http://newschoolinexile.com/ New School In Exile en-us Fri, 18 Dec 2009 19:49:33 GMT 1440 CPG-Nuke Dragonfly The New School In Exile News http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/rss/rss.html http://newschoolinexile.com/images/New-School-in-Exile_logo.gif http://newschoolinexile.com/ http://newschoolinexile.com/News/article/sid=83.html A diligent researcher sent us the following, and we thought the NSIE community would find it of interest. This is a story of Bob Kerrey over twenty years ago, and his attempts to censor freedom of expression and attack artistic expression while a Senator. The controversy surrounded a piece of art known as the "Piss Christ" and a letter from Jesse Helms, Bob Kerrey and others, appealing to the Senate in 1989 to stopping funding controversial artists, which lead to a long controversy resulting in severe decreases in the public support for arts in US in the following years. This had been a highly public controversy and a fairly famous public affair. The interesting thing for New Schoolers is that, among the Senators who signed Jesse Helms letter was Bob Kerry. This means that the current president of the New School was effectively collaborating with a right wing fundamentalists and bigot in order to censor the artistic expression in his political past. To learn more about the controversy, check out Richard Bolton's Culture Wars: Documents from the Recent Controversies in the Arts, New York: New Press. 1992. Hat tip to k for this info. Fri, 18 Dec 2009 19:49:33 GMT http://newschoolinexile.com/News/article/sid=82.html “The show is over. The curtain has fallen on trains filled with reservists, as they pull out amid the joyous cries of enthusiastic maidens. . . . Into the disillusioned atmosphere of pale daylight there rings a different chorus; the hoarse croaks of the hawks and hyenas of the battlefield. . . . profits are springing, like weeds, from the fields of the dead.” —Rosa It’s gratifying that the Faculty Senate managed to call Kerrey’s police repression of the April occupation “misguided”—although “violent” and “despotic” would have been better terms. At least they implicitly rebutted the letter the Board attached to the so-called “April 10 Report,” where they called Kerrey’s paramilitary attack “responsible” and warned that any further civil disobedience would be met with the same level of ferocity. The Faculty Senate has a mania, however, for issuing pronouncements that aren’t backed up by action. Kerrey openly violated the spirit of the “Minimum Requirements” agreement meant to limit his tyrannical power, and bypassed the Advisory Committee on Speech Activities and Expression that is supposed to be consulted in such situations. What are they going to do about it? Continued in Read More... Fri, 18 Dec 2009 19:28:43 GMT http://newschoolinexile.com/News/article/sid=81.html Students have now occuied two buildings on the UCSC campus -New York students protest in solidarity. NYPD reaction to New York student solidarity actions just posted! UCSC expands occupations California is Occupied UCSC Students Occupy Administration Building and Issue Demands Demands: 1. Repeal the 32% fee increase 2. Stop all current construction on campus 3. UC funds and budget are made transparent 4. Verbal and written commitment to Master Plan 5. Total amnesty to all people occupying buildings and involved in student protest concerning budget cuts including: Doug G., and Brian Glasscock and Olivia Egan Rudolph 6. Keep all resource centers open: engaging education, women's resource center, and all other diversity centers 7. Keep the campus child-care center open 8. Repeal cuts to the Community Studies Field Program 9. Re-funding the CMMU field studies coordinator positions 10. Get verbal and written agreement from admins to shut-down campus for one day for the purpose of educating students on the budget cuts 11. Said support for AB656 12. Said commitment to work-study for all who are eligible 13. Making UC Santa Cruz a safe campus for all undocumented (AB540) students and workers 14. Keeping LALS professors Guillermo Delgado & Susan Jonas 15. Repeal all furloughs to all campus employees, renege the 15% cut in labor time for custodians 16. Stop the gutting of funding for fellowships and TAships and the re-instatement of TAs who lost their jobs due the budget cuts from this quarter 17. Re-prioritizing funding so that essential student services i.e. the library get adequate funding to ensure regular library hours 18. Censure Mark Yudof 19. Un-arming UC police of all weapons including tasers 20. NO SCPD police allowed on campus 21. An apology from the regents and the state 22. Creating a free and permanent organizing space on campus for student activists and organizers (first options: Kresge Town Hall) 23. Due process for students: a. trial by peers b. constitutional rights for students tried under the UC judicial system 24. Making rent affordable for Family Student Housing, ensuring that the price does not exceed that of operating costs Fri, 20 Nov 2009 05:07:22 GMT http://newschoolinexile.com/News/article/sid=80.html In case people have not heard, or are not following it closely, things ratched up another notch today at UC Santa Cruz, where a two-day series of actions began to protest rising tuition costs and decreasing access to education in California. We want to let them UCSC students know the New School In Exile is in support of their struggle! You can read more about it at Indymedia here. Here's the lead blurb right now... Quote:: The imaginary committee writes, "University students and workers in California must organize immediately to occupy, blockade and strike on all campuses November 