Yes, tomorrow is election day. Yes, this could be a fateful election. Yes, things are not going to be decided tomorrow. Yes, there could be a battle royal that could go on in the courts and in the streets for months, as the contest in “swing” states is bound to be close. This is presented as the election for the survival of democracy, perhaps of the planet. Gone forever, apparently, are the politics of convergence; we have entered the politics of polarization. Yet, from the standpoint of human survival the parties have as much in common as they differ. Neither party is equipped to deal with the new age we’ve entered – the age of climate change, the age of pandemics, the age of massive migration and refugees –the intersecting and cascading crises of the environment, health, employment, social justice.
And the university? There will be desperation moves to make up losses (an estimated $340 million on our campus at the end of the fiscal year 2021), and there will no doubt be intensified pressure to generate revenue by increased commodification: more so-called “self-supporting degree programs,” more adjuncts to support massive online instruction, increasing focus on “marketable” research. At Berkeley’s Academic Senate meeting last Thursday, the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost was already touting “semester in the cloud” as a great success. What’s the evidence of that success? How long before undergraduates begin to realize that the excellent public university education they were promised has been diluted? And all this is happening as access to the university is widening, irrespective of the fate of Proposition 16. Across the nation, higher education faces a precarious future. Where will Berkeley land? That’s a question for tomorrow, no matter who wins.
Michael Burawoy and Celeste Langan for the Board of the Berkeley Faculty Association.