“Beneath the University, the Commons”
A conference at the University of Minnesota

April 8-11, 2010

// Antioch 05.08 // Rome 10.08 // Athens 12.08 // New York City 12.08
// Helsinki 03.09 // Zagreb 05.09 // Heidelberg 06.09 // London 06.09
//Santa Cruz 09.09// … //

Seemingly discrete struggles over the conditions of university life
have erupted around the world within the past year. These struggles
share certain commonalities: outrage over precarious and exploitative
conditions, the occupation of university spaces, and goals of
reclaiming education from state and corporate interests.  It is
becoming increasingly apparent that recent struggles over the
university are not merely discrete events. They express a wider
collective desire for direct control over the means of production and
forms of life; a desire to create relationships of learning,
collaboration, and innovation beyond the university’s attempts to
quantify and discipline them.

Although the modern university has served the interests of the state
and capital since its inception, the past thirty years have witnessed
tightened ties with corporate, financial, and geopolitical interests.
The subsumption of higher education under capital-driven business
models has intensified the expropriation of the products of
cooperative labor.  With the proliferation of student-consumer and
scholar-manager subjectivities, we increasingly find ourselves
uncomfortably and often unwittingly occupying the role of active
participants in these trends.  As the global struggles over the past
year have illustrated, however, opposition to these mechanisms of
capture is mounting, as are creative strategies for alternatives and
exodus.  Struggles against the corporate university are linking up
across borders; the slogan of the International Student Movement, “One
World – One Struggle : Education is Not for Sale,” and the slogan of
the Anomalous Wave, “We Won’t Pay for Your Crisis,” appear in actions
across Europe, the Americas, and South Asia.

“Beneath the University, the Commons” builds on the work accomplished
by activists, organizers, artists, and academics at the “Re-thinking”
and “Re-working” the University Conferences of 2008 and 2009
(www.reworkingtheu.org), while expanding the scope of our discussions
and bringing together more international scholars in order to address
an increasingly volatile global situation.  Our goal is to aggregate
and accelerate our knowledge of university conditions and our
collective acts of resistance to them, including alternative forms of
engaging with each other and with the world.  To this end, the 2010
conference will draw together a diverse set of people committed to
exploring how we can understand, create, and experiment with the
commons beneath the university.  Our questions include but are not
limited to:

//How do we enact and sustain occupations of the university in the
exceptional times and spaces of the everyday?

//How do we generate an international “undercommons,” maintaining
subversive positions as actors within, rather than of, the spaces of
the university?

//How can unionization projects and occupation struggles learn from
and collaborate with one another?

//How do we negotiate the line between stability and revolutionary
effectiveness?

//How do we open up sustainable and livable spaces for radical
research, education, and scholarship without being subsumed by the
publish-or-perish disciplinary apparatus?

//How can we collaboratively map and share research, information,
tactics, and cultures?

//In recognition that our conditions are a part of a larger set of
global occupations and injustices, how do we link with social
movements outside of and across the university?

This four-day event will consist of two days of conference sessions
bracketed by two days of workshops, writing collaborations, skill
shares, and plenty of time for sustained conversations among
participants.  We are accepting proposals both for formal papers and
for non-conventional forms of participation.

– If you would like to present a paper, please submit an abstract and
a CV or brief biographical statement.

– If you would like to participate in another way (by leading a
workshop, facilitating a roundtable, presenting media, etc), please
submit a brief (1-2 pages) description of the proposed activity and
include what kind of resources we would need to provide, along with a
CV or brief biographical statement.

All proposals should be addressed to conference [at-n0spam] beneaththeu.org, and
must be received by January 1, 2010.

As you all likely know, our upcoming conference coincides with the “Reclaim Your Education – Global Week of Action 2009.” In connection with associated protests taking place around the world, we would like to collaborate on declaring our visions, strategies, and demands in a public document that we can take back to our respective local struggles. And so, in the spirit of the Situationist’s manifesto, “On the Poverty of Student Life,” our goal is to articulate:

• A vision of what education could and should be, making explicit the desire and need for political action within and beyond the university

• What it would mean to reclaim our education, strategically, tactically, and as part of our everyday practices

• An alternative framing of the university in crisis, against the supposed inevitability of the neoliberal university

• The university as a terrain of political struggles, with the aim of dismantling the corporate monopoly on higher education by reworking the university into a common for alternative political projects

While not directly political activity in the traditional sense, we believe that the Reworking and Rethinking the University conferences are capable of contributing to struggles over education taking place around the world. It is in this spirit that we hope to write a statement that captures some of the intellectual and political work that goes on at this conference in a way that can be collectively transmitted to those who did not attend the conference.

