I teach at UC Berkeley and my brother teaches at UC Davis, so I’ve been a bit preoccupied trying to figure out why our two campuses have all of a sudden become ground zero in the institutional repression of student speech. Is it some kind of accident that both Berkeley’s Chancellor Birgeneau and Davis’s Chancellor Katehi decided to insist on a zero tolerance policy against students putting up tents and give police carte blanche to enforce it? I don’t think so.
The UC administration – the chancellors who preside over individual campuses, the President who governs over the whole system, and the Regents who rule them all – have been frustratingly obsequious when it comes to the brutal budget cuts that continue to be handed down from the legislature and governor. Yes, they complain about the effects, and continue to lobby for more money. But there’s been a surprising lack of outrage as the greatest public university in the world has been dismantled. Instead, they’ve more or less sucked it up, and turned to students and workers to make up the difference while they stray further and further from the university’s great public mission.
They (and many others) have argued that they have no choice – that forces far larger than UC, or even Sacramento, have forced this issue on the system and that they are only doing what is necessary to survive. But it’s hard to escape the feeling that the Chancellors are striking out violently at the students precisely because they are showing them up – for having the temerity to do what they lack the courage to do themselves.
And this is why Birgeneau and Katehi must go. It’s not just because they allowed their students to be beaten/pepper sprayed when all they were trying to do was defend the university and its ideals. It’s because they have become bullies, taking out the frustrations of their jobs (of which there must be many) on those less powerful than them. And bullies rarely, if ever, strike only once.
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