Where The Blog Has No Name

The Cost of Knowledge: Researchers taking a stand against Elsevier

Academics have protested against Elsevier’s business practices for years with little effect. The main objections are these:

1. They charge exorbitantly high prices for their journals.
2. They sell journals in very large “bundles,” so libraries must buy a large set with many unwanted journals, or none at all. Elsevier thus makes huge profits by exploiting their essential titles, at the expense of other journals.
3. They support measures such as SOPA, PIPA and the Research Works Act, that aim to restrict the free exchange of information.

Sign the petition here.

Two Scandals, One Connection: The FBI link between Penn State and UC Davis
Dave Zirin

Two shocking scandals. Two esteemed universities. Two disgraced university leaders. One stunning connection. Over the last month, we’ve seen Penn State University President Graham Spanier dismissed from his duties and we’ve seen UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi pushed to the brink of resignation. Spanier was jettisoned because of what appears to be a systematic cover-up of assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky’s serial child rape. Katehi has faced calls to resign after the she sent campus police to blast pepper spray in the faces of her peaceably assembled students, an act for which she claims “full responsibility.” The university’s Faculty Association has since voted for her ouster citing a “gross failure of leadership.” The names Spanier and Katehi are now synonymous with the worst abuses of institutional power. But their connection didn’t begin there. In 2010, Spanier chose Katehi to join an elite team of twenty college presidents on what’s called the National Security Higher Education Advisory Board, which “promotes discussion and outreach between research universities and the FBI.”

Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor

www.workplace-gsc.com

CFP: Academic Mobbing

Special Issue of Workplace 2012
Editors: Stephen Petrina & Wayne Ross

Editors of Workplace are accepting manuscripts for a theme issue on Academic Mobbing. Academic mobbing is defined by the Chronicle of Higher Education (11 June 2009) as: “a form of bullying in which members of a department gang up to isolate or humiliate a colleague.” The Chronicle continues:

If rumors are circulating about the target’s supposed misdeeds, if the target is excluded from meetings or not named to committees, or if people are saying the target needs to be punished formally “to be taught a lesson,” it’s likely that mobbing is under way.

As Joan Friedenberg eloquently notes in The Anatomy of an Academic Mobbing, the toll taken is excessive. Building on a long history of both analysis and neglect in academia, Workplace is interested in a range of scholarship on this practice, including theoretical frameworks, legal analyses, resistance narratives, reports from the trenches, and labor policy reviews. We invite manuscripts that address, among other foci:

• Effects of academic mobbing
• History of academic mobbing
• Sociology and ethnography of the practices of an academic mob
• Social psychology of the academic mob leader or boss
• Academic mobbing factions (fact + fiction) or short stories
• Legal defense for academic mob victims and threats (e.g., Protectable
• political affiliation, race, religion)
• Gender norms of an academic mob
• Neo-McCarthyism and academic mobbing
• Your story…

Contributions for Workplace should be 4000-6000 words in length and should conform to APA or MLA style.

If interested in co-editing or authoring, please contact Stephen Petrina (Stephen.petrina@ubc.ca) or Wayne Ross (wayne.ross@ubc.ca). This issue will ideally launch in September 2012.

Police club and pepper spray students and professors at the University of California

Nov. 18, 2011: letter from English professor Nathan Brown to Chancellor Katehi

Nov. 18, 2011: UC Davis students pepper sprayed:

Nov. 9, 2011: police club UC Berkeley professors and students:

Nov. 9, 2011: UC Berkeley students drive out police:

UC Berkeley professor on her arrest: Why I Got Arrested with Occupy Cal–and How

The Rouge Forum @ AERA 2012

Free Interactive Conference Open to All

To Know is Not Enough:

Activist Scholarship, Social Change & The Corporate University

 www.RougeForumConference.org

Friday April 13, 2012

University of British Columbia,

Robson Square Campus

HSBC Hall

Vancouver, BC

The theme for the 2012 annual meeting of the American Education Research Association is “Non Satis Scire: To Know Is Not Enough.” It is laudable that AERA is promoting “the use of research to improve education and serve the public good” rather than the mere accumulation of research knowledge, but The Rouge Forum is interested in exploring what it means for scholars, and educators in general, to move beyond “knowing” to the pursuit of activist agendas for social change.