That being said, we recognize that there are considerable time restrictions which limit what can be collectively written during the course of an already busy weekend. That is why, in the run up to the conference, we’d like to invite you all to begin brainstorming ideas for this document here on our blog (click on ‘comment’ below and post your ideas via the comments section).

Beginning on the first day of the conference, we’ll post sheets of butcher paper on the wall to further collect and collaborate on our visions, strategies, and demands for reworking the university. On Sunday morning we’ll convene with these ideas to produce a manifesto and to develop plans for its dissemination. We’ll print and post online copies of it for you to distribute on your home campuses.

We look forward to collaborating with you all!

Committee on Revolutionizing the AcaDemy (ComRAD)

I’m seeking information on academic organizations that have honored boycotts and workers’ strikes by breaking hotel contracts, or shown solidarity by other means during a conference. This information would contribute to a discussion currently underway among members of the National Communication Association. 

In response to 1) the current boycott on the Manchester Hyatt Hotel in San Diego, and 2) a workers’ strike at the same hotel organized by UNITE HERE, members of the National Communication Association, which is holding its annual convention at that hotel in November, have called for NCA to adopt a formal set of guidelines for convention planning. Those guidelines outline how NCA will respond to labor disputes in the future and advocates support of green initiatives whenever possible. It is modeled on similar guidelines adopted by other academic organizations, all listed below.

Does anyone know of any other similar initiatives, or of similar efforts to rethink the planning of large scale academic conventions? Do any academic organizations offer carbon offsetting credits as part of their conference registration? Have those organizations referenced university labor, equal opportunity, and diversity policies to leverage support for unionized hotels and boycotts of states with discriminatory laws? What has been the general response to such initiatives within these organizations? Did any academic organizations respond to the the 2007 strike at the University of Minnesota?

 
Many thanks for your help!

 
Kathleen McConnell

The following is the proposed Resolution for Convention Site Locating & Planning drafted by Phaedra Pezzullo and available here:http://www.indiana.edu/~envtrhet/NCAresolution.html 

Resolved, that the National Communication Association (NCA) convention staff and organizers endorse locating and planning its annual convention based on the following standards:

(a) NCA will continue to rotate sites regionally in the U.S. to keep the convention more affordable to the widest range of participants.

(b) NCA will continue to give preference to settings with major national airports to keep the convention more affordable to the widest range of participants.

(c) NCA will continue to give preference to meeting sites that involve contiguous properties such that the community is not dispersed and the distance does not become too cumbersome to travel.

(d) NCA will continue to work with hotel partners to assure accessibility to facilities, including Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliance. 

(e) NCA will continue to value affordable costs as a priority in choosing locations and timing of the conference.

(f) NCA will include the following escape clause in all its hotel and service provider contracts:
“NCA reserves the right of termination of this agreement, without penalty or liability, if the site, hotel owner, chain, service provider, the municipal government, or the state in which the hotel is located establishes or enforces laws or publicly endorses or contributes funds to causes that, in the estimation of NCA, abridge the civil rights or advocate discrimination of any NCA member on the basis of gender, race, color, national origin, sexual orientation, sex, marital status, physical handicap, disability, or religion. NCA also reserves its right to withdraw from this agreement, without penalty or liability, if a labor dispute or other organized protest arises such that attendees will not be compelled to cross picket lines or violate a boycott.” 

(g) NCA strongly prefers locations where legal rights are afforded to same-sex unions and partnerships.

(h) NCA strongly prefers meeting facilities and service providers whose staff are represented by a union. NCA will not book conventions at hotels or with service providers that have ongoing labor disputes. 

(i) NCA strongly prefers meeting facilities located in areas with living wage ordinances.

(j) NCA strongly prefers facilities that either accommodate or provide secure daycare at a reasonable cost.

(k) NCA strongly prefers hotel venues and service providers that have taken steps to become more environmentally sustainable, such as reducing carbon impact or energy conservation programs.

(l) NCA will make available and publicize voluntary options for members to reduce the carbon footprint of their attendance, as well as other voluntary acts individual members may take to make the convention more environmentally sustainable.

