I’m excited that the CUNY Advocate has asked me to write about labor issues (and other thoughts too!) in Higher Education. Here’s my latest piece: “What’s At Stake in Graduate Student Organizing.”
If you happen to visit the most recent updates to the CUNY Graduate Center’s website, you’ll be greeted by the rather kind words from the President, Chase Robinson: “A graduate school of arts and sciences, a center for applied and theoretical research, and a platform for performance, conversation, and public debate, the Graduate Center is a community of students and scholars committed to the idea that learning is a public good.” For new students arriving, as well as those of us “roaches” who have perhaps overstayed our welcome the words are a lovely sentiment. We are a community of students and scholars committed to learning as a public good. In a time when “the public good” seems in short supply and even shorter social support, being welcomed into such a community might even feel life-affirming. If we listen to President Robinson, we have found a place, maybe even an intellectual home, which will nurture and support our development as students, scholars, theorists, researchers, activists, and writers. And, ideally, this home won’t force us to choose between the roles, as we imagine that such multifaceted development is more or less essential if we are going to carry on the noble mission the Graduate Center has outlined.
http://opencuny.org/gcadvocate/2013/09/28/whats-at-stake-in-graduate-organizing/