• What happens when teachers and other academics connect reason to power and power to resistance?
• How can academic work (in universities and other learning environments) support local and global resistance to global neoliberal capitalism?
• How do we respond to the obstacles and threats faced as activist scholars?

The Rouge Forum @ AERA will bring together world-renowned scholars, teachers, community organizers, and other activists to discuss these questions and others related to activist scholarship, social change, academic freedom, and work in the corporate university as part of a one-day interactive conference at the Robson Square Campus of University of British Columbia in downtown Vancouver.

What is the Rouge Forum?

The Rouge Forum is a group of educators, students, and parents seeking a democratic society. We are both research and action oriented. We want to learn about equality, democracy and social justice as we simultaneously struggle to bring into practice our present understanding of what that is. We seek to build a caring inclusive community that understands that an injury to one is an injury to all. At the same time, our caring community is going to need to deal decisively with an opposition that is sometimes ruthless. RougeForum.com

THE ASSAULT ON UNIVERSITIES: A MANIFESTO FOR RESISTANCE

The UK White Paper on universities that was published in June contains yet more proposals that will embed the market ever deeper into our educational system through the entrance of private providers and the extension of a logic of financialisation. The deadline for submissions is 20 September and we encourage you to make a response (http://bit.ly/jpLET3).

We would also like to let you know that the manifesto has now been published in a book, ‘The Assault on Universities: A Manifesto for Resistance’ (Pluto Press) which contains a series of short essays identifying the consequences of the reforms as well as possible alternatives. We are sure you will find it both stimulating and useful in your response to the attacks on higher education.

Details of the book are at: http://bit.ly/lKgYdE

You can also use the book and manifesto as the focus for a meeting, debate or other form of campaign activity where you work.

We would be delighted to help arrange a meeting on your campus and to build up a head of steam against the government’s disastrous reforms.

No university is immune and there will certainly be a good audience for a lively and topical meeting.

Please don’t hesitate to contact us: hemanifesto@gmail.com (or d.freedman@gold.ac.uk if you have trouble accessing gmail).

Inside Higher Ed: The Would-Be Provost Who Quoted Marx

“In the university, the higher up the hierarchical structure, the more one has decision-making power and the further one is from the actual ‘work’ (discovering and disseminating knowledge).”

Timothy J. L. Chandler, the co-author of a 1998 journal article with that quote about university hierarchies, is going to stay a step closer to actual work. On Thursday, he announced that he is turning down the position of provost at Kennesaw State University — in part because of furor set off in the local area over the article, which applies class analysis and several times cites Marx.

The Rouge Forum 2011: Call for Papers

Education and the State: A Critical Antidote to the Commercialized, Racist, and Militaristic Social Order

The Rouge Forum 2011 will be held at Lewis University. The University’s main campus is located in Romeoville, IL, which is 30 minutes southwest of Chicago, IL. The conference will be held May 19-22.

Proposals for papers, panels, performances, workshops, and other multimedia presentations should include title(s) and names and contact information for presenter(s). The deadline for sending proposals is March 22. The Steering Committee will email acceptance or rejection notices by April 1. The proposal formats available to the presenters are as follows:

Bringing together academic presentations and performances (from some of the most prominent voices for democratic, critical, and/or revolutionary pedagogy), panel discussions, community-building, and cultural events, this action-oriented conference will center on questions such as:

• Transforming the notion of “saving public education” to one of creating education in the public interest, what does teaching and learning for a democratic society look like?
• How do we educate the public and our youth to understand the implications of “saving public education” through corporate and militaristic practices, such as standardized examinations, zero-tolerance policies, charter schools, and corporate donations?
• How will educational initiatives supported by the Obama Administration and many other politicians impact teachers, students, and communities across the US?
• What does education for liberation look like compared to the more socially reproductive/dominating education we see in many of our nation’s schools?
• What debts will future generations, including the students we may teach, carry because our financial, governmental, and military endeavors have not been concerned with public goods?