Background:

- the 1995 NCA Policy on Diversity

- the 2006 NCA Statement on Labor Disputes

- the following professional acadmic associations already have similiar policies in place:

* American Political Science Association (APSA): http://www.apsanet.org/content_54403.cfm 

* Modern Language Association (MLA) (provided by Director of Convention Programs, available on request)

* American Studies Association (ASA): http://www.theasa.net/about/page/resolutions_and_actions/

* Organization of American Historians (OAH): http://hnn.us/articles/10342.html

* American Sociological Association (ASA): http://www.asanet.org/cs/root/leftnav/governance/council_minutes

* American Anthropological Association (AAA): http://www.aaanet.org/meetings/loc_policies.cfm

To see a contemporary free university in action, check out the Twin Cities Experimental College – offering 35 classes this summer, starting next week.

Jeff Williams (of the Minnesota Review) – “Debt Education” – “Student Debt and the Spirit of Indenture” - “Teach the University” - (three papers that were the basis of his talk – the third has a helpful bibliography of university fiction, ideas, and histories).

David Cerniglia and Heather Steffen, “Composing the University”

Randall Cohn, “Artificial Disciplinarity? Policing the Boundaries between Art and Design History”

Lisa J. Disch and Jean M. O’Brien, “Innovation is Overtime: An Ethical Analysis of ‘Politically Committed’ Academic Labor”

Isaac Kamola and Eli Meyerhoff, “Creating Commons: Divided Governance, Participatory Management, and Struggles over the Enclosure of the University”

John Mowitt, “The Neo-liberalization of Knowledge”

Richard Ohmann, “Talk on Radical Teaching”

Zach Schwartz-Weinstein, “Without Our Brain and Muscle: NYU and the Future of the Neoliberal University”

Barbara Scott Winkler, “Laboring in the Knowledge Factory: A View from Women’s Studies”

Jess Sundin, “Labor in the Neo-liberal University”

We have some exciting news to share!  Two of our allies on Capitol Hill, Senator Edward M. Kennedy and Representative George Miller, have just introduced federal legislation to amend the National Labor Relations Act to grant collective bargaining rights to teaching and research assistants at private universities and colleges.

The Teaching and Research Assistants Collective Bargaining Rights Act would correct the bad 2004 decision made by Bush appointees to the National Labor Relations Board which NYU hid behind in refusing to negotiate a new union contract with us.  Eventual passage of this bill which our union, the UAW, has been pushing on our behalf, will stop NYU from continuing to engage in the egregious union-busting tactics of the last several years, and help us sit down as equals at the negotiating table to work out issues like pay, health benefits, and working conditions.

Over the next several months, we will all have a role to play in supporting this legislation.  Now is a great time to update your phone number and address, which you can do by replying to this e-mail, so we can stay in touch as things unfold.

REPLY by e-mail with to add your name to a letter of support and thanks for this bill to the current sponsors and co-sponsors: Senators Kennedy, Brown, Clinton, Feingold, Obama and Schumer and Representatives Andrews, Grijalva, and Tierney.  We will be in touch again soon with more that we all can do to help see the bill passed and signed.

As Senator Kennedy said on the floor of the Senate, “It’s important for Congress to do more to guarantee graduate students the right to organize and to bargain over their wages and working conditions as teaching and research assistants, so I’m introducing legislation today to do so.

More than ever in modern education, teaching and research assistants are in classrooms every day, educating students in colleges and universities across the country.  Their numbers are increasing as the number of full time faculty dwindles.  Often, teaching and research assistants are now doing the same job as junior faculty members.

In fact, the classroom is a workplace for these scholars.  It’s where they earn the money they need to pay to put food on their tables and a roof over their heads.  They deserve the right to stand together and make their voice heard in their workplace.  Like other employees, they should have the right to join a union and improve their working conditions.  Obviously, better wages and working conditions for them also means better education for their students.

. . . The National Labor Relations Board is supposed to protect the rights of American workers, but it is failing teaching and research assistants, just as it has failed so many others.  By passing the Teaching and Research Assistants Collective Bargaining Rights Act, Congress will give these workers back the rights that the National Labor Relations Board has taken away.”

You can read his full statement at http://kennedy.senate.gov/newsroom/press_release.cfm?id=eac9f6af-730d-4f4c-b10a-2a98b2c70328

• Where should it be held?
• When should it be held?
• What should the format look like? Or, what worked and didn’t work this year? For instance, a few people have made the suggestion that we incorporate seminars, or possibly reading groups.