The California Faculty Association has released a white paper that blasts the CSU system's leadership for "a 'restructuring' of the CSU that goes far beyond 'belt-tightening' in hard times and is, in fact, a radical change in the mission of the system."
The paper also contains an analysis of how CFA wants to frame the debate:
In addition to challenging administrators' managerial language, we must also expose the long-term social effects of the changes they propose. While it appears that each campus will have its own campus-specific plan to "transform" education, the examples being implemented right now make clear that these changes will have an especially negative impact on low-income people and communities of color and raise real questions about the civil rights implications of these actions. In fact, the provision of a broad liberal education for communities that might have no other access is at the heart of the CSU's mission and at the heart of what is under attack.
We also must understand the pattern of the assault on our public universities in a broader historical and political framework. What is happening to us in the CSU is not new, and it is not unique. As Naomi Klein chronicles in "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism," crises of various sorts, from economic crises to natural disasters, have been used around the world for decades to strip down social programs, privatize government, destroy democratic institutions, and create enormous wealth for a tiny group of individuals.
Click here to download the 8-page paper.
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