17-19. We call for a wave of occupations and blockades to bring the university to a halt. The proposed fee hikes of 32 percent, to be ratified November 17-19, are only the latest indication that the California university system is bankrupt. We cannot allow it to continue through the end of the term. "Too many workers have already lost their jobs. The jobs for which our educations supposedly prepare us have already disappeared. We have given our ‘representatives’ enough time to work out peaceful solutions to these problems, and we see no indication that they have made any progress. "We are not interested in any more tedious conferences or assemblies, which draw out hundreds of people, but only for an endless conversation. We are not interested in more ’symbolic protests’, whether walkouts or strikes, insofar as they are pre-announced to end after one or a few days. More meetings and protests will only waste our energies, while the administration continues to implement its plans without hindrance." Also, check out the Imaginary Committee blog for the latest on the planned actions and occupations. Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:08:39 GMT http://newschoolinexile.com/News/article/sid=79.html A New School student sent us this message recently, only further highlighting the ongoing problems with the New School that urgently need to be addressed. People seem to forget that the occupations over December 2008 and April 2009 were grounded in quite material problems at the New School, such as this one here. (p.s. Were looking for the Board of Trustees too I found this website looking to find the members of the New School's Board of Trustees. I am having issues with my instructors and this is a recurring problem. My online class, the instructor is MIA. An in person class I take, the instructor constantly self promotes herself but, will turn around and say she is overwhelmed with her schedule and leaves the students to fend for themselves. I emailed Bob Kerrey and hopefully I got him and I put a notifier on to let me know when the message was read and deleted. He read it in 3 minutes, responded, delegated it to Tim Marshall and deleted it within that time. My letter and attachments were too in depth for even the fastest reader to get through it! Tim Marshall opened it and deleted in 10 minutes later. I am going to escalate this as far as I can because I am a matriculated student and this tuition is costing me out the wazoo! I am open to any of your suggestions as to what I should do next. Thanks! Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:00:06 GMT http://newschoolinexile.com/News/article/sid=78.html More student occupations sprouting up in Europe this week! This latest update is from Vienna, Austria... Quote:: just to inform you, we are right now blocking the biggest lecture hall at the university in vienna, austria, to protest against the cut backs on the budget for education and for free access to university for everyone! keep on fighting for free education for everyone!!! greetings form austria! http://derstandard.at/ English translation of pages available here... Über 1000 Studierende protestieren gegen Bildungsabbau - Vizerektor setzt auf Verhandlungen mit den Studierenden: Audimax wird zumindest bis Freitag Mittag nicht geräumt. (Over 1000 students protest against education cuts - Vice Rector set to negotiate with the students: lecture hall will not be cleared until at least Friday afternoon) Thu, 22 Oct 2009 23:58:23 GMT http://newschoolinexile.com/News/article/sid=77.html Check out the new missive What We Want here. What We Want: A Proposed Beginning Over and over—sometimes in accusatory tones—the radical movement at the New School has been asked to explain itself: why are we protesting? After eight years of soft fascism and bloody war, then an unprecedented economic disaster following on Wall Street shenanigans—all aided and abetted by the president of the New School—one has to wonder about the motivations of the questioners. Isn’t the more reasonable question why isn’t everyone protesting? In addition, many of us have been wary of presenting any demands, as this concedes power to the enemy, providing him with an opportunity to recuperate and sterilize the movement, reducing it to meaningless negotiations over paltry reforms. We’re willing to recognize that these questions can be posed in good faith, however, and that we do have a responsibility to account for our actions. It also seems that in present conditions the only way for the movement to go forward is to provide tangible points of struggle, and open up a wider discussion among students, faculty, and staff, about our problems and needs... Wed, 07 Oct 2009 00:09:32 GMT http://newschoolinexile.com/News/article/sid=76.html The New School today released the findings from the Ad-Hoc Committee of Review, which was tasked with conducting an investigation into the April 10, 2009 occupation of the GF building at 65 5th Ave. The full report can be downloaded here as a pdf. Here is the take home message from the Board of Trustees letter announcing the release of this report, which although it is not surprising, is sad. The claim which seems to be implicit in this statement is that it is ok for Kerrey to act unilaterally as he sees fit, but if students do the same, they must be crushed with force. But there are also some hard questions for the admins embedded in here, so read closely everyone, we've got a long road ahead of us at the New School... Quote:: We believe that the unauthorized occupancy of the building was an intentional trespass, a violation of law and an infringement of the rights of other members of the university community. We condemn