those campuses were almost complete--and AWDU actually seemed to be breaking even.

The elections committee called an hour recess--and three hours later came back to say that the count was suspended, the results so far calculated were certified, and the rest of the count (including all 1500+ votes from LA and Berkeley) and all of the challenges were passed on to the Joint Council--which doesn't meet until July! The elections committee then immediately fled the building and abandoned the ballots.

All the members at LA sat down in the union office to make sure the votes were secured and to start lodging our protests with media, union officials, etc.

Late last night we drove back to Berkeley, had a meeting, and are now sitting down (in good UAW fashion) in the statewide union office until the elections committee agrees to resume the vote count. We have one demand: COUNT OUR VOTES.

We cannot let our votes be thrown out! This is exactly why we were forced to form the Academic Workers for a Democratic Union more than a year ago, though these actions are almost incomprehensible in their disregard for union democracy and members rights. Please join us at the office as soon as possible (2070 Allston Way, Suite 205) or come to the rally at Sather Gate at 11:30 and march to the office.

A call is planned at 1pm today between incumbent leadership, AWDU members, the elections committee chair and our international representative from UAW. We need to show that our members will not allow their votes to be thrown out, that the count must be finished and new leadership instated.

For more info, including our responses to the attacks that have been emailed by Daraka Larimore-Hall, see: http://www.awdu.org/ and http://berkeleyuaw.wordpress.com/

[Update Monday 1:49pm]: Occupiers just voted unanimously to remain in the office indefinitely until their demand -- that all the votes be counted -- is met.

Here's our take on the whole story with the election fraud perpetrated by the Administration Caucus/USEJ. On one hand, we're so skeptical of these corporate hack careerist bureaucrats that at some level we're really not that surprised by their decision to exclude the ballots from Berkeley and UCLA and "partially certify" the results of the vote. On the other hand, it's so over-the-top, absurd to the point of being a cliche, that it's really difficult to understand how they could do something so obvious. It's like they're following a script written by third-rate union-hating conservative propagandists.

At any rate, we wanted to reference a couple of updates that our compañeros over at thosewhouseit have been posting. First, the hilarious claims made by Daraka Larimore-Hall, the Admin Caucus/USEJ’s candidate for President and the current President of UAW 2865, that in reality it's AWDU that's trying to steal the election. The evidence he presents is the above photo, which supposedly shows a member of AWDU tampering with a ballot box. There's just one small problem -- it was taken before the voting even began. "If it’s the end of the day," writes thosewhouseit, "then why is the sun shining from the east?" He's assembling the box.

Also, we wanted to post some info about the rally tomorrow (Monday) at UC Berkeley to demand that all the votes be counted:

I want to give you all a personal update on what has happened with the UC grad student union elections over the weekend. Most importantly, I am asking for everyone -- students and non-students -- to come out to Sather Gate TOMORROW (Monday) at 11:30am to demand our union count every vote. I know this sounds absurd, especially during finals week when we’re all stressed, but at this point we have to fight for our votes to be counted!

Here’s what happened:

Elections for UAW Local 2865 -- representing 12,000 graduate student workers UC-wide -- ended on Thursday afternoon. All ballot boxes were taken to UCLA to be counted on Friday. There were many challenges concerning the boxes, their seals etc, but on Saturday morning the elections committee decided to go on with the count and then deal with each challenge afterward, as according to our bylaws.

Halfway through the count on Saturday, it became possible that AWDU (the reform slate I’m affiliated with) had won the elections. Rather than continue the count, the chair of the elections committee decided that the elections were “partially certified” and that the more than 1,500 ballots from Berkeley and UCLA (nearly half of all ballots cast) will not counted till the next meeting in July.

To put this in perspective: This is as if, in the 2008 national elections, the Republicans had decided to not count the votes of California and Hawaii, and to let a Republican-controlled congress decide how to deal with those ballots later. Would you find such a process fair? I didn’t think so. Would you do something about it?!? Hell yeah!

We need YOUR help to make sure all votes are counted!

1. Gather for a rally TOMORROW at 11:30 at Sather Gate. Then we will march to the union office in downtown Berkeley to demand that our votes are counted (meet us there at 12:30 if you can’t make it to Sather -- 2070 Allston Way). We really need everyone to come out to put the political pressure on!

2. Email the current UAW President Daraka Larimore-Hall larimorehall@uaw2865.org and demand that all the votes are counted! Please bcc me [awadu@googlegroups.com] so we can keep track of how many emails are getting sent.

3. Tell your friends! Please forward this email far and wide -- we need all the support we can get, from students and non-students alike!

Thank you to those of you who voted in this last election and showed your support in so many tremendous ways. In some terrible twist, if it hadn’t had been for all of your efforts, our current union leadership would not be acting so scared right now. But right now, this isn’t about which side will win or lose the elections -- this is about upholding democracy and our right to vote. Please come out and show your support.

[Update Monday 9:45am]: Here's a statement from the guy in the photo:

I am the person in the picture. I would estimate that it was taken around 10:00 a.m. on Wednesday, April 27. It could be a little before or after; I wasn't keeping track of the exact time. I was setting up the polling place at Sather Gate on Wednesday morning. This is a picture from just before I opened up the poll. I had tested the ballot box, and the way the slot had been cut, you could not get ballots to go in because the second layer of flaps blocked the opening. So I opened the box to tape those flaps down, then closed it again. After doing that, I finished arranging the materials on the table and opened the polling place. My solution to the ballot box design flaw didn't work particularly well, because the flaps inside came un-taped and the ballots got a bit gummed up inside. But I didn't open it again, because by that point voting had started.