SUBMISSIONS
Proposal Formats

Individual Proposal: (45 minutes)
The Rouge Forum welcomes individual paper proposals, with the understanding that those accepted will be grouped together around common or overlapping themes, Presenters will have approximately 45 minutes to present or summarize their individual papers. Individual paper submissions will be considered for panels with the same topic/theme. If you would prefer to present your paper/research individually you should consider the alternative format proposal. A 300-500 word abstract of the paper will be peer reviewed for acceptance to the conference.

Symposium Proposal: (90 minutes)
Presenters are also welcomed to submit proposals for a symposium. A symposium is typically composed of a chair and discussant and three to five participants who present or summarize their papers. Each symposium is organized around a common theme. Each participant will have between 15 and 45 minutes to present their papers, depending upon the number of participants involved in the symposium. A 300-500 word abstract of the symposium will be peer reviewed for acceptance to the conference.

Panel Proposal: (90 minutes)
A panel discussion is another venue available presenters. A panel discussion is typically composed of three to six participants who discuss their scholarly work within the context of a dialogue or conversation on a topic or theme related to the conference theme. Typically, each panelist is given 10-15 minutes to discuss the topic, present theoretical ideas, and/or point to relevant research. A chair should be identified who introduces the panel and frames the issues and questions being addressed. In addition to the chair, we encourage (but do not require) organizers of panels to include a discussant who responds to the comments of the panelists. Individual proposal submissions will be combined into panels with the same theme/topic. A 300-500 word abstract of the panel discussion will be peer reviewed for acceptance to the conference.

Alternative Format and Special Interest Groups (90 minutes)
Alternative proposals that do not fit into the above categories, such as workshops, performances, video and multimedia presentations, and round-table dialogues, are encouraged. We also welcome proposals for the organization of special interest groups. A 150-250 word abstract of the panel discussion will be peer reviewed for acceptance to the conference.

Email proposals to conference coordinator Brad Porfilio porfilio16@aol.com, by March 22, 2011.

Additional information on Rouge Forum 2011 is available at rougeforumconference.org

Globe and Mail: David Noble, academic and activist, dies at 65

David Noble, one of North America’s most prominent critics of the corporatization of academia and a groundbreaking researcher on the influence of technology on society, died Monday evening at age 65. He passed away in hospital unexpectedly of natural causes with his family at his side, friends said.

Prof. Noble rose to prominence for his critiques of technological automation, which he argued had been a method of depriving workers of power. He worked at the Massachusettes Institute of Technology and later at York University in Toronto, where he quickly became known for his political activism.

In 2001, he was denied an appointment to the J.S. Woodsworth research chair at Vancouver’s Simon Fraser University, despite the backing of faculty, which he blamed on his activism against corporatization. Seven years later, he settled out of court with the university, which acknowledged that it had made mistakes.

A Jew and an opponent of Zionism, Prof. Noble garnered an angry reaction from York in 2004 when he published a pamphlet accusing a school fundraising body of being “biased by the presence and influence of staunch pro-Israeli lobbyists, activities and fundraising agencies,” and proceeded to name members of the group who had ties to Jewish organizations. After York condemned his actions, he sued the school for defamation, a case that was due to go to trial next year.

Two years later, he launched a complaint with the Ontario Human Rights Commission against York’s practice of cancelling classes on some Jewish holidays, maintaining that it constituted discrimination against non-Jewish students. The university changed its policies before the case was heard.

“He was very vehement, vibrant, intense,” said Denis Rancourt, a former University of Ottawa professor and a close friend of Prof. Noble’s. “He was very energetic and exciting to be around in terms of all the ideas.”

Mr. Rancourt credited Prof. Noble with motivating his students’ activism and described his intense passion.

“One time he called me after an opera performance to express that the singer was so powerful that he was convinced we would all live forever,” he said.

He had planned to retire from classroom teaching this summer, he said.

“He was very courageous in his ability to unwaveringly speak truth to power,” said Yavar Hameed, his lawyer. “He was unafraid to speak up against the corporatization of education.”

The Canadian Arab Federation issued a statement on his death: “Canada lost a truly noble person, both in name and in the essence of his character.”

Prof. Noble is survived by his wife, three children and two brothers.