UC Berkeley Budget Crisis

Blog for the UC Berkeley community to post recommendations, articles and letters. This blog can be used to share your own data and experiences so that we can collectively better understand how different departments are dealing with the budget crisis and see campus-wide patterns. It can be used to post and comment on events. Also see email post for the Faculty Budget Forum Listserv: http://facultybudgetforum.berkeley.edu. Recent UC budget news at: http://budgetcrisis.berkeley.edu/?page_id=2715. For more information on this blog, contact Alice Agogino in Mechanical Engineering. Please contact her if you would like to have an account to publish a comment. Note that opinions are not official statements or policies of the university and comments may be from people not associated with the university.

Fall Meeting of the Academic Senate, Berkeley Division: Wednesday, November 7, 2012, 3:00 to 5:00 p.m., Pacific Film Archive Theater

This meeting will be held the day after the election, so we will have an opportunity to discuss the implications for the future of the campus. A week prior to the meeting, the Notice of Meeting will be posted on the Senate web site.

The spring meeting will be held Tuesday, April 23, 2013, from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m., location to be announced.

Nov. 8 Walkout. An Educated California is a Public Good: Faculty Stands with Students Against Defunding UC

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Previous Events 2011/12 Academic Year

Debtor’s Assembly – Student Debt in a Global Context: Neoliberalism and Crisis, Oct. 24, 2012, 5-6 pm

Protest outside of California Hall. After a presentation by Robert Meister and Q&A there will be an open forum to address the problems students and others face dealing with debt. This will be the first in a series of weekly Debtors’ Assemblies to learn more about the many forms of debt and discuss ways to resist debt’s claim upon our lives. Debt is a permanent feature of most of our lives. Yet the socialization of risk debt represents isolates individuals, locking us in the private misery of our dealings with banks and creditors. Medical debt, student debt, consumer debt, foreclosures—these social forms mark so many personal failings and moral obligations, we are told. Debt, in other words, not only insures our continued servitude to the corporate pursuit of dwindling private profits. It also serves
to alienate us from one another, and foreclose the possibility of collective resistance.

10/28 cross-campus faculty gathering

On Sunday October 28, 2012 from 12-2 pm, a group of faculty drawn from the northern UC campuses will gather to discuss the multiple kinds of actions and interventions we can engage in, in defense of the public nature of the University. Please join us. This follows on a meeting held on September 30, in which an initial group from Berkeley, Santa Cruz, Davis and UCSF gathered to share challenges for each campus and for the larger system and to envision our role in protecting the University as a public institution. Notes from that meeting, including both minutes and graphic records of the conversation, can be found here: http://ucbfa.org/2012/10/september-30-workshop-minutes/.
All are welcome on October 28. Please join us, whether or not you attended the first meeting.  The meeting is sponsored by  the Berkeley Faculty Association and the Faculty Organizing Group at Santa Cruz. For more information or to RSVP, contact info@cucfa.org.

March 1-5 2012 Mobilization for Public Education in California

From the Berkeley Faculty Association: A major mobilization is coming up March 1-5, 2012 to put pressure on the Governor and legislature to renew support for public education in California. It includes a variety of marches, rallies and other activities around the state, peaking with a big show of protest on the Capitol grounds in Sacramento on Monday, March 5th.  A key part the action is a “99-mile March for Public Education & Social Justice”, starting hereabouts and going to Sacramento. Faculty can participate in two ways:

• Have faculty join the 99-mile marchers on Friday, March 2d, 1-3 pm.

BFA will organize car pools to and from the march, starting around noon and returning around 4 pm to Berkeley. It is recommended that faculty march in robes, if you have your own regalia. This would be more likely to get press attention and interviews. It would be good to have as many faculty as possible talk to the press. If you are willing to participate, please write back to BFA/CUCFA/AAUP staff person Deborah Rosenberg at deborahrosenberg@ymail.com.

• Have faculty join the demonstration at the Capitol on Monday, March 5th (morning).

There are buses going from Berkeley (and other points) and coming back. You need to sign up at: http://www.refundcalifornia.org/march5. If you are planning to go to Sacramento, please tell us that, too, via Deborah Rosenberg deborahrosenberg@ymail.com. BFA and CUCFA have endorsed the statewide protests, which are organized by the ReFund California Coalition and an ad hoc group, Occupy the Capitol, which includes the California Federation of Teachers, the Courage Campaign, ACCE, and the Berkeley grad students union.