Again. Thosewhouseit has the press release. Here's the key paragraph:

In the wake of a hotly contested election for leadership UAW local 2865, reports from inside the vote count indicate UAW officials may be trying to steal the election. The count is unfolding currently in Los Angeles, where one member has challenged every box of ballots from UC Berkeley on fabricated grounds. The ballots being challenged represent 25% of all votes cast: about 800 of approximately 3,200 total votes in this election. The challenge threatens to disenfranchise every voter on the campus with the union’s largest membership. UAW local 2865 represents over 12,000 Academic Student Employees across the UC system.

Here's another update from last night:

Des Harmon, someone who is not a graduate student, not a teaching assistant, and not a member in good standing has challenged hundreds of ballots from Berkeley on grounds that are completely fabricated. And the current UAW administration has the votes on the elections committee here to let this farce stand.

Des Harmon is the Los Angeles Recording Secretary for UAW local 2865. Where does he stand on the election, you ask?

Note: Within 10 minutes of campaigning at the polls for AWDU on the first day of the election, I met Des Harmon. He tore the AWDU leaflet in front of my face – I’m sure this gives you a sense of where he stands. – Renee Hudson

Members of AWDU Berkeley left late last night to go down to LA to try to monitor the vote count and prevent this fraud from taking place. It's hard to say with complete accuracy at this point, but the word is that AWDU folks have responded by making some of their own challenges. We'll try to keep the updates coming. Regardless, if fraud were to happen, it would be the second fraudulent vote in the union in the last six months. Last December, you remember, there was a vote about whether to approve the shitty contract that our negotiators were telling us -- falsely -- was actually pure gold. (And look where that got us.) AWDU and others organized a "NO!" campaign, which quickly generated an astonishing amount of support. It's impossible to say for sure, simply because there weren't enough safeguards in place to keep track of what's happening, but it seems likely that the count was fraudulent. And this one is starting to look the same way.

Tragedy, meet farce.

[Update Sunday 9:20am]: Once again, it's fraud:

This just in: After leaving the counting for 3 hours, Admin Caucus members Jorge Cabrera and Travis Knowles, the latter of whom is the chair of the Elections Committee, certified the results without counting ballots from UCLA or Berkeley. We’ll post developments as they come in. As things stand, they are trying to postpone the count for a full two months until the next Joint Council meeting. Why else would they do this unless they were certain they lost?

The following is an open letter that's just come through the email:

May 1, 2011

Open letter from an outraged member of UAW and AWDU supporter.

This message goes out to everyone on the USEJ slate, everyone on the Elections Committee, and everyone who voted in the election.

I am hugely appalled by the incumbent caucus’ decision to prevent the counting of votes at UCLA and UC Berkeley. I have just read the official UAW email claiming that the election has been “partially certified.” AWDU members present at the Los Angeles UAW office have informed me that “At 8 pm after a break begun at 5pm in which election committee chair Travis Knowles was absent with opposition candidate Jorge Cabrera for 3 hours, the election committee returned and certified the election without counting Berkeley or UCLA ballots.” What, I wonder, could “partial certification” mean, and according to what definition of democracy? To be clear about what’s happened: imagine a U.S. Presidential election in which, in the eleventh hour of vote counting, the incumbent party—lets make them Republicans, for the sake of argument—decided not to count the remaining votes from, say, California, New York, Ohio and Tennessee. Let’s say that the incumbent party’s spokesperson went on air with the message, “Because there were challenges from both sides, and because things have been contentious, and because we’ve been counting for so long—48 hours!—we decided to call it a day.” What would you think? Would you believe the principles of democracy were being upheld?

I am even more appalled because today is May 1st, the one day of the year devoted to working men and women, not only in American, but in all nations. This is not the day to trample on the democratic rights of workers, but that is what the power-holders in USEJ have chosen to do. This is not the day to communicate to the honest workers of our local that their votes were not even counted for fear of the results. This is not the day to pretend that the “contentiousness” of an election is grounds for the nullification of the democratic process. On any other day, this behavior would be shameful and intolerable. But today, it is a gross insult and a travesty of the values of “social and economic justice” for which the incumbent caucus claims to stand. It is an insult to all of us, on both sides of the election campaign. This is not the day to defile the honor of public-sector workers; this is a day to stand together, and to cherish one of the few rights afforded us as workers in this country: the right to participate in collective bargaining. Recent events in Michigan, Wisconsin, and elsewhere have shown that this right is under serious threat from the political Right. For too many American workers, May Day has already been tarred by political defeats and betrayals. Still, I did not expect I would be spending my May Day contemplating my own union’s betrayal of my rights as a worker.

