Jasmine Vu: Week 4

Thao-Nhi “Jasmine” Vu

A02

Week 4: Corporatization of the University

For my post this week, I want to concentrate on Fredrik deBoer’s Why We Should Fear University, Inc, particularly the part dealing with the university's obsession with image control.

deBoer’s article discusses how universities, afraid of appearing bigoted (and thus losing students) often sanitize their classroom atmosphere and make it difficult for people to build off opposing ideas and come together. At first, this can be seen as the university acknowledging or even giving into student activists; however, the structure of universities says otherwise. For example, while the UC system seems progressive, the Quad at UC Davis is built to be efficiently surrounded by police in case of protests. Campuses like UCSD and UCSC are specifically built to discourage organized protest (UCSD’s campus is notoriously spread apart and UCSC is built into hilly regions, making mobilization on foot a task), while at Berkeley the doors on administrator buildings are one handle only — making it impossible for student activists to chain them shut. The contrast between the outer image and its motivations, deBoer writes, is dangerous because it prevents students from thinking about how to dismantle the harmful institutions of, well, their institution. Students follow a very corporate idea of activism — that is, they believe in making appeals to the higher-ups, not realizing that working within the system causes no actual change. In contrast, faculty in the university are strongly discouraged from speaking up against system corruption and are often punished for doing so.

Like Professor Valverde says, there are no safe spaces in the real world. Education has never been a safe space; bigotry and prejudice will constantly be present in academic spaces and materials. If the dismantling of racism is a war, we won’t learn to fight in an echo chamber. This false sense of progress leaves us no room to prepare to defend our ideals. We must break the cycle and understand that university is not our weapon; we must build our own army.

QUESTION: Where do we draw the line between allowing differing ideas to mesh and protecting the dignity and well-being of marginalized communities?

While looking up Laura Kipnis, I found out she is a speaker on a Libertarian Youtube channel (no judgement here, only passing on the information). Here is one of her videos, where she speaks about how offense and learning from it affected her.

SOURCES

Deboer, F. (2015, September 9). Why we should fear university, inc. The New York Times Magazine, 1-8. Retrieved April 23, 2017, from https://canvas.ucdavis.edu/files/folder/courses_105891/Week%20of%20Readings/Week4?preview=1069178.

Institute for Humane Studies (2016, August 1). Right to Offend: Free Speech on Campus: Ep. 1 - Learn Liberty. Retrieved April 23, 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lT8EOWlK_9Q