BY JONATHAN REES
My chapter is planning its National Day of Action for Higher Education event on April 17. Up to this point in time, we’ve been tightly focused on organizing to improve faculty salaries, but looking around at the world today the need to broaden our scope seemed clear. It is time to get “political.”
I’m a historian, and our policy about political speech on campus has always bothered me because it reminds of the conditions that led to the Berkeley Free Speech Movement protests of 1964–65. We’re allowed to express political beliefs on campus, but only in one spot—our fountain. It’s in the middle of the campus, but safely away from normal foot traffic routes that nobody will come there randomly.
A couple of weeks ago, while “reserving” our allotted public space, I explained to the administration what makes our planned action “political.” This is when I realized how much things have changed. Some of us are inevitably going to write signs about raising our salaries or preserving academic freedom, I explained, but others might feel the need to write signs like “Don’t Deport Our Students!” or “Save DEI!” I always thought their Berkeley-inspired free speech policy was to stop us from endorsing political candidates in class, but now it has become political to defend ideas that are essential for every one of us being able to do our jobs.
Coincidentally, over spring break, I finished my of copy Transforming Hispanic-Serving Institutions for Equity and Justice by Gina Ann Garcia of the University Of California, Berkeley. My administration gave it to me when I went to her lunch talk while she visited our campus last semester, before the election. I remember being particularly struck when she called boards of governors “colonialist,” but when you read the book that point makes lots of sense. At a different point (p. 141), Garcia writes, “I call on leaders of transformed HSIs to redistribute resources to people of color for efforts that advance racial equity, social justice, and collective liberation.”
While reserving our fountain, I was advised, “You do not and can not represent the university in your views regarding recent trends in our nation’s politics.” That means, if I got a bullhorn, and called on the administration of my Hispanic Serving Institution to “redistribute resources to people of color to advance racial equity, social justice, and collective liberation,” I would have to distance myself from the institution that gave me the book where I got that idea.
Some of us still have memories that go back further than last November.
Contributing editor Jonathan Rees is professor of history at Colorado State University–Pueblo.
I think it is generally understood that individual faculty are not authorized to speak on behalf of their institutions (and in case of doubt a disclaimer solves the problem). It should be even more clear that protestors urging an institution to change its policies or practices are not speaking on behalf of the institution.
Are you a public college or university? If so, they can’t force you to “reserve” a spot outdoors on campus to exercise your freedom of speech and assembly. Much less can they limit what you say. The First Amendment is in effect on public college campuses just as it is in public parks and sidewalks.
Everything in life is political. It’s only in Ivory Towers that the reality of that got sidelined and tenure led to ossification and irrelevance. Just as our world is at a crossroads where it’s survival or extinction, education faces a choice: radical change or extinction. The canary in the mine, Trumpism, has been long in building because nobody was prepared to grasp the nettle while the opportunity existed. In that, academe FAILED. As Europe found in 1938, things won’t improve by wishing they’d go away and clamouring for a return to “normality”. The fan blades have turned a solid brown today, and whimpering and hand-wringing aren’t going to cut it this time. What good is the First Amendment when it’s possible now to disregard the Constitution altogether with impunity? What good is “democratic” government when the two parties are so corrupt Al Capone would lose his lunch over it? What academe should be doing now is telling us how things got to this, what’s really wrong with America that’s made it the laughing stock of the entire world, and what’s to be done about it. Until it does that, drawing academic salaries is just another form of white collar corruption–graft–that’s blighted the nation all through its history. That’d be far more satisfactory and uplifting than the pathetic whimpering and moaning over the loss of perks for academics who’ve failed dismally with their public mandate.