mortiz055

The news is that UCOP has legitimated the conventional wisdom that there's a crisis of free speech on campus by funding a center to study it .  But I'm still thinking about the situation at other campuses, from Drexel's suspension of a tweeting professor that I discussed at length in  Inside Higher Ed  last week ( "Feeding a Dangerous Fiction "), to one of the many interesting exchanges I recently had in Reno.  During questions after my lecture at the University of Nevada campus there, a man in his mid-40s told a story about his friend, a cement tycoon, who didn't get a thank you note from his East coast alma mater for building them a football stadium.  He then asked me when I thought universities were going to get back to "merit and accomplishment" and stop spending their time catering to their "special snowflakes." I smiled at him.  He was a UNR alumnus but not an academic, and I love talking with non-university people about universities....

In the latest fallout from last spring's disastrous, and disastrously handled, audit, Governor Brown has just signed a new law that tightens up legislative oversight over UC Finances .  You will probably remember that the State Auditor challenged UCOP's handling of funds and  accused UCOP of intervening in the audit process in order to gain more favorable responses from campus officials  (although UCOP denied the allegations).  In response, the State  transformed UC's budget .  And now the state is increasing its intervention into UC budgeting. In what can only be seen as a response UCOP's role in changing campus responses to the Auditor's inquiries, the new law forbids communication between UCOP and a campus whenever a request for information relating to the security of funds of the University of California is made by the California State Auditor’s Office pursuant to these provisions to one or more campuses of the University of California, would prohibit ...

The farce that was MiloFest has now frittered away into failure.  Of course, that will not be the last time that the right-wing attempts to undermine the authority and status of higher education under the guise of standing up for free thought.  The challenge will be ongoing. At the same time, we should not allow the fireworks over free speech to divert us from other important attacks on the educational mission of universities.  These attacks are driven not by the ideologies of the alt-right but by the ideologies of austerity. One classic case of the damage brought about by privatization-driven austerity was revealed amidst the hubbub over free speech week at Berkeley.  While most attention was focused on the spectacles of Shapiro and Yiannopoulos, the Daily Cal  reported that the Christ administration is proposing to end the funding for the tremendously successful Berkeley Connect program as part of its budget cutting plans. Berkeley Connect is an  innova...