For reportage on the meeting and the vote, see:
Daily Cal
Contra Costa Times
The Nation

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, read Prof. Jonathan Cole’s post about OWS on the Huffington Post, which is linked here.

•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 older generations. It rests on the belief that our collective future, the future of this State and country, depends on their talents and wisdom. That is why it should be virtually free. It is not a personal investment by those with ample means, like private universities.

•Educating the young to the highest level has three essential purposes: improving their contribution to economic prosperity, making them into the most capable citizens and leaders, and fulfilling their potential for personal growth and satisfaction

•The 3-tier college system of California is a brilliant solution to reconciling two fundamental goals of higher education: open opportunity and the promotion of excellence among our students.

•In the University of California, research and teaching must always go together. Research informs the best teaching and teaching introduces students to the best minds. Yet this partnership is being eroded by those who think that research is the sole purpose of elite universities and that teaching is a lower activity that should be relegated to lecturers and graduate students.

•Research is a basic function of the university. Research advances the frontiers of human knowledge and has unexpected benefits for society and economy. Sometimes these benefits emerge years or decades later, which is why is it important to support basic research and not only marketable applications. Research is done by faculty across all the disciplines and its value is not to be measured simply by potential economic payoff.

•The natural sciences have much larger financial needs for running laboratories, and require greater outside finance resources (from government, foundations and industry), as well as greater needs for support from the university. This puts special demands on science faculty and the university. But it does not obviate the need for teaching nor does it put research funding above things such as good classrooms and libraries.

•Funding for public education is being eroded all across the country and around the world, as part of the larger shift to neoliberalism, i.e., away from government and toward private enterprise in all social provision. This is not a California problem alone nor a short-term dip due to the Great Recession.

•The university leadership is obsessed with money, putting aside all considerations of UC’s larger values. All they think of is raising tuition, attracting private donations, and garnering more research grants, along with cost-cutting. In so doing, they endanger the future of the public university and make UC more and more like a private institution.

•UC and Berkeley are not “brands” like Coca-Cola to be marketed for revenues. We do not put billboards on campus and we should not be in the business of selling on-line courses and external degrees. We can make use of the internet and other technologies to reach a broader audience, but with great care not to degrade our educational mission.

•The current crisis is being used by the university leadership to make hasty decisions without adequate faculty control and to make end-runs around the university community. Faculty governance was central to making this the greatest public university in the world, and it has been badly eroded. Faculty cannot remain quiet, but need to speak out through the Senates and Faculty Associations on all 10 campuses.

•Extreme salary inequality has demoralized many younger faculty and many of those most dedicated to the university. Their ire is directed at both overpaid administrators and extreme ‘star salaries’ for some faculty. This university became great by hiring well, promoting well and nurturing the best minds. Yet today it is under-paying its younger faculty while spending large amounts playing the free-agent game at the top.

•University leaders, and all of us, need to speak to the people of California. All indications are that they support the higher education system and are willing to pay for it. But the political system is incapable of overcoming ideological opposition to taxes and rational budgeting and our leaders are unwilling and unable to provide political leadership in what is a profoundly political debate over the future of the state.

•Quite modest taxes would restore full funding to the university and state colleges. We calculate that a mere $40 per year by the median tax-payer would return the system to sufficient revenues without the fee increases of the last 10 years. Why can’t this be done? (for further information go to http://keepcaliforniaspromise.org/)

•We believe that faculty, students, staff, parents and alumni could be mobilized to put unprecedented pressure on the legislature to re-fund public education in the State of California, if the President and Chancellors across the system would mobilize the greater UC community and provide the leadership we all sorely need.

The Berkeley Faculty Association
Wendy Brown and Chris Rosen, Co-Chairs
Richard Walker, Vice-Chair
September 21, 2011

Proposed Senate resolution on online evaluation 4-14

WBrown-UC Cybercampus Loan.4-18-11

Crane is outspoken opponent of public sector unions. He recently published an inflammatory editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle attacking collective bargaining rights for public employee unions, couching these rights as threats to public higher education and good governance.

