An amazing aggregate of resources, the Class War University blog speaks directly to issues that are important to the Free University. Their many thoughtful posts are proof positive that “we’re unstoppable, another world is possible!” Check out the latest piece, an interview of Stefano Harney and Fred Moten on “Studying through the Undercommons.”
Category Archives: Blog Post
Education ministry’s office vandalized with red paint ahead of summit
By Anne Sutherland
Originally published by the Montreal Gazette, February 25, 2013
A security guard stands at the vandalized entrance of the 600 Fullum St. building that houses the offices of the Ministry of Education. The Summit on Higher Education begins Monday. Red was the colour used by the striking students last spring.
Photograph by: Dario Ayala , The Gazette
MONTREAL — The offices of the Ministry of Education were vandalized overnight Sunday to Monday with red paint covering the door and windows.
The Montreal offices at 600 Fullum St. were hit sometime between 9:30 p.m. Sunday and 3:20 a.m. Monday when police patrolling in the Ville Marie borough noticed the damage. No arrests and no description of the vandals were immediately available. Continue reading
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“We Will Not Defer to You, Jamshed”: Deferred Applicants Speak out at the Cooper Union
Students at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City unfurled a “Free Education to All” banner from a third story window today as about one hundred students, faculty, and supporters demonstrated below. The event was just one of many in what is an ongoing struggle over whether or not to institute tuition at the historically free university. Many folks involved in the Free University of NYC were there today to show our solidarity, as we have before and will continue to do until the Cooper Union affirms its historic mission to provide an education that is as “free as air and water.” Continue reading
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Tagged cooper union, tuition
Making Sense of MOOCs: Musings in a Maze of Myth, Paradox and Possibility
By Sir John Daniel, Fellow, Korea National Open University; Education Master, DeTao Masters Academy, China
Abstract
MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) are the educational buzzword of 2012. Media frenzy surrounds them and commercial interests have moved in. Sober analysis is overwhelmed by apocalyptic predictions that ignore the history of earlier educational technology fads. The paper describes the short history of MOOCs and sets them in the wider context of the evolution of educational technology and open/distance learning. While the hype about MOOCs presaging a revolution in higher education has focussed on their scale, the real revolution is that universities with scarcity at the heart of their business models are embracing openness. We explore the paradoxes that permeate the MOOCs movement and explode some myths enlisted in its support. The competition inherent in the gadarene rush to offer MOOCs will create a sea change by obliging participating institutions to revisit their missions and focus on teaching quality and students as never before. It could also create a welcome deflationary trend in the costs of higher education. Continue reading
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A Culture of Resistance: Lessons Learned from the Student Liberation Action Movement
Originally Published on Upping the Anti @ http://uppingtheanti.org/journal/article/08-a-culture-of-resistance1/.
By Suzy Subways
In March 1995, 20,000 students from City University of New York (CUNY) were attacked by police after surrounding city hall to protest a draconian tuition increase. This protest, organized by the CUNY Coalition Against the Cuts, marked an upsurge in student movement activity that continued into 1996, when the group transformed into the Student Liberation Action Movement (SLAM), a multiracial radical organization. Before disbanding in 2004, SLAM established chapters at CUNY colleges in all five boroughs of the city. This roundtable focuses on the chapter at Hunter College in Manhattan and explores SLAM’s legacy of building a left culture in New York City and across the country. Continue reading
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Tagged CUNY, Organizing, SLAM, Student Movement
CUNY’s Pathways Initiative and the Future of Higher Education Reform
By James Dennis
Originally Published in Dissent Magazine, February 12th, 2013
[Photo of Brooklyn College, CUNY, by Salim Virji, 2009, Flickr creative commons]
What began as a fight between English faculty and the administration at a small urban community college is quickly becoming the front line in a national struggle over the future of higher education. As of this writing, two of the largest faculty organizations in the country, the Modern Language Association and the American Association of University Professors, have taken strong public stands against the City University of New York’s controversial Pathways to Degree Completion initiative, which supporters claim will streamline transfers between branches of the university system and increase graduation rates. These denouncements follow the creation of a national petition against Pathways and a spirited and growing campaign by the Professional Staff Congress, CUNY’s faculty union, to resist the proposed changes. Continue reading
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Tagged CUNY Pathways, Neoliberalism, Restructuring
The courage of the vigilante feminists is contagious
The Free University dedicates this Valentine’s Day re-posting of Laurie Penny’s article to all of the feminists world wide who work daily to smash patriarchy and end gender based violence.