Faculty Forum on Key Operational Excellence Technology Initiative – February 8, 2012, 4-5:30 pm Section Club, Tang Center

The Operational Excellence (OE) Program Office, in partnership with the Academic Senate, invites all faculty to attend a Q+A forum about a key campus-wide OE information technology project, the IT Productivity Suite. Through this project, all faculty, staff and students will migrate this year to a new integrated email and calendar solution from Google, and can access best-in-class software from Microsoft, Adobe, Mathematica, and more.

• Andrew Szeri, OE Program Faculty Head and Dean, Graduate Division, will provide a brief summary of the project and how it will affect faculty and the campus, and then a panel will answer questions. Panel participants will also include:
• Paul Wright, Director of the Center for Information Technology in the Interest of Society (CITRIS)
• Bob Jacobsen, Academic Senate Chair
• Shel Waggener, Associate Vice Chancellor for Information Technology
• and Chief Information Officer
• Bill Allison, Director, Campus Technology Services
• Alex Walton, Project Manager, IT Productivity Suite
• Gabriel Gonzalez, Chief Technical Officer, Berkeley Law

December 6, 2011, noon-2:00pm: Taxation, Citizenship, Protest, and our Current Crisis in Higher Education, Wheeler Auditorium

• Henry E. Brady (Dean, Goldman School of Public Policy)
• Catherine M. Cole (Professor, Performance Studies)
• Donald Kennedy (President Emeritus, Stanford University)
• Alfredo Mireles, Jr. (Student Regent)
• Jonathan Stein (Student Regent-Designate)

Special Meeting of the Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate, Nov. 28, 2011

Monday, November 28, 2011, 3:00 in the Chevron Auditorium, International House (Notice of Meeting). The meeting is in response to anger over police brutality to non-violent student protests.

Special Meeting of the Academic Council, Nov. 20, 2011

The Academic Council met by teleconference for two hours this afternoon, and unanimously adopted the following four statements:

We are outraged by the display of force against members of the UC community that we have seen at the Berkeley and Davis campuses.

It is essential that there be a clear chain of command, with the Chancellor accepting ultimate responsibility for actions of the police, who must be trained to respond appropriately to protests.

Campuses should exercise restraint in responding to peaceful protests and seek to resolve the situation through dialogue.

We support the right of free speech and peaceful protest by all members of the University community. We reaffirm our opposition to the state’s disinvestment in higher education, which is at the root of the student protests.

November 15: Robert Reich, Mario Savio Memorial Lecture

Pauley Ballroom, 8 pm. http://www.savio.org/. Full video of Robert Reich’s Mario Salvio speech at Occupy Cal archived, http://bit.ly/uyMwxs.

Strike on Tuesday, November 15

After a mass rally and march of over 3,000 people, and repeated police assaults on the encampment, the Occupy Cal general assembly decided – withover 500 votes, 95% of the assembly – to organize and call for a strike and day of action on Tuesday, November 15 in all sectors of higher education. We will strike in opposition to the cuts to public education,university privatization, and the indebting of our generation. We also call for simultaneous solidarity actions in workplaces and k-12 schools. We will organize through daily, 5pm strike planning meetings at our encampments, followed by general assemblies.

• The strike call can also be found online here: http://reclaimuc.blogspot.com/2011/11/occupy-cal-strike-call.html
• Video of the Wednesday General Assembly meeting at which the decision to call for a strike was reached: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9Zr6ir-iqw&feature=youtu.be

Protests Against Tuition Hikes (November 9, 10, 16)

Student and staff groups are calling for a “Teach-Out” this Wednesday (“Day of Action“) and Thursday (Nov. 9 and 10) to protest rising tuition (300% in the past ten years) and severe state budget cutbacks to public higher education. This is a precursor to protest planned for the Regents meeting on November 16th at the Mission Bay campus, San Francisco. The November 9 Teach-Out includes a noon rally in Sproul Plaza. Students and workers are actively organizing to bring students to the rally and to encourage departments and other units to walk out/teach out en bloc. There are buses organized to enable students and others to assemble at the Regents meeting in Mission Bay on the morning of Wednesday, Nov. 16th. Although the 3-year 81% tuition increase proposal may not be voted on at the Nov. 16 Regent’s meeting (that vote may be moved to March), many believe that strong opposition to this plan is imperative now. Related websites:

