The University We Stand For:
- A university in which all students have a genuinely equal chance to think, study and succeed. This requires that all be able to attend school without having to work, without financial anxiety and without incurring debt.
- A university whose educational mission is publicly funded so that administrators do not need to chase tuition and donors from across the world and so that decisions about programs, departments and curriculum are made on educational and intellectual rather than financial grounds.
- A university whose language, practices, and policies befit an institution dedicated to higher education, and are not imported from commercial platforms oriented toward other ends.
- A university that supports all employees with livable–neither exorbitant nor precarious–salaries and benefits.
- A university that prioritizes (and subsidizes) research oriented toward illuminating or solving public problems, broadly understood.
- A university that celebrates and protects the great diversity of knowledge — including basic research and rare knowledge whose purpose and value may not be obvious to all — against external pressures and values, especially those of the marketplace.
- A university that recognizes the climate crisis and other environmental devastations as holding the future hostage, and models the capacity to eliminate reliance on fossil fuels and foster sustainability in every aspect of its existence, from investments to buildings to food provision.
- A university whose students, faculty, staff and administration actually reflect the diversity of the people of California. Rather than merely deploying the language of diversity, such a university also works to recognize and repair legacies of dispossession, exclusion and inequality.
- A university that commits itself to, rather than seeks to break away from, the broader system and democratic promise of public higher education within the University of California, the California State University, and Community Colleges.
