The modern university

by **Jeff** » Fri Feb 25, 2011 12:04 pm

Jeff wrote:If you want a picture of the modern university, imagine studying Peter Munk's boot stomping on a human face, for credit.

Just found this:

a campaign to get Barrick Gold's influence out of the University of Toronto

by **Jeff** » Fri Feb 25, 2011 2:04 pm

by **Jeff** » Sat Feb 26, 2011 11:54 am

Universities suffer corporate enticements with strings
By Linda McQuaig
February 22, 2011

Some grand new buildings at the University of Toronto -- including a lavishly renovated "heritage mansion" -- seem to beckon us to walk through their doors into halls of higher learning.

But they're also evidence that our universities, faced with deep government funding cuts, have found comfort in the warm embrace of corporate money, which is paying for the impressive new facilities.

With university administrators now heavily focused on wooing private funds, corporate money has become an increasingly potent force shaping our universities -- a development prompting a group of concerned professors to hold a teach-in at U of T's Bahen Centre this Saturday.

The concern is that reliance on corporate philanthropy risks skewing the university's priorities to court the rich, and threatens to undermine the role of universities as key democratic institutions where society's prevailing orthodoxies and power structures come under scrutiny.

Are universities likely to critically scrutinize power structures when their funding increasingly comes from those who dominate these very power structures?

...

Munk's agreement with U of T calls for $2 million to be spent on "branding" -- as if the school were a cigarette or designer handbag.

Another strange clause in the agreement sets an elitist tone that seems out of keeping with the university as a collegial academic community. It specifies that the school's elegant heritage mansion will have "a formal entrance reserved only for senior staff and visitors to the School."

Others -- junior faculty, students and the public -- may also feel beckoned to come to the Munk School in the hopes of liberating their human spirit. But, like deliveries, they'll be directed to enter by the back door.

http://www.rabble.ca/columnists/2011/02 ... ts-strings

FWIW, Munk's recent letter to The Walrus, re its G20 coverage:

Munk wrote:A policeman’s lot is not a happy one, as Gilbert and Sullivan pointed out, but it is a breeze compared with a limousine socialist’s. Take your conflicted writer, Pasha Malla (“The Question