Let me pose a question to the supporters of USEJ. When you cast your vote in the election, what image of democracy did you have in mind? Would you have felt comfortable voting for the incumbent caucus knowing that they would try to tilt the election in their favor by whatever means necessary? Are you aware, for instance, that the photograph touted in a recent USEJ email as evidence of voter fraud at Berkeley--it shows a man reaching into the ballot box--was taken prior to voting, while the polling station was still being set up? (Which is precisely what the photograph depicts: a volunteer, not an AWDU member, preparing the polling station for voting.) If you had known to what lengths the incumbents were willing to go to ensure victory, would you have voted for USEJ or for AWDU? As for candidates on the USEJ slate, I cannot understand what you mean by the phrase “social and economic justice.” Is it socially and economically just to shut out voters at UCLA and Berkeley? What should we call justice that exempts itself from judgment? What would you propose? Or are you as appalled as I am? If so, I strongly urge you to condemn your caucus’ leadership for making a mockery of the election, a mockery of union democracy, and a mockery of justice. Moreover, I urge you to join AWDU. The stakes of our caucus are real: union democracy urgently needs defenders. We want to fight with you, not against you, to build a stronger union for all of us.

Make no mistake: infamy is at work in the union. It has draped itself in the costume of “partial certification” and the legitimacy of the Joint Council of the Union, but it is infamy nonetheless. We have all been stained by this insult, and we ought all to fight it—today, tomorrow, and every day until our union is again worthy of that title. Otherwise there will be no union, and anyone who says otherwise is a liar and a fraud.

If you share this opinion, send a message or email djmarcus@berkeley.edu to have your name added to the list of signatories.

Daniel Marcus
UC Berkeley

We really couldn't hope to clarify things as well as thosewhouseit, so if you're interested in the union check out their post on union machinations and astroturfing in light of the upcoming election in the local. The picture above features Daraka Larimore-Hall, the president of UAW Local 2865, on the far left, campaigning for the asshole who's working overtime to cut $1.4 billion from public higher education -- at a minimum. Thanks, Administration Caucus!

(The Daily Cal also published an article on the contested election today.)

From today's article in the California Aggie, following up on the UC Davis administration's decision to establish an official "team" to monitor and infiltrate the student protest movement:

The team's name was changed several times, once called the 'Activism Response Team' and 'The Freedom of Expression Support Team,' as revealed by various drafts of protocol and training guides.

Check out the rest of the article.

UC Davis professor Joshua Clover writes an op-ed in the California Aggie:

Over the last year, the UC Davis administration has pursued an extensive program to place staffers in and around student-worker protest. They have done so not, as you might expect, to join in the struggle against indecent cuts and backdoor privatization, but to deliver surveillance on participants.

This "Activism Response Team" was, for example, trained to "collaborate with police," and advised by university counsel on negotiating possible rights violations of those undergoing surveillance. When asked directly whether they were supplying information to the administration, ART members denied this. Once caught, the chancellor assured us that -- suddenly! -- she would like to make public what in truth had become public only via the legal compulsion of the Freedom of Information Act.

The chancellor's justification (see "Embracing Student Activism," March 14) has two main claims, strikingly different in tenor. First, the paternalistic hymn of "we have your best interests at heart." Second, the childish denial that resembles getting caught cheating on an exam, mumbling that you "could have done a better job of educating the campus community" regarding your scheme -- and would now prove your virtue by publishing your crib notes.

As everybody who's been following this stuff is aware, UC Berkeley's Code of Student Conduct and the Office of Student Conduct (OSC) that administers it are a complete disaster. One concrete issue for which we've only just begun to scratch the surface has to do with systematically and structurally downplaying or overlooking sexual violence -- not to mention, in a number of cases, exacerbating its emotional impact on survivors. We will be following up on this in further posts.

But for now we wanted to follow up on a different thread. Another problem with OSC and the Code, which generally falls under the rubric of what's been called "the rule of the arbitrary," comes down to the fact that -- totally apart from the arbitrary uses to which pathetic OSC bureaucrats put it -- the Code enshrines the arbitrary as the basic mode of operation: "even when the Code is followed to the letter, its 'rule' is inescapably arbitrary and subject to the whims and political interests of the administration." There are two ways of making this argument: one frames it as a problem with the way the Code is written, that it contains certain unconstitutional provisions, for example, which could be resolved by re-writing them; the other sees these problems as structural, rooted in and basic to the daily operations of the neoliberal university, embedded to the point that no revisions could hope to resolve them satisfactorily. The latter formulation looks to abolish the Code and OSC, while the former looks to the administration-led Task Force that is currently working on a new set of revisions to the Code.

On this note, we've received an email that was sent by Vice Chancellor Harry Le Grande, who is heading up the Task Force, to the rest of the members, in which he proposes inserting an additional clause in order to codify a certain "flexibility" with regard to the Code. As a suggestion, he includes a provision that appears to come from the UC Santa Cruz Code of Student Conduct. Here's the email:

All,

I would like to discuss the possibility of having a clause in the code that would allow for the process to be suspended, but still allow for due process and provisions to remain. I think it would mostly result in being used in large disciplinary cases that the normal process has little ability to impact without it being an exception.

Below is text from another UC that allows that option. I would like to discuss this at our next general meeting.

"104.32 In the interest of fair administration of these regulations and procedures, and consistent with law and university policy, the chancellor or designees may interpret and make reasonable adjustments to jurisdictional and other provisions."

