David Green
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Agreed. But I ignored the talk about agency and the various hangover words that betray the pomo of just yesterday. And certainly universities are corporations. In fact, just last week the alumni association called, or rather some nice young person was doing her job. Water was boiling for coffee, so I just said no thanks and skipped my usual, `On Strike, Shut it Down!' rant.
The education I got is forever gone. It is supposed to be available to the rich but I seriously doubt that because the rich don't expect to get hit hard and struggle and don't sit back and celebrate getting a decent grade from one of those tough guys with an arm long reading list. They certainly never question who they are and what they are doing in the world---or what the world is doing for that matter.
As a humorous note, back when Berkeley was declared the Free Republic of Berkeley, we had a Free University. A fair number of profs and grad students from the College of Environmental Design (architecture, design, planning) set up classes outside and in ad hoc locations. It wasn't a shining example, but it was generally the right direction. This had many spin-off and residual consequences which are stories all their own and include the Peralta Community College District and City of Berkeley...
Something like that must have been happening at New School or some other places around NYC during a few weeks of OWS. But this can be set-up in something slightly more formal.
Beyond or behind it all, is the question of real estate. You need a building. So I would focus on that... My first studio--not supposed to live in but did--was a real estate office that was going to be demolished.
What about all those schools they keep closing?
There is a long history of these kinds of movements and their struggles with the bourgeois order. They shift around but generally gravitate about somekind of bohemian center. They are co-opted and rise again in different forms.
It seems to me, there is a junction floating around that takes as its premise, the university is dead. For all intent, what I think of as a university was struggling to stay alive fifty years ago. Looking back. I was probably one of the last generations to get the best. Sure it lingered here and there and flared up now and again, but its essential fuels were running out. 1990-1 was big out here. Wilson chopped the holy fuck out of the UC system and gave professors in their fifties or near retirement a golden retirement package. The offer extended to upper levels of staff positions. This acted like a giant scythe and cut off the living connections to academic battles of the past. Many of the tenure positions disappeared.
So, if it no longer works the way it is supposed to, it needs to be replaced. I am not sure it's worth the battle to fix it. Students last for a few years and then go away. The administrations around the country count on that and that their jobs will very likely last longer than any protest or pressure for reform.