• Refund California Coalition http://www.makebankspaycalifornia.com/
• Public Education Coalition http://berkeleycuts.org/
• Remaking the University http://utotherescue.blogspot.com/
• Videos of Police Action, Nov. 9 Students chanting “stop beating students”. In another video, Prof. Celeste Langan (in maroon jacket wearing sunglasses) standing there and then being dragged by her hair and pushed to the ground by the police at approximately 0:39-0:49. She had offered her wrists to be handcuffed once she realized the police intended to arrest her, but instead was held and dragged by the hair. She was arrested and jailed. Her book bag with her teaching materials and lecture notes for her Monday class were taken and reviewed. The Chancellor’s office gave instructions to hold all property until Monday. These teaching materials were only returned after a faculty outcry that this was inappropriate and inconsistent with trying to maintain academic excellence at all times. See this video in news item below:
• UC Berkeley Pledges to Investigate Police Response to Occupy Cal Protest: Video shows officers dragging a professor and a student to the ground by their hair, The Bay Citizen, November 11, 2011. “[Prof.] Langan, who was released late Wednesday after roughly five hours in police custody, intends to file a complaint with the University of California Police Department on Monday accusing authorities of using excessive force. She says as officers approached, she stuck out her wrist and said, “Arrest me.” Instead, they grabbed her by the hair.”
• Video clip from Colbert Report, Nov. 10, 2011 Occupy U.C. Berkeley – When U.C. Berkeley student protesters refuse to leave the campus, the university resorts to having them forcibly removed by baton-wielding police.
• Penn State and Berkeley: A Tale of Two Protests, The Nation, Nov. 10, 2011. “At Berkeley, the police had a much different response [than student protestors at Penn State]. Defenseless students were struck repeatedly with batons, as efforts were made to disperse their occupation by Sproul Hall, the site of the famed Mario Savio–led free speech battles of the 1960s. These students are a credit to their school and represent the absolute best of a young generation who are refusing to accept the world as it is.”
• Berkeley City Council has Ended Mutual Aid Agreements With Other Jurisdictions, Daily Kos, Nov 10, 2011.
• Berkeley leaders refuse mutual aid agreements, Mercury News, Nov 10, 2011.
• Berkeley’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Response to #occupycal, Michael Eisen, Nov 10, 2011.
• Campus Occupations Intensify, Chronicle of Higher Education, Nov 11, 2011.
• Not Non-violent Civil Disobedience, Micha Lazarus, Nov 11, 2011.
• Not Non-Violent Civil Disobedience, Critical Theory B-sides and Small Pieces blog, Nov 11, 2011.
• UC Berkeley teachers condemn police violence, Daily Californian, Nov 12, 2011.
• Public Records Request from ACLU of Northern California to Chancellor Birgeneau and Chief Mitchell Celaya Concerning Conduct of November 9/10, 2011 in connection with Occupy Cal. Download PDF of letter.
• Students call for resignation of top UC Berkeley officials, Daily Californian, Nov. 13, 2011.
• Why I Got Arrested with Occupy Cal – and How, by Celeste Langan
• Graduate Student Assembly – Day of Action – Tues Nov 15
• Occupy Cal Makes Occupy History at Berkeley, The Atlantic, November 16, 2011.

November  8: R. Jeffrey Lustig, “Corporate MisEducation and the Liberal Arts Response”

Townsend Center, 5 pm. http://townsendlab.berkeley.edu/making-uc-futures. ** Please note this is a seminar and the paper is to be read in advance. The paper is available for download:
http://townsendlab.berkeley.edu/making-uc-futures/files/r-jeffrey-lustig-corporate-miseducation-and-liberal-arts-response-pdf

The American university is a battered figure on the public domain, half relic of the past, half orphan of the present, celebrated on the dais while denigrated in the boardroom, swamped by passing fads, starved by state legislatures and fated finally, it seems, to have its different pieces auctioned off to the highest bidder. If it also remains a special realm for the cultivation of the mind, the last self-governing community in the country and a critical public sphere, it maintains those other aspects against long and ever-mounting odds. Within a maelstrom of forces and pressures a master trend is apparent: the corporatization of the university. In order for this trend to be resisted and the older promise of the American university reclaimed, we need to understand how that trend became dominant, why the narrative seemed persuasive, and what the alternatives are for the American university. Offering an analysis ranging from Cicero and Clark Kerr to Novartis and British Petroleum, Lustig’s essay challenges faculty, in particular, to recreate their culture from within and to affirm the university itself as a school of publicness, a place where we learn what it means to be a public.

