#adjunct & student actions & other happenings here there & everywhere

International Student Movement Global Week of Action, Nov 17-22

…local, national, and global ~ on the ground, through cyberspace ~ everywhere, continual and connected. You can't miss the common themes weaving through them…   #1world1struggle

Recently...

• End of October: Fair Employment Week in Canada and CEW 2014 in San Diego and Colorado
• November 3: Day of Action to STOP the Corporatization of Education with campaigns in Florida, Kansas, Massachusetts and Washington D.C. that spread across nation and the internet.
• November 11: @TakeBackNEIU demonstration at Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU) against cancelled classes and a university land grabbing development scheme

Coming soon to a computer monitor or street near you...

Midweek Movie Break: Chomsky on the #Corporatization of #HigherEd

…with an introductory visual from Tom Tomorrow and a background article on the Powell Memo that Chomsky refers to.

and now for the main feature....

Dear Corporation

…timely & relevant poem by Adam Fell…not all poems go to Poets & Writers Picnic, some appear here on occasion. Besides, Adam teaches at Edgewood College, Madison WI, one of us. Poetry, music, art, etc make a  fine break from the ongoing madness of news, calls to action, movement rhetoric. Remember Gregor. If we don't take spiritual nourishment. We could wake up one morning transformed into giant cockroaches, bugs, administrators or other vermin. 

Dear Corporation,  by Adam Fell I don't know how to say how I feel politely, or poetically, or without the jugular and collapse of the immediate heart, so tonight, I won't say anything at all. Just stare out the window at our stunned little writhe. Hold back the strongest urge to knock out a few of the capitol's most critical walls, replace its fiber optic cables with lightning bugs, replace the investment bankers all with bunker busters. I lock eyes with the capitol's bright and empty rooms and admit that, sometimes, deep in my affluent, American cells, I miss my body carved to projectile. I miss trebuchet shoulders and knuckles flaked to arrowheads, miss my hands massive and molded from molten to the bolts of ballistas. I miss blackjack and cudgel and quarterstaff and flintlock. I miss pummel and pike and I am not proud of this. I know it's not a healthy feeling. I try to un-arm, to un-cock. I try to practice my breathing. I try The Master Cleanse, The Stationary Bike, The Bikram Sweat, The Contortion Stretch, The Vegan Meatloaf, The Nightly, Scorching Bath, The Leafy Greens and Venom Television, The Self-Mutilation of a Winter's Run, but we can only cleanse our bodies so much before we realize it's not our bodies that need detoxing. Copyright © 2012 by Adam Fell. Used with permission of the author. About this poem: This poem is from Dear Corporation, forthcoming from H_NGM_N Books in 2013.  Poetry by FellI Am Not a Pioneer December 12, 2012 Adam Fell is the author of I Am Not a Pioneer (H_NGM_N Books 2011). He lives in Madison, Wisconsin where he teaches at Edgewood College. Related Poems Dear Empire [these are your temples] by Oliver de la Paz Dear Lonely Animal, by Oni Buchanan Dear Migraine, by Gail Mazur Poem-A-Day started as a National Poetry Month program in 2006, delivering daily poems from newly-published poetry titles. Due to popular demand, Poem-A-Day became a year-round program in 2010, featuring original, never-before-published poems by contemporary poets on weekdays, and classic poems on weekends. Browse the Poem-A-Day archive for selections since 2010.

New admin in the college workplace: just not getting it

SOMETIMES I THINK NOBODY GETS IT

At my community college we have a relatively new upper administration. The President is just finishing her 2nd year and the Vice President for Academic Affairs (VPAA) just finished her first year here. Neither one has strong academic background and the VPAA has not yet learned the 'culture' of the College. For example in the Spring semester, she cancelled classes with 9 and 10 students in them (some were required for the students to graduate) and then complained that enrollment was down! 

Joe Berry's Jun28 COCAL Updates

...news & links about #ContingentFaculty, #academiclabor & #organizing in #highered. To subscribe to regular Updates, email joeberry@igc.org.  More about Joe Berry.  Updates are also archived at chicagococal.org. Follow COCAL International on Facebook. 

 Welcome to the CorporateU

UVA reinstates president after corporate right wingers who engineered her ouster were themselves defeated (resigned), Inside HigherEd

Chris Newfield at Remaking the University explains who really controls "public" universities or "Yes Virginia, there really is a ruling class, and you are not in it." More from Chris and Remaking about recent Bad Day(s) at UVa here and an all-too relevant /UCLA biz school/privatization background story here. 

NFM members on #LeftForum Panels

There may be other NFM members presenting in addition to Debra Leigh Scott and Joe Berry. If so, please let me know. Looking for panels to follow? A number of the Education track panels should be interest. The Left Forum page also has search for tracking down topics and speakers. For those not in attendance, I'll be following as best I can on twitter, hoping for both good turn out reporting back and presentations being available post-conference. 