This clause would codify the "rule of the arbitrary" in the Code's provisions -- it would allow the administration to do literally anything it sees fit, from suspending the timeline, to eliminating the role of the adviser, to getting rid of the student's right to remain silent. Anything you imagine would be subject to the will of the administration. That this clause is currently part of Code at UCSC is extremely worrisome, and suggests that it's not simply a case of administrative overreach that will necessarily be overruled at the next Task Force meeting. But it is exactly what we should expect, to the extent that the university claims absolute jurisdiction over both the individual student's body and the collective student body. This is the paternalistic claim that Le Grande and his cronies in the administration stand for: "University knows best."

Posted at the Burnt Bookmobile:

The occupation is a feast at which we may satisfy our hunger for beautiful and intense moments.
- Graffiti from the occupied UWM theatre building

The stage is set: years of defeat-induced, pessimistic depression and a more-than-healthy dose of cynicism; cut backs, layoffs, and foreclosures piled on top of already extreme levels of poverty, hopelessness and social disintegration; a context notable for its glaring lack of collective struggle against this misery.

Then suddenly an outburst of activity: the occupation of the State Capitol building in Madison; anti-austerity demonstrations involving tens of thousands of people; massive wildcat sick-ins, student walk-outs and murmurs of a general strike.

Of course this attempt to get back on our feet will include its fair share of missteps and stumbling. All the more so because for many of us, nothing quite like this has yet touched our lives. Even for those of us who desperately track such moments of conflict through the pages of books, across oceans and continents, this is a new and strange place we find ourselves in.

What follows is a chunk of an investigative report that will be published soon in The California Aggie. It's based on documents obtained through a request under the California Public Records Act, the same way we were able to get our hands on that 300+ page document dump filled with internal UC Berkeley administration emails from the protests in November 2009 and live week. The new documents on which this article is based are available here. (Note, for example, the reference to our compañeros at the Bicycle Barricade on page 8.) Anyway, the article has been circulating by email at UC Davis, so we figured we'd post it here as well:

For several months, administrators, students, and police have been coordinating an under-the-radar response team to infiltrate student protest groups, relay information to administrators and police leadership, and control peaceful gatherings in response to tuition spikes and budget cuts.

At least one undercover police officer infiltrated the most recent protests on March 2: Officer Joanne Zekany of the UCDPD was dressed in casual business attire as she marched with students last Wednesday afternoon. When asked about her affiliation, Officer Zekany lied to students, saying she was an administrator with the Neuroscience Department in Briggs Hall, and made a disparaging comment about the intelligence of a student. Officer Zekany has worked for the UCDPD for over two years and was caught disseminating information regarding the plans and whereabouts of the peaceful protestors.

This comes in tandem with discoveries that have been made about the existence of a complex protest response plan established jointly between police, students, and administrators, on the wake of protests throughout the 2010-11 academic year.

According to documents released in response to a filing under the California Public Records Act, UC Administrators established the “Activism Response Team”-- a network of student leaders, high-ranking administrators, and police leadership in the fall of 2010 to keep peaceful protestors under the administration’s control through direct communication with University leadership, including Chancellor Linda Katehi. The group served to “accompany students” throughout protests, “observe the [protest] situation”, “update staff” about the situation, and “point out safety issues and risks to students”, according to an agenda schedule from August of last year.

Within the program, a “Leadership Team” was established that included many top-ranking UCD administrators, including Vice Chancellor Fred Wood, Vice Chancellor John Meyer, former Provost and Current Dean of the College of Engineering Enrique Lavernia, and Assistant Executive Vice Chancellor Robert Loessberg-Zahl. According to program documents, this group “makes decisions in communication with Chancellor [Katehi], Chief of Police [Annette Spicuzza], and Assistant Vice Chancellor [Griselda Castro]”. The documents do not address the potential political implications of allying the Chancellor and Police against student protestors.

A “Student Activism Team” was also established, and included a far-reaching network of UCD administrators employed in ASUCD, CAPS, Financial Aid, SJA, the Student Academic Success Center, and Student Housing to help monitor student activity.

According to a document titled “Student Activism Response Protocol” dated August 18, 2010, administrators were given the responsibility to “receive information from all Student Affairs staff regarding any anticipated student actions, not just those of registered student organizations”, “inform police and request standby support if appropriate”, and “notify and maintain communication with news service”.

Furthermore, the program encouraged police collaboration at times: A “Support Team” was established to “provide a presence at student actions and rallies”, “offer action sponsors suggestions on how to handle the crowd”, and to “request ... Police presence if needed”.

Emails between administrators and police officers recovered under the Public Records Act also reveal that administrators and police were forwarding one another protest pamphlets, and Facebook links regarding protest information.

[Update Wednesday, 5:41pm]: Important follow-up from thosewhouseit, tracing the spread of surveillance and monitoring techniques on other UC campuses, from Berkeley to Santa Cruz.

This open letter from a former Berkeley unit chair is a helpful addition to the numerous reasons we have for voting NO on the tentative contract agreement that the UAW leadership is pushing on us. But it's even more interesting in terms of the way it details some of the internal practices within the union, practices that make it completely unresponsive to and unrepresentative of its graduate student members:

The year before last I became, almost accidentally, first the acting then the elected Chair of the UAW for Berkeley. I was recruited to this position and agreed to it without much understanding what it entailed. This seems to be standard MO for the current statewide leadership; after I had agreed to stand for the position it was hinted to me that nefarious and disruptive people might try to challenge me for what is, after all, an elected position. As it turns out, no one did, I was “elected” by all of you without you having any idea, unless you actually read all those emails full of dense and formal bureaucracy-speak that you receive on a regular basis, and the leadership avoided having to deal with anyone who might make waves.

