Category: Politics

REPOST: When Public Goes Private, as Trump Wants: What Happens?

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The New York Times recently published a series of articles about the dangers of privatizing public services, the first of which was called “When You Dial 911 and Wall Street Answers.” Over the years, the Times has published other exposés of privatized services, like hospitals, health care, prisons, ambulances, and preschools for children with disabilities. In some cities and states, even libraries and water have been privatized. No public service is immune from takeover by corporations that say they can provide comparable or better quality at a lower cost. The New York Times said that since the 2008 financial crisis, Read More …

Teaching National Memory On the Anniversary of the 9/11 Attacks

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At the Jersey shore over Labor Day Weekend, two newspaper items sparked my interest and raised questions. One was an announcement in the local free weekly of an event Remembering 9/11 at a branch of the public library.  No surprise there; what institution is missing the occasion to memorialize the events of that day?  But the description caught my eye: The program is designed for children. If they’re children, they don’t remember 9/11 anyway.  No one under age 10 was born yet.  The audacity of the project to provide children with pseudo-memories of an event they did not experience was Read More …

What Gets Better, Exactly? And For Whom?

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Many educators find that one good technique for promoting critical thought is to show students how to “ask the other question.”  Arising from an engagement with the politics of intersectionality—or, the recognition that identity, struggle, and oppression do not follow singular axes but rather emerge from multiple layers, dimensions, and vectors of power, experience, and location—“ask the other question” was first articulated as such in the early 1990s by critical race theorist and legal scholar Mari Matsuda.  Matsuda was addressing colleagues and comrades on the political Left, those who are “down for the cause,” but, in her estimation, too frequently Read More …

Solidarity With Wisconsin: A How To Guide

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To my out-of-state and international friends who want to know what to do: I recommend you do your own phone banking or mass emailing event. With a little review online you can find out the names/numbers of Wisconsin state GOP senators and Assembly reps who are supporting this bill. You can also find out which ones are in danger of recall. Then, you can have your callers explain to the legislator’ staffers on phone or in email that you consider the Wisconsin state line a PICKET LINE. No more dollars into Wisconsin. No more purchasing of Wisconsin products. Publicity ALL Read More …

On-Line Democracy and Social Movements

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As a retired teacher who has heard far too many spurious claims for the educational virtues of technology in the classroom, and a former activist from the thrilling protests of the 60’s, you might call me a skeptic about the revolutionary potential of the internet. Well, I’m not too old to admit when I am wrong. Facebook, which I still refuse to join as a means of personal communication, has just enabled a youth revolution in Egypt that is completely inspiring. To see that this movement, largely led by the young, as were so many of the protests of the Read More …

Dangerous Partnership: The Academy, Anthropology, and U.S. Military Occupation and Invasion

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Dear Colleague, I am an anthropologist who has been working to expose the U.S. role in supporting last year’s military coup and its resulting administrations and policies in Honduras. Here are several of the articles I have written over the past year: Message Control: Field Notes on Washington’s Golpistas WOLA vs. Honduran Democracy Saving Honduras? I write to let you know about a dangerous new turn in the use of the academy, and of anthropology in particular, to legitimate U.S. military occupation and invasion of Latin American countries, and to ask for your help in challenging it. The threat in Read More …

Deregulation Comes to Public Higher Education

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At the moment of this writing, New York Governor David Paterson is playing a game of political chicken with the state legislature.  Paterson (a Democrat) is counting on the state senate to pass a budget that effectively deregulates tuition at the state and city universities, SUNY and CUNY.  At the CUNY campus where I teach, the cost of each year of college for full-time students who are residents of New York State is $5,050 ($4,600 tuition + $550 in fees).  It’s not much by today’s standards, but it’s not nothing either…which is exactly what CUNY used to cost.  Should Paterson Read More …

University of Puerto Rico Student Strikes

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The silence in the English-language press about the student strikes at the University of Puerto Rico stands in stark contrast to the roar produced by the growing number of students who have moved to shut down UPR to protest state disinvestment from public education. The basic terms of the strike: As the state legislature has systematically diverted money from Puerto Rico’s only public university system, UPR has been left with a $100 million budget shortfall. In response, the Board of Trustees wants  to make up that gap on the backs of the students, more than 60% of whom qualify for Read More …

The 40th Anniversary of the Kent State Killings

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My visit to Kent, Ohio for the 40thanniversary of the Kent State killings, when four students were killed (Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandy Scheuer, William Schroeder) and nine injured (with Dean Kahler left paralyzed and in a wheelchair for the last 40 years) was both nostalgic and informative. Although I was not on campus the day of the killings, I did see the burning of the ROTC building and the shattered bank windows over that weekend in downtown Kent.  I also saw the Ohio National Guard occupy my campus, the FBI invade student dormitories looking for weapons and photograph classrooms Read More …

Bad Times in Academia, Part IV

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This is my fourth and final post on the academic job market and the future of college teaching as a profession.  Quick review:  in earlier installments I noted the devastation that came to academic employment via the crash of 2008; proposed that recovery from that crash will not restore the jobs lost, either across the whole economy or specifically in higher education; suggested that our professionis a moribund institution; and laid out some lines of action it (for instance, the Modern Language Association) would need to take in order to have a chance of rebuilding its market haven. Now I Read More …