Originally published in the Guardian. February, 12th 2013 (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/13/new-feminism-defying-shame)
By Laurie Penny
Protesters hold up knives in a show of defiance during a protest in Cairo against rape and sexual harrassment on 6 February 2013. Photograph: AFP/Getty
“I’m sick of being ashamed.” Three days ago, an anti-harassment activist said those words to me in a flat above Cairo’s Tahrir square, as she pulled on her makeshift uniform ready to protect women on the protest lines from being raped in the street. Only days before, I’d heard exactly the same words from pro-choice organisers in Dublin, where I travelled to report on the feminist fight to legalise abortion in Ireland. I had thought that I was covering two separate stories – so why were two women from different countries and backgrounds repeating the same mantra against fear, and against shame? Continue reading
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Higher education under threat in Hungary
by KÁROLY FÜZESSI
This article was originally published on OpenDemocracy, February 11, 2013. (http://www.opendemocracy.net/károly-füzessi/higher-education-under-threat-in-hungary)
The drastic higher education reforms the Hungarian government has introduced in the last months of 2012 have sparked nationwide protests. But while the government continues to implement contradictory reform, resistance from below is gaining ground.
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The SituationSince the current government came into power in 2010, changes in the education system have been generally characterized by centralization, state control, overregulation and questioning of the role of the intelligentsia and the importance of higher education. Continue reading Comments Off on Higher education under threat in Hungary
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“This Generation Has a Flash of Realization in the Middle of a Crisis”: A Discussion on the Student demonstrations in Hungary
Originally Publish on CriticAtac (http://www.criticatac.ro/21257/generation-flash-realization-middle-crisis/), Febreuary 10th, 2013
In December 2012 students started a series of demonstrations against recent government reforms of higher education. In Budapest and many other towns the students set up discussion forums, organized strikes, and occupied streets, squares and bridges. Besides the slowly reacting official national and local Student Union (HÖK, HÖOK), the newly organized Student Network (SN, HaHa) has had a major role in organizing events. SN aims to be a horizontally, bottom-up organized body representing the interests of students. On December 10, at the forum of SN, students accepted a list of six major demands. While the official student union was attempting to negotiate a compromise with the representatives of the government and the Hungarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the SN presented an ultimatum to the government: unless they meet the demands by February 11, the students will use all means to exert pressure. The six points of SN are the following: Continue reading Comments Off on “This Generation Has a Flash of Realization in the Middle of a Crisis”: A Discussion on the Student demonstrations in Hungary
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My PhD Program is not a “Roach Motel”
(This is a response to the recently published “Closing Down the Roach Motel,” which appeared in Inside Higher Ed on February 5, 2013 [http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/02/05/cuny-graduate-center-hopes-offer-public-model-reform-doctoral-education])
By Colin Ashley, John Boy, Anne Donlon, Gregory T. Donovan, Colleen Eren, Zoltán Glück, Karen Gregory, Stefanie A. Jones, Eero Laine, Ben Miller, Christina Nadler, Jared Simard, Jennifer Sloan, Alyson Spurgas, Chris Alen Sula, Suzanne Tamang, Jen Tang, Monique Whitaker
We are current and former students at the CUNY Graduate Center. Many of us have been involved in the Doctoral Students’ Council (DSC), the student government run by graduate students. We also take classes, write dissertations, work in university offices, perform research, and teach (often three or more courses each semester) at different colleges throughout the City University system. In our work on the DSC, we are elected student officers, newspaper editors, committee members, media coordinators, and student organizers. Continue reading
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