provisional home of the College of Debtors in Defiance
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
Thoughts on UC Berkeley's Propaganda Faces + More
By friend of the blog Aaron Bady (also known as zunguzungu).
Update below the fold.
[Update 8/11]: Here's a couple more of these "Take Five" videos, including another one from Aaron Bady, as well as Leigh Raiford and Richard Walker. In their discussions of Ansel Adams's photos of UC Berkeley in the late 1960s, they do a great job of pulling out and foregrounding some of the problematic ways in which technocratic mastery, racism, imperialism, and violence lie at the heart of the university project.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
University of California is not to hurt to heal, but serious questions remain. Cal. Chancellor Birgeneau, Provost George W Breslauer: recruit affluent born abroad foreign and affluent out of state applicants who displace Californians; pay ex-politician $300,000 for lectures; double instate tuition - Cal. is the most expensive public university, more expensive than Harvard; spend tens of millions (prominent East Coast university accomplishes same 0 cost) for OE consultants but stop analysis of inefficiencies in Chancellor, Provost operations; Cal. tuition to return on investment falls below top 10. Chancellor Birgeneau, Provost Breslauer senior management is wasteful.
ReplyDeleteBreslauer, Birgeneau would like to blame the politicians, since they stopped giving them every dollar demanded, & the state legislators do share some responsibility for the financial crisis. But not in the sense B and B mean. Every year Birgeneau ($450,000) and Provost Breslauer ($306,000) would request a budget increase, the timid UC Regents would agree to it, and the Calif. Senate, Assembly would provide. The hard questions were avoided, and inefficiencies piled up to $150 million +.
Cal’s senior management is either incompetent or culpable. It’s not that B and B were unaware that waste and inefficiencies were accumulating. Faculty & staff raised issues however, when they failed to see relevant action taken, they stopped. Finally, the Provost and Chancellor engaged expensive OE consultants to tell them what they should have known or been able to find out from their bright, engaged faculty, staff.
We are sympathetic to the running of higher education with declining state money. However, the Chancellor, Provost leadership is badly damaging Cal. Good people are loosing their jobs. You never want a crisis to go to waste. Increasing Cal’s budget is no solution. Birgeneau’s resignation is welcome. Honorably retire clueless Provost George W Breslauer. Opinions to UC Board of Regents marsha.kelman@ucop.edu (The author has 35 years’ consulting experience, has taught at University of California Berkeley where he observed the way Cal. senior management work)