Dear Faculty, (this letter downloadable for distribution here)

This letter is about why you should move your classes to the Free University on the week of September 18th – 22th in Madison Square Park.

The Free University is a student and activist-led project which holds days of radical public education in public parks around New York City. Next week, in the immediate wake of the one-year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, the Free University will provide a space for critical dialogue, reflection, workshops, lectures, and skill-shares, in order to build a student movement and foster the conditions for a broader social justice movement here in New York City.

This week of free educational courses and events brings together people from around the world, from Canadian student activists to renowned public intellectuals here in the city (see our growing schedule of events here: http://freeuniversitynyc.org/schedule/). Free University advocates for education as a human right and demonstrates our ability to implement free education for all. We are asking that faculty from universities around New York City move their classes to the Madison Square Park during the week of Sept 18th – 22nd in support of this cause. Not only would moving your class give those who don’t have access to education an opportunity to participate, it would also demonstrate your solidarity with our overall objectives:

  • to be a cooperative enterprise working for a new form of education that re-defines what it means to be educators and students.
  • to prefigure a more democratic, horizontal, and radical educational structure.
  • to empower ourselves, each other, and our communities to become decision-makers in our own processes of self-education.
  • to expose the inequities of the existing university system.
  • to intentionally and conscientiously create educational spaces that are anti-oppressive, anti-racist, and anti-authoritarian.
  • to fight against the casualization and precaritization of academic labor.
  • to join others who see education as a form of direct action by withdrawing from the failing capitalist education system, and collaborating in the realization of a more accessible education for all.

To learn more, or to register your class with the free university go here: http://freeuniversitynyc.org/get-involved/registration-form/

We hope to see you and your students at the Free University,
In Solidarity,

-The Free University Planning Team