My position made me a member of the bargaining committee, and we prepared to negotiate a contract last year. Days before the first meeting with the University, in the midst of what was then the still-unfolding budgetary crisis, the state-wide president (do you know who your union president is? did you vote for her?) suggested we take the university’s offer of a one-year extension of the current contract with no changes at all. This was presented as fait accompli at a meeting of the committee, and we voted unanimously to accept it.

In the aftermath of all of that, I became increasingly frustrated with how poorly the union represented its members, how shockingly little democracy was actually involved, how easily the state-wide leadership quashed any dissent, and how wholly it bought into the University’s antagonistic relationship while capitulating on a regular basis to the University’s interests. I was in the perfect position to do something about this, but I was not the individual to do it for a variety of reasons. Clearly, that is why I was put in the position to begin with. So I resigned, and as I did so, I urged various people to step in and do what I was unwilling to do. I’m not proud of all of this, but I do have the satisfaction of knowing that Berkeley’s current representatives are a force for agitation among the state-wide leadership, and I support them.

Now, the University really is a vicious negotiator. You will note that we are only now, in the last week of November, voting on a contract, while these negotiations began last Spring and the previous contract expired at the end of September. You probably heard something about the switching of “fees” for “tuition” and whether or not that would invalidate our guaranteed fee remissions, a well-timed announcement that now puts the union in the position of touting as a win what is actually a holding of the status quo. The bargaining committee is not made up of evil people, nor are they secretly trying to shore up the UC’s bottom line at our expense; I’m sure they really believe that this is the best contract they can get. But they are tired of the process, they have been skillfully manipulated by the University, and they are actively quashing efforts to allow debate among the actual membership of the union around this contract.

Another form that the anti-democratic nature of the union might take is the real possibility of fraud in the vote count. This text comes from a flyer that was being handed out today on Sproul plaza:

The UAW Elections Committee, made up of elected representatives from each campus, agreed on voting procedures that require each campus to submit voting tallies to the committee, after which all ballot boxes are sent to one place and a final tally is made. The totals of the campus tallies and the total tally are compared.

On the morning of November 30th, the chair of UAW Elections Committee announced she would be withholding the daily campus tallies from the rest of the Elections Committee. Further, the Chair refused to hold a conference call with committee members to discuss this last-minute change in voting procedure. This unilateral act violates the November 28th decision of our Elections Committee -- duly authorized by the Constitution and Bylaws of the union.

Call Fawn Huisman, chair of the Elections Committee and express your concern over this unilateral and arbitrary violation of democratic procedure and the constitution of the Union.

360-441-5376

In the last few days, a new blog called "UAW for Sanity" has appeared and begun to push back against the folks advocating a NO vote. It purports to be a "grassroots" blog, but at least three of the five authors are members of the UAW joint council. Not that that makes their opinion irrelevant, but it certainly makes the idea that this constitutes some surge of "grassroots" outrage laughable. As @santacruztacean put it the other day,



One final note: as of this moment, 946 people have pledged to vote NO. Last day of voting is Thursday. At Berkeley, you can vote at Sather Gate and North Gate from 8am - 4pm, and at Kroeber Hall from 10am - 2pm.

[Update 12/2]: More on the UAW's astroturf blog here. Also, an interesting recording of a confrontation at a polling station at UC Irvine is here. Paid UAW staffers (non-students) have been brought in to get people to approve the contract:

4 Paid and bias[ed] UAW Staffers were spotted on the Palo Verde (Graduate) Housing Bridge. Reports are that they were at the polling table and that one of them was “removed” and replaced by a less biased one.

Below, you may listen to the audio recording of the incident linked from the UC Rebel Radio Audio Archives. The louder voice at around 10:00 (and before) is the person operating the poll. He is a paid staffer, not a student. He talks at length to this graduate student about the contract, especially around 15:00, where he discusses what the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ would mean. He says things like “A ‘NO’ vote is not caring for childcare”. It is pretty fucked up.

At 16:20 Coral (a Union polling member) tells him he is out of line. Someone then text messages Fawn (UCI physics graduate, statewide elections committee person) to tell her this shit is fucking crazy. Someone tells Coral they want to put the recorder on the table. She then calls Fawn about this. Fawn shortly shows up to take over operating the poll.

Some links related to the union struggle, both inside and out:
- "Why We Are Voting NO" (AWaDU)
- "An Open Letter from UAW Bargaining Team Members: Why You Should Vote NO On the Tentative Contract Agreement"
- "UAW Rank-and-File Confront Local 2865 President"
- "UAW Bureaucrats Sell Us Out"

From Mobilize Berkeley:

Over the last school year, we’ve seen tuition increase by 32% and massive cuts to every sector of our campus from academic departments, to maintenance staffing. This is old news.

Just this semester, the Chancellor announced his intention to eliminate 200 campus faculty and staff positions, Chicano Studies and Asian American Studies as majors may disappear, and there’s been a 12% drop in Latino admissions.