such behavior as incompatible with the values of our university. The report also provides the basis for our concluding that under difficult circumstances President Kerrey acted responsibly. We strongly support the Ad Hoc Committee's recommendations to create a special committee to examine and revise the “Guidelines on Demonstrations in University Facilities" and the "Student Code of Conduct" for student protest and related activities, and the Chair of the Board and President Kerrey will work together to move this recommendation forward. We expect these Guidelines to state unequivocally that the unauthorized occupation of any building or any space that impinges on the rights of others constitutes a serious violation. Mon, 05 Oct 2009 23:57:30 GMT http://newschoolinexile.com/News/article/sid=75.html Political Dissent, Speech Acts and the New School Milieu: An Open Letter to the New School 10.2.09 As many people at the New School are likely now aware, student protests at a Milano public forum on Homeland Security, where Tom Ridge was the featured guest, have sparked considerable controversy around issues of freedom of speech and political protest. This is a controversy deeply entwined with not only the history and legacy of the New School, but also with the current campus climate and administration of the school. Some of the questions that have emerged so far include: ~ Were students justified in protesting the appearance of Tom Ridge at the New School? ~ Were the specific tactics used to disrupt the Tom Ridge event appropriate? ~ What standards does the community use to judge what is "appropriate" or "inappropriate" actions? ~ Are all forms of protest equally legitimate and protected? ~ What is the relationship between the protection of free speech on campus and the creation of a safe space for academic discussion and debate? ~ Should the university only invite individuals to speak whose values or politics we agree with? ~ What exactly are the core values and the mission of the New School today, and how do they relate to our historical legacy as an institution? ~ Does the university community have an affirmative obligation to condemn actions which pose a potential threat to free speech at the New School? ~ Can issues of political dissent be separated from the political critique being offered by those acts? These are all very important questions which the university is now grappling with, but which I believe we as a community are not adequately discussing. With that being said, I believe the academic community at the New School has an obligation to engage with these issues in a constructive and timely manner—one which does justice to our political views and positions as individual members—as well as our philosophical obligation as the embodiment or living spirit that defines the New School. We must demonstrate the value of theory and practice in a unified manner in and out of the classroom. In an attempt to do just that, I offer the following reflections to the New School community. First, by addressing the underlying political issues as I understand them and as I see them relating to the specific issue of Tom Ridge speaking at the New School. Second, by framing the issues of political dissent and free speech in both a very grounded New School context, as well as a larger philosophical context. And finally, by trying to suggest the interconnections between the first and seconds parts, and their immediate ramifications for our school. Mon, 05 Oct 2009 01:53:19 GMT http://newschoolinexile.com/News/article/sid=73.html by Neil Gordon (originally published in the New School Free Press, April 27 2009. Reprinted here by permission of the author.) The 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention was a seminal moment in the history of the American Left, but we tend to forget the actual party politics behind the protest. Eugene McCarthy had galvanized anti-War Americans against the Democratic establishment that had so committed us to Vietnam and represented, to many, real opportunity for change. But Humphrey won the nomination and Nixon the election. SDS would be destroyed the following year by the tiny radical minority of Weatherman, whose intransigent politics proceeded to turn, perhaps permanently, the ideals of the 60s counterculture into the stuff of which right wing parodies are made. The war in Vietnam continued for five more years. And the question of how we fight for political change remains unanswered to this day. Lately it feels to me that we’re at the 1968 of New School history. The comparisons are fun to play with. Tim Marshall as Gene McCarthy? The deans would be the activists who had cut their hair and put on suits to get, as they said in the day, “Clean for Gene.” SDS? Faculty and Student Senate. And then there’s Weatherman. Okay – let’s not go too far with that joke. My support for the right to dissent is radical and unconditional. But somehow, I no longer recognize ourselves in debate about the New School Crisis. The problems we know and have been grappling with -- centralization of the university, corporatization of American education, lack of space – are real. But where in the manifestos and pamphlets is our Lang program for inmates at Arthur Kill Correctional Facility? Where is our Institute for Urban Education, our students’ work in Cambodian orphanages, or New Orleans? Is there any mention of the classes we offer throughout our university by full- and part-time faculty – whether economists, scientists, artists, or writers – which approach our disciplines by way of activist, politically astute, anti-sexist and anti-racist analyses? Continued in Read More link below... Thu, 01 Oct 2009 18:47:27 GMT