 

Occupy Colleges: Rescuing Higher Education from the Corporatized University. Featuring: Debra Leigh Scott, Chris LaBree, Nathan Kleinman, Kyle McCarthy. Session 2, E323, Sat 12:00pm - 01:50pm

The panel will investigate some of the many ways we are pushing back against the corporate colonization of academic culture. Fighting to raise awareness of the issues through documentaries and art-making will be discussed by the writers and filmmakers on the panel. Working to return professional stature, governance and economic justice to the migrant adjunct faculty within traditional academic institutions will be discussed by members of NFM. Creating new models of higher education - like the free university movement, open sourceware opportunities and peer-to-peer educating - will be examined for its benefits and game-changing possibilities. 

About panelists: Debra Leigh Scott and Chris LaBree Co-Producer of 'Junct: The Trashing of Higher Ed. in America, will talk about the 'Junct project, our goals and intentions in the making of the film. Nathan Kleinman, The Free University of Philadelphia Working Group, and candidate for U.S. Congress, in Pennsylvania's 13th District. Kyle McCarthy, Producer of Default: The Student Loan Documentary.

For-Profit Universities: The Corporatization of Higher Ed. Featuring: Susan O'Malley, Joe Berry, Richard Ohmann. Session 4, E321, Sat 05:00pm - 06:40pm

For-profit universities have been in the news a lot recently, chiefly for sleazy and sometimes illegal practices. Since they now enroll more than 10% of college students in the U.S., since their rapid growth parallels the commercialization of traditional universities, and since their competition is hastening that process, they should be understood as one thread in the fabric of gonzo capitalism, not a marginal aberration. 

The Spring 2012 issue of Radical Teacher is about the commercializing of higher education. Susan O'Malley and Richard Ohmann edited the issue and Joe Berry, who has taught at a for-profit and is involved in organizing for-profit faculty, wrote for the issue. Confirmed speakers will be Joe Berry, Richard Ohmann with Susan O'Malley chairing the panel.

Peter Fettner recommends two panels hosted by Dissent Magazine on debt serfdom (Friday night, Schimmel, Opening Plenary) and organizing precarious labor (Session 2, E307, Sat 12:00pm - 01:50pm; co-hosted by Verso Books). 

  

Work in the 21st century has been described as unstable, decentralized, precarious. How can workers organize under conditions of "flexible" employment, or gain leverage against an ever-changing boss? What will organizing look like in the face of massive shifts in risk to the backs of workers? All kinds of workers face these conditions, from home care workers, whose recent victories in New York State have challenged the impossibility of rallying those particularly vulnerable to hidden exploitation, to the "knowledge workers" who make up the Freelancers Union. These panelists will discuss the changing face of organizing in the face of the changing nature of work.

Class dismissed

Adjunct blogger, David Ruccio teaches economics, blogs ~ links, excepts, keen commentary thereon, invariably illustrated to perfection ~ and never fails to come with the best of images: art, photos (frequently of public art), cartoons, graphics, illustrations, sketches, charts,and so on. I may be a lit person. but most of the blogs I reach for (figuratively speaking) are by historians or economists. David's is worth following for either copy or images alone ~ both is a twofer treat ...

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Class dismissed via occasional links & commentary by David Ruccio on 11/5/10

In the brave new world of the cost-cutting corporate university, students can stay in their pajamas and earn course credits. Right in their dorm rooms, by viewing on-line courses.


It may not be learning. Or learning much. But students are able to accumulate course credits, and therefore consume what the new corporate university is supplying.


The New York Times reports that universities are teaching thousands of students who never have to step foot in a classroom to earn course credits in Economics, Spanish, Psychology, and so on. And they're not the usual distance-learning students, students who for some time have been offered the opportunity to purchase the education commodity without setting foot on a college or university campus. No, these are on-campus students who, because of budget-cuts, are being forced to purchase course credits by taking-on-line courses.


A single professor, sitting in an office (at home or on campus) can "teach" thousands of students, many more than can fit in a lecture hall, via a relatively simple computer hook-up. Students stay in their rooms, without ever meeting the professor or other students in the course, and attempt to learn the material via on-line lectures and exams.


On-line education represents a fundamental change both in the labor process (it is a form of speed-up) and in the commodity being produced (since one of the distinctive features of consuming the commodity higher education is that students have to work—alone, with the professor, and with other students—to realize the use-value of learning).
It is the future of higher education—and the end of the university as we have known it.

Branding Education

What's in a logo? There's a bad mood rising against the corporate brands, not just among students and faculty in colleges and universities where corporatization is on the rise. No Logo is the warning on the label.


Excerpted from Naomi Klien’s book, No Logo: the chapter, "The Branding of Learning" ~ Click to View

In this excerpt, Naomi Klein discusses the corporatization of education (both in pre-k-12th and at the university level).

(from post by Brit Reed on Defend Education)

In the last decade, No Logo has become a cultural manifesto for the critics of unfettered capitalism worldwide. As the world faces a second economic depression, No Logo's analysis of our corporate and branded world is as timely and powerful as ever.

Equal parts cultural analysis, political manifesto, mall-rat memoir, and journalistic exposé, No Logo is the first book to put the new resistance into pop-historical and clear economic perspective. It tells a story of rebellion and self-determination in the face of our new branded world.


(from Naomi Klein's website)