Meanwhile, investigative reporter Peter Byrne has uncovered some disturbing facts about the UC Regent’s use of the UC’s investment fund. In 2003, three Regents restructured the UC’s investment fund, investing in risky financial instruments, making students and workers poorer, and making themselves richer in the process. To put it shortly:

many of these deals, while potentially lucrative, have lost significant amounts of money for UC’s retirement and endowment funds, which were worth $63 billion at the end of 2009. (These losses ultimately reduce the amount spent on education, since the endowment supports teaching activities.) And the non-transparency of these private deals enabled multiple conflicts of interest to arise without challenge.

You can rest assured knowing that every time your fees go up UC Regent Richard Blum, with his investments in for-profit private colleges, gets a little bit richer. As if to add insult to injury, at the last Regents meeting the Regents voted unanimously to cut pensions for the UC’s lowest paid workers and to increase the pensions of the UC’s 250 highest paid employees. This news comes only a few short weeks after the New York Times and other major news agencies reported that, before moving to his new mansion in Lafayette, UC President Mark Yudof racked up $70,000 worth of damages to his previous UC mansion.

As students, we are asked to take out more loans that force us into jobs we don’t like to pay off debt we can’t afford for the privilege of getting a lower quality education. We are then told to kindly shut up and move along when we voice our reasonable conclusions: that the crisis of our university is not just a lack of state funding, that UC administrators give the public little reason to believe that new funds will be used in a reasonable or just manner, and that the governance structure of the UC is fundamentally flawed.

Over the last year, tens of thousands of UC students, workers, and faculty stood up, walked out, sat-in, occupied, and disrupted business as usual, forcing the governor to restore funding to public higher education. His chief of staff, Susan Kennedy, stated “those protests on the U.C. campuses were the tipping point. Our university system is going to get the support it deserves.”

And while we await the materialization of those hollow words (the California budget is over 80 days late, the restorations are not enough, and they will come from cuts to essential social services), we again look to ourselves, the students of the U.C., as well as the workers, faculty, and community members with whom we’ve built solidarity over the last year, for the strength to change the status quo.

Co-optation: It's not just for administrators anymore...

In an incredibly strange twist of logic, the for-profit Kaplan University has created a new ad based on the co-opting the energy of the student movement... a movement which, despite its many internal ideological divisions, has been fighting by and large for public education:

Of course Kaplan University, which was created ten years ago with the purchase of an old correspondence school by the Stanley Kaplan test prep company, is obviously anything but “a student-led revolution” in higher ed.

By coincidence, in fact, yesterday’s New York Times featured a front-page article on how for-profit universities deliver “dubious benefits to students” by “exploit[ing] the recession as a lucrative recruiting device” and “harvesting growing federal student aid dollars, including Pell grants awarded to low-income students.”

(It took me about fifteen minutes of Googling and clicking to find Kaplan’s tuition rates, but it looks like they run about $16,000 per year. That’s $2,000 more than the national average for for-profit colleges, and $11,000 a year more than in-state tuition for full-time online enrollment in New York’s state university system.)

The first one was sent out today to UC Berkeley building coordinators by Stephen Stoll, Director of the Office of Emergency Preparedness/Homeland Security:

Building Coordinators

PLEASE DISSEMINATE THIS INFORMAITON TO YOUR BUILDING STAFF

As you may have heard, this coming week has several scheduled activities, including the planned rally on Thursday, March 4^th. There may also be other associated activities around the campus, including potential marches through campus buildings and “sit-ins”. These activities may present some unique challenges for the campus as the majority of our facilities are open to the public.

Although we do not expect any malicious activities, its possible your building may be marched through or even have minor disruptions, so it is best to be a little more vigilant for those who may be roaming our halls.

As always, UCPD will be continuously monitoring activities around campus and if the situation arises, be providing you with information specific to your building/facility.

It might be good to review standard operating procedures for this eventuality (see below).

**************************************************

Please remind your building occupants of the following procedures should marchers enter your building:

If marchers enter your building, let them. Try to carry on business as usual. If the noise becomes too great, or the crowd too large, feel free to close and lock your office doors - this is a departmental decision.

Do not close your buildings unless the Police advise you to.

As always, if you have questions please feel free to contact the UC Police department at 642-6760 or call via cell phone to 642-3333.

**************************************************

From an informational perspective, if you observe any unusual gatherings or activities in your building/facility, if you observe any suspicious activities or if you experience actual disruptions to classrooms or administrative routines, call UCPD (642-6760 or 642-3333) and we will provide the appropriate support.

We will be utilizing the BC email as a conduit for campus-wide specific information we need to disseminate, so please check your email regularly.

Thank you for helping get the word out!

PLEASE DISSEMINATE THIS INFORMAITON TO YOUR BUILDING STAFF

The second email was sent out yesterday to the UC Berkeley faculty senate by chair Christopher Kutz:

Dear all,

Like many of the readers of this list, I am very excited about the March on the 4th in Sacramento -- SAVE has done
an incredible job organizing.

Perhaps like many of you, I am also getting pretty concerned by all the reports about plans for more occupations, "actions,"
and more confrontational kinds of campus protests next week, including on the 4th. I know a lot of this is just smoke, an attempt deliberately to rattle the cages of those of us who think we need to make the public, political case for higher education. But Durant Hall is evidence that some things will happen -- things that have the potential to get students hurt, and to shift the focus from the insistent demand to restore educational funding, to violent internecine conflict on campus. I really don't want either of those.