October 25 2011, noon-2:00pm: Social Inequity and Social Opportunity, Pauley Ballroom

October 4, 2011, 1-2 pm, 306 Soda Hall Auditorium: Ralph Nader spoke on “What’s the Matter with Big Time College Sports”

Open to the public, this talk is part of a Freshman Seminar “Priorities Under Pressure: A Critical Assessment of How the University’s Core Mission is Affected by Intercollegiate Athletics. Talk is archived at: , http://priorities.weebly.com/guest-speaker-schedule-and-videos.html

September 22: Day of Action for Public Education

September 22 is the first day of classes at the other UCs. Though we know that they won’t be able to organize anything yet, we picked this day in solidarity with them, in hopes that later on in the semester we can organize events on a cross-campus basis.  A rally is planned for noon on Thursday, Sept 22, on the Mario Savio Steps (front of Sproul). See the Public Education Coalition for more details.

September 20: Austerity Townhall

6-8 pm on Tuesday, Sept 20, in the Maude Fife Room in Wheeler Hall (3rd Floor: room 315). This student organized event will be an “open mic” conversation with four speakers, each speaking relatively briefly during the first hour, followed by an open discussion period.

September 13 2011, 5:00 am – 6:30 pm: Education: Back to the Future? Wurster Hall, Cal Design Lab, Room 501SE

We are in the early stages of a large-scale organizational transformation that will impact everything we do-from how we organize production to how we grow our food to how we govern ourselves. Although we often see this transformation through the lens of new technologies and global access to information, the larger impact is social; it is in how we lead our lives and re-structure our institutions, including education. If you were starting a school or a university today – with today’s technologies and knowledge of the latest findings in the neuroscience of learning, what would it look like? In this talk, Marina Gorbis will take us on a tour of the education landscape of the future in the context of larger technological and organizational shifts. She will talk about how we can “socialstruct” education–bringing together the best technologies and online resources for the purpose of creating social interactions and environments most conducive to learning. Marina Gorbis is Executive Director of Institute for the Future, a 42-year old non-profit research and consulting organization based in Silicon Valley. The Institute is dedicated to helping people think systematically about the future in order to make better decisions today. . She holds a Master’s Degree from the Graduate School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley. Presented by the Townsend Center Working Group “Making UC Futures.”
http://townsendlab.berkeley.edu/making-uc-futures. For more information, contact Catherine Cole, colecat@berkeley.edu.

August 27, 11:00 am – 5:00 pm: OPENed: education as experience

Berkeley Art Museum, 11:00 am – 5:00 pm. Reservations recommended. From the ‘knowledge factory’ to factory farming, homogenization has traded diversity for efficiency. Eager to point to alternative strategies, new and historical, OPENrestaurant proposes an educational experience based on curiosity, play, and desire. Transforming the grounds of the Berkeley Art Museum on the UC Berkeley campus into an open classroom and living kitchen, visitors will be able to shape their own education, participating in the creation, production, and consumption of food as collective performance. Part demystification of the lore of the kitchen and part tracing the genealogy of Chez Panisse and its influences – from the free speech movement to Edible Schoolyards – OPENeducation invites participants to collaborate with students, educators, farmers, cooks, and artists in constructing the elements of a lunch menu in a series of independent classrooms. More at: http://openrestaurant.org/2011/06/26/opened-education-as-experience/

There is a “digest” feature available to all members of the Faculty Budget Forum (FBF) list. You can receive FBF messages in this form by going to the CalMail home, selecting “Managing Your Mailing Lists” from the Quick Links menu, and then selecting the link for “faculty_budget_forum@lists.berkeley.edu.” On the page of “Options” for your CalMail account, scroll down and you’ll find the button for Digest Mode, which will let you receive FBF emails in daily (or semi-daily) bundles. For questions, contact Mark Goble, mgoble@berkeley.edu.