Last week, Chancellor Christ announced salary cuts for non-union employees and time reductions for unionized employees that would save the university some $27 million – a fraction of the presumed $340 million deficit that will have to be covered through borrowing, digging into reserves, and budget reductions on campus. We are pleased that Chancellor Christ will make the cuts progressive – exempting those with annual income of less than $59,000 and rising on a graduated scale to a maximum of 3.84% for those with annual incomes greater than $234,000 – but we regard this as too timid an attempt to address ever-widening income inequality. The BFA has been advocating far more progressive cuts – no cuts for those earning less than $100,000 and up to 10% for those in the higher income brackets, including more brackets at the top. We have also proposed that this would be a good time to put athletics on the chopping block and rent out the debt-ridden stadium. And we are especially worried that students will ultimately have to pay the costs of COVID – not just in their own health and dislocation, not just in the degradation of their education, but, on top of everything else, in increased tuition costs – as happened after the crisis of 2008.
It was in response to that crisis that the Berkeley Faculty Association was rejuvenated. Wendy Brown was a major contributor to bringing new life to the BFA. She is now retiring. The withdrawal of such a brilliant intellect and activist spirit will be a great loss to the BFA, to her home department of political science, and to the vitality of the campus. A product of the California system of public education, she has been its fierce defender and has argued for its centrality not just to our collective life but to the vitality of democracy. As a scholar, she has an uncanny capacity to describe the present in a way that throws light on its essential dynamics, and her excellence in scholarship and teaching has always gone hand in hand with political commitment. She was recently heard commenting about a colleague: “She’s not afraid of power–in both senses: she’s not afraid of criticizing and challenging power, and she’s not afraid of using her intellectual power to advance the interests of others.” That pretty well sums up Wendy. She deserves a rest, but her exemplary combination of scholarship and activism ought to inspire all of us to renew our commitment to the principles she helped us to articulate.
Michael Burawoy, Celeste Langan, Leslie Salzinger and James Vernon for the Board of the Berkeley Faculty Association.