The students bent on occupation and confrontation will do what they do, and will take the consequences. But I am especially concerned to avoid another Nov. 20th-like event, where the real chaos and danger lay outside, with large groups of protestors. My fear is that there may be many students, eager to support the inside protest or simply curious, who will not know how to protest safely, without putting themselves at risk of arrest, on campus discipline, or injury, especially when they hear voices of some activists urging them to rush the police lines.

So I thought the Senate might directly recruit some "Casque bleu" peacekeepers from among the faculty, who could be counted on to play the role some faculty (particularly SAVE members) did in November, of trying to calm the crowd and instruct them, via bullhorn or leaflet, on "Peaceful Protest 101." If you would be willing to play this role, or know someone who would, could you please write me directly to let me know? You won't be representing the administration, or any particular principle except informed consent on the part of students -- how to engage in protest without (unwittingly) risking injury or academic career.

thanks,
Chris

Direct action works, but watch out for co-optation. Once again, it's UCD Chancellor Katehi, trying to make it seem like the library study-in was her idea all along. Professor Nathan Brown writes a letter (Katehi's email follows):

Dear Colleagues,

In a message just circulated to the UCD community, the Chancellor has announced that Shields Library will be open 24 hrs through the weekend, in response to a planned Study-In which several groups have been organizing over the past few weeks. The study-in -- intended to protest reductions in library funding and insufficient student space on campus (including the planned closure of the Davis Student Co-Op this summer) -- has been publicized through flyers, posters, and Facebook, with over 650 people having indicated that they plan to attend: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=270851043900&index=1

It is no doubt this overwhelmingly supportive response to the planned study-in that forced the hand of the administration in extending library hours over the weekend. I have attached two flyers with basic information about the action, which you might distribute to your classes beforehand. People will gather at the MU patio at 4pm tomorrow, and then move to the library thereafter.

Now that the administration's approach to handling the event has clarified itself, I'm writing both to comment on the process that lead to this outcome and to invite faculty to attend over the weekend -- and perhaps to speak on the situation of library funding. Robert Samuels (President, UC-AFT), Jarue Manning (Biological Sciences), and Bob Ostertag (Music/Technocultural Studies) are already scheduled to speak on Friday evening (they committed to speak prior to the Chancellor's announcement). If you would like to speak or to run a workshop in Shields on Saturday or Sunday, please let me know.

In assessing the response of the administration, it seems important to note that Chancellor Katehi's decision to hold the library open is in no way the result of any process of negotiation or of mutual concessions. The stance of the organizers toward the administration has been one of indifference. The event was planned and publicized openly, but it was not announced directly to either campus or library administrators. This is a case in which the will of students to act has resulted in a recognition by the administration that their will cannot be ignored. The same decision-makers who unceremoniously ordered a mass-arrest of students for being in a building after-hours in November seem to have calculated, in this instance, that the balance of forces is not in their favor.

In other words: direct action works.

I hope that the study-in this weekend will be an important event in building links among activist students, staff, and faculty, and in building momentum toward the state-wide Day of Action on March 4.

In solidarity,
Nathan

--
Nathan Brown
Assistant Professor
Department of English
University of California, Davis
http://english.ucdavis.edu/people/directory/natbrown


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Chancellor Katehi and Provost Lavernia
Date: Thu, Feb 4, 2010 at 10:11 AM
Subject: Library Weekend Study Hall
To: UC Davis Community Members


Dear UC Davis Community Members,

This weekend's announced "study in" at Shields Library reflects a shared concern -- the need for adequate student study space, especially during peak testing periods and despite significant budget cuts that have affected every corner of the campus.

With midterms pressing, and with the Library's 24-hour reading room overly crowded, we have asked our head librarians to take steps to keep Shields open as a study hall throughout this weekend.

The extended hours -- from 7:30 a.m. Friday, Feb. 5, through midnight Sunday, Feb. 7 -- will expand quiet study opportunities in designated areas of the Library. Library services will be limited during the extended evening hours (for example, Reserves, Inter-Library Loan, Circulation and Reference Services will not be offered then), but some staff will be available to assist patrons.

The Library's Use and Conduct Code (http://www.lib.ucdavis.edu/ul/about/policies/conduct.php) and our Principles of Community will apply throughout the weekend, helping to ensure for everyone a welcoming, comfortable and safe environment in which to study. If the weekend proves successful, we'll give every consideration to expanded hours during finals week, as well.

In addition, designated quiet space will also be available this weekend during the Memorial Union's and ARC's normal hours (MU: 7 a.m.-5 p.m. Friday, 12-5 p.m. Saturday; ARC: 6 a.m.-11 p.m. Friday, 8 a.m.-9 p.m. Saturday, and 9 a.m.-midnight Sunday).

We do understand the overall concerns that have been expressed about the Library's funding. The Library is the heart of an academic institution and a shared asset of inestimable value. While it's not been possible to completely protect the Library from budget cuts -- our budget challenges are simply too great -- we have tried to shield the Library by assessing cuts that are less than half those assessed administrative units. Looking forward, we are eager to receive the advice of a newly formed Joint Senate-Administration Task Force on the Future of the Library that will develop short- and long-term recommendations to ensure an intellectually vibrant Library that serves our UC Davis community well.

We wish you well in your studies this weekend and in the examinations that follow.

