administrators aim to create a more politically quietist university
May 6, 2024 3:38 PM Subscribe
Who Has the Right to “Disrupt” the University? Perhaps the most egregious example of the administrator-as-disruptor is Gordon Gee, currently the president of West Virginia University (WVU), whose administration pushed through extraordinarily deep cuts to the institution’s academic offerings last fall. During a meeting of the faculty senate, Gee said “I want to be very clear that the university is not dismantling higher education. We are disrupting it . . . And many of you know I am a firm believer in disruption.”
Protesters seek not only to advance their points of view, but to change the facts on the ground on their campuses. In doing so, they correctly recognize that the contemporary American university is much more than a marketplace of ideas; it is an unprecedented institutional form that acts as a powerful force in fields from real estate to healthcare to finance—to, indeed, weapons manufacturing. In fact, it is precisely these operations—and their entanglements with the Israeli and US war machines—that student protesters are targeting, with demands that are not only expressive (asking administrators to join calls for a ceasefire, for example) but also material. When the very point of protesting is to put a stop to business as usual, the right to disrupt becomes a central part of the right to protest.
Indeed, university administrators are aware that campus protest is about disruption rather than just expression—not least because they have spent the last few years contending with a wave of “disruptive” union activity that has spread to nearly every part of the large and growing university apparatus.
Protesters seek not only to advance their points of view, but to change the facts on the ground on their campuses. In doing so, they correctly recognize that the contemporary American university is much more than a marketplace of ideas; it is an unprecedented institutional form that acts as a powerful force in fields from real estate to healthcare to finance—to, indeed, weapons manufacturing. In fact, it is precisely these operations—and their entanglements with the Israeli and US war machines—that student protesters are targeting, with demands that are not only expressive (asking administrators to join calls for a ceasefire, for example) but also material. When the very point of protesting is to put a stop to business as usual, the right to disrupt becomes a central part of the right to protest.
Indeed, university administrators are aware that campus protest is about disruption rather than just expression—not least because they have spent the last few years contending with a wave of “disruptive” union activity that has spread to nearly every part of the large and growing university apparatus.
The enrollment crisis and the plague of parasitic corporate managers it has attracted to slather sub-Silicon Valley blathering and magical thinking on real wounds for big salaries have put US higher ed in a dire place. It’s hard to see good paths out given the baseline demographics.
I say this as a relatively recently laid off 17th year vet of a state university system.
posted by ryanshepard at 4:07 PM on May 6 [10 favorites]
I say this as a relatively recently laid off 17th year vet of a state university system.
posted by ryanshepard at 4:07 PM on May 6 [10 favorites]
I have been working for WVU for two years now. My sector of campus, the medical school, has only been slightly disrupted and we are doing okay. Most of the rest of the university is not so fortunate. There are no big student protests here. I don't think they would disrupt much more than the football games already do.
posted by biogeo at 4:08 PM on May 6 [3 favorites]
posted by biogeo at 4:08 PM on May 6 [3 favorites]
On the one hand these are kids. Kids who should be learning to think critically, and who know that there is a long, storied history of student protest in the US.
On the other hand are the adults, who reap their considerable salaries to boost the endowments of these universities while paying lip service to ensuring an education for these kids. Adults who should know that seldom have the student protestors been on the wrong side of history. Add the fascist cops who have never been taught critical thinking, and the press who struggle to balance the both-sides-ism so as not to anger the investor class and the military industrial complex propping up the perpetrators of this genocide.
Absent is the kind of political leadership to put the protests into context and quell the fascist instincts of the administrators and their goons.
The kids are all right. The rest is just a mirror to our Eff'd up world.
posted by OHenryPacey at 4:13 PM on May 6 [7 favorites]
On the other hand are the adults, who reap their considerable salaries to boost the endowments of these universities while paying lip service to ensuring an education for these kids. Adults who should know that seldom have the student protestors been on the wrong side of history. Add the fascist cops who have never been taught critical thinking, and the press who struggle to balance the both-sides-ism so as not to anger the investor class and the military industrial complex propping up the perpetrators of this genocide.
Absent is the kind of political leadership to put the protests into context and quell the fascist instincts of the administrators and their goons.
The kids are all right. The rest is just a mirror to our Eff'd up world.
posted by OHenryPacey at 4:13 PM on May 6 [7 favorites]
The faculty and academic-staff union local I'm part of (and currently serve as secretary) met on Saturday evening to pass a resolution sharply critical of our chancellor for calling in the (racist abusive) cops. This afternoon there was a faculty gathering at the student encampment that subsequently marched up to the faculty senate meeting.
We don't get as much attention as the students -- because the right and admin think they have us cowed -- but we are not doing nothing.
posted by humbug at 4:20 PM on May 6 [9 favorites]
We don't get as much attention as the students -- because the right and admin think they have us cowed -- but we are not doing nothing.
posted by humbug at 4:20 PM on May 6 [9 favorites]
If I see one more hand-wringing social media comment about Those Poor Kids at Columbia who have to have a smaller graduation ceremony I'm going to scream.
With Schools in Ruins, Education in Gaza Will Be Hobbled for Years
With Schools in Ruins, Education in Gaza Will Be Hobbled for Years
Most of Gaza’s schools, including all of its universities, have severe damage that makes them unusable, which could harm an entire generation, the United Nations and others say. ...posted by Nelson at 4:26 PM on May 6 [4 favorites]
That has led critics, including the Palestinian ministry of education and more than two dozen U.N. officials, to accuse Israel of a deliberate pattern of targeting educational facilities, much as it has been accused of targeting hospitals. ...
The United Nations said last month that it had documented at least 5,479 students, 261 teachers and 95 university professors who had been killed in Gaza since October, as well as at least 7,819 students and 756 teachers wounded.
If you are on the side of cracking down on large-scale student protests, you are on the wrong side of history.
posted by SoberHighland at 4:51 PM on May 6 [3 favorites]
posted by SoberHighland at 4:51 PM on May 6 [3 favorites]
What's really interesting is also how much they are controlling expressions of anger against this activity as well. For example: Greg Fenves engaged in "listening sessions" this week, but only for controlled and pre-approved questions, and refused to answer (per faculty posting on locked Twitter) questions that were off script, or let people have the ability to speak if they weren't pre-selected.
posted by corb at 5:42 PM on May 6
posted by corb at 5:42 PM on May 6
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Disruption by having a small tent encampment in the quad: Send in the goons!
posted by Dip Flash at 4:03 PM on May 6 [21 favorites]