The BFA board has agreed to sign on to the ReFund California pledge for public education, following a poll of the members that was overwhelmingly in favor. ReFund California is a coalition of public interest groups seeking to get Wall Street banks to pay for reinvesting in housing, public education, and other public services. The pledge on public education can be found here.
The Berkeley Academic Senate passes four resolutions rebuking Chancellor Birgeneau and the campus administration for poor management of student demonstrations that unleashed police on non-violent demonstrators. The Senate vote was overwhelming, 435-36, a mark of faculty outrage rarely seen on this campus. For reportage on the meeting and the vote, see: Daily Cal Contra Costa Times The Nation
The social movement known as Occupy Wall Street (OWS) is growing and raising issues of direct relevance to the faculty, students and staff of the University of California, including contracting opportunities and increasing debt loads for our students created by a system of privatized education and a refusal to provide high quality affordable public higher education. The Council of UC Faculty Associations, on behalf of all UC faculty, is making a petition supporting OWS available for UC faculty to sign. We urge you to read the petition and support it by clicking here. This petition was originally developed by faculty at Columbia and Barnard. For an excellent short article on this growing movement and how it relates to higher education, [...]
For all concerned faculty at the University of California: •Public education for all is one of the great contributions of America to modern life, and was fought for by brilliant educators from John Dewey to Clark Kerr. It has always had doubters and enemies; it is at risk and will not survive unless we defend it once again. •All of us must be able to defend public education to our colleagues, our students and the public. To do so, we must be able to articulate its basic purposes and priorities, as well as criticize the misunderstandings and mistakes of our administration, the Regents, and the dominant ideology. •Public education is an investment in the young by the general public and [...]
SAVE & BFA have submitted a resolution to the Academic Senate at Berkeley calling for a halt to the administration’s plan to convert course evaluations by students to publicly available on-line evaluations. Please come to the Senate meeting on Wed. April 20th, 3-5, in Sibley Auditorium to support this resolution. Proposed Senate resolution on online evaluation 4-14
Eager to promote on-line education, the UC administration has lent itself $7 million for a pilot project that was supposed to be self-supporting! (Outside grants from the Gates Foundation did not come through). BFA’s Wendy Brown says why this is shameful, especially in a time of budget cuts. WBrown-UC Cybercampus Loan.4-18-11