Sincerely,

Linda P.B. Katehi
Chancellor

Enrique J. Lavernia
Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor

Some reflections on the Schwarzenegger's recent proposal:

The only possible solution to salvage either of these institutions for capital is to privatize them. It is here that capitalism as the unbridled negation of human existence shows its face; these two sites which are already situated to mold individuals to their social roles will be put under the rule of the most cutthroat calculus—quality will never outstrip quantity within the capitalist mode of existence. Students are merely collateral for construction loans, and a gamble on productive jobs in the future; prisoners are those without a legitimate place in the process, except as a reserve labor force (and object of prison corporations; let’s not forget prison labor as well, the latest form of slavery). And in order to create new forms of value, there must be a simultaneous devaluation of a particular sector of society. The university is thus being redesigned as a glorified vocational school, producer of complex labor powers for a privileged few, and an outsourced research and development division for state and corporate agencies to which it is ultimately the appendage. Its future can only be ever-more null and quantitative existence for its ever-more restricted pool of students: there must necessarily be those who are excluded access from the university, in order for the degrees it produces to be worth anything.

The opposite pole of social reproduction is found in the prison system, where individuals are actively being made useless. The prison is no longer meant to be a place to rehabilitate individuals, but a dead end in which the individual’s nullity in everyday life comes to its logical conclusion. As jobs become scarce, foreclosed homes are left unoccupied, and the prisons become the only place in which the growing number of people without a tenable capacity to produce value can be safely placed. It is this devaluation of living labor—“the crisis of a period in which capitalism no longer needs us as workers”—which underlies the crises of the prison, the university, and so much more. Socially condemned individuals are to simply to be warehoused and contained at all costs, healthcare be damned. Imprisonment is exclusion taking total form, one which marks even those who depart from its walls, still to be denied inclusion in the legitimate economy through the loss of employment, education and housing. (Much like immigrants who are finding themselves increasingly imprisoned and deported.) The prison as a form of mass containment and social control originated as the debtors’ prison; we still speak of prisoners “paying their debt to society.” Now students and workers are facing more debt than ever before: our whole society is a debtors’ prison. Meanwhile, the extension of parole regimes, house arrest, and generalized surveillance may be another means not just of reducing the cost of prisons, but bringing them into ever closer convergence with the rest of daily life (or rather, vice versa).

Yesterday, Gov. Schwarzenegger proposed a constitutional amendment that would require that the state of California dedicate more money to higher education (specifically the UC and CSU systems) than to prisons. While it sounds nice on face, the shift wouldn't actually alter the state's obsession with prisons or sever its ties to the prison-industrial complex -- indeed, it would strengthen these ties. Prisons won't be eliminated -- they'll be privatized.

The basic points of the plan are here; a good critical analysis, which suggests that even aside from the prisons issue, the amendment won't resolve the budget crisis at the UC and CSU, is here.

But this isn't what I want to talk about here. What I want to talk about is cooptation and the UC administration. About a half hour ago, Chancellor Birgeneau sent out an official statement on Schwarzenegger's proposal to the UC Berkeley community. The Governor, he writes, "has taken a bold and visionary step to reposition support for education among the State's highest priorities." And what made Schwarzenegger take this seemingly incongruous step?

We commend Governor Schwarzenegger for taking this strong stance in response to the efforts of UCOP leadership to restore funding for the university.

As usual, Birgeneau has the UC administration take all the credit. Everything that happens happens because the administration makes it happen. Protests? What protests?

But look at what the governor's chief of staff told the New York Times:

“Those protests on the U.C. campuses were the tipping point,” the governor’s chief of staff, Susan Kennedy, said in an interview after the speech. “Our university system is going to get the support it deserves.”

Again and again, the administration has tried to take credit for the effects of direct actions carried out by students, faculty, and workers. Cooptation is the first prong of its political strategy; the second, of course, is violence.

Here's the whole email Birgeneau sent out:

Dear Faculty, Staff and Students:

Yesterday, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger made a very important statement of commitment to higher education in his State of the State Address from Sacramento. In acknowledging that "we can no longer afford to cut higher education" and proposing a constitutional amendment to rebalance spending between education and prisons, the Governor has taken a bold and visionary step to reposition support for education among the State's highest priorities.

We commend Governor Schwarzenegger for taking this strong stance in response to the efforts of UCOP leadership to restore funding for the university. Across the UC campuses, including our own, we have all been working hard to convince Sacramento of the critical importance to our State of investment in public higher education. I am sure that you are as uplifted and encouraged as I am by this very positive outcome.

I want to emphasize, however, that this is just a beginning. First, we must remain focused on the near-term and on the budget for the upcoming year. Although the Governor has indicated that he wants no further cuts to higher education, we will need to convince legislators from both parties to support the Governor in this, given the $19.9 billion projected State deficit. Second, passing a constitutional amendment to guarantee that the University of California and the California State University systems receive no less than 10% of the state's operating funds each year will require all our support in ensuring that the Governor's commitment survives the legislative process and succeeds as a ballot initiative. We will need to continue to advocate with our legislators and the California public to secure stable financial support of public higher education.

I look forward to working with you all in the coming weeks and months as we continue our efforts to ensure that the legislature restores funding to the University of California.

The Governor's statement can be read at http://gov.ca.gov/speech/14118/

President Yudof's response to the Governor's announcement is available at http://atyourservice.ucop.edu/news/general/0106-presidentmessage_sos.html

Yours sincerely,

Robert J. Birgeneau