You can read and sign the petition here

Please sign and distribute widely.

Chris Rosen, co-Chair of BFA

P.S. Senator Ted Lieu’s excellent rebuttal of David Crane

Senator Ted W. Lieu (D-Torrance), Chair of the Labor and Industrial
Relations Committee, released the following statement regarding the
confirmation of University of California Regent David Crane:

I actively oppose the confirmation of David Crane as a UC Regent. I
read Mr. Crane’s Op-Ed in the San Francisco Chronicle in which he argues
for the elimination of collective bargaining for public sector
employees. I cannot support someone for the powerful post of UC Regent
who continues to perpetuate the myth that collective bargaining caused
our state economic crisis and has a fundamental misunderstanding of how
our state budget operates.

In his Op-Ed, titled “Should Public Employees Have Collective
Bargaining”, Mr. Crane argues that because of collective bargaining,
“general fund spending on higher education, parks and environmental
protection was flat or lower.” As a matter of historical fact, that is
false. Our general fund spending generally declined because of a
national economic recession. The recession was not caused by collective
bargaining or public sector unions, but by private sector, out of
control Wall Street firms at the time.

The specific reason our general fund spending sharply declined was
because the person Mr. Crane advised, former Governor Arnold
Schwarzenegger, reduced the Vehicle License Fee and replaced it with . .
. nothing. As a result, the state general fund lost over $5 to $6
billion in revenues per year for every year Mr. Schwarzenegger was in
office. The VLF reduction has resulted in a total loss of over $30
billion to the state, an amount in excess of the current California
budgetary shortfall. How conveniently Mr. Crane forgot to mention that
critical fact when it doesn’t suit his ideological assault on public
sector unions.

Now that Mr. Crane senses his confirmation may be in jeopardy, he
attempts to marginalize his own Op-Ed by releasing a new statement
saying he really didn’t mean to attack all public sector unions, just
those who happen to have statutory civil service protections. For those
in Ivory Towers that distinction may have some academic meaning, but for
everyone else in the real world that is a distinction without a
difference. Civil Service protections do not prevent employees from
being terminated or laid off, they provide standards for government to
follow when firing or disciplining employees. Such protections do not
guarantee appropriate wages or benefits, nor address a plethora of other
issues, such as workforce safety issues.

Mr. Crane’s Op-Ed also discusses political spending by public sector
unions. In his world view, political spending by the California
Teachers Association is inappropriate, but the massive political
spending by the Koch Brothers would presumably be acceptable.
I cannot, and will not, support someone for the post of UC Regent who
blames public sector employees, such as teachers, for somehow being
responsible for our economic crisis or the resulting decline in general
fund spending. We need UC Regents who are interested in solving
problems, not those who twist historical facts to suit an ideological
agenda.

Originally posted at http://www.camajorityreport.com/index.php?module=articles&func=display&aid=4613&ptid=9

Operational Excellence “mid-semester evaluation”

To sign the petition, go here

The petition reads:

We, the undersigned faculty and staff of the University of California, urge you to resist the request by 36 top executives and deans to raise the pensions of those making over $245K.

At a time when the UC pension system is endangered and the entire instructional and research enterprise of UC is imperiled we find it outrageous that these managers — whose very job it is to steward the system — would demand exorbitant pension compensation. They cannot have it both ways: private sector salary levels and public employee pensions.

The damage to the image of the university from excessive pay and benefits, and now from this ill-timed threat of a lawsuit from the 36 signees, has been immense. In order to restore public faith in UC, you must come forward quickly with a statement of intent to hold the line on pensions to elite employees.

The principle here is greater than this incident: this is a public university, one in dire straits financially. Most of us work for reasonable salaries but also for the public good. If the elite earners do not care enough about the public university to stay, then let them depart for the private sector. We believe you can find dedicated people within and without UC who would would be willing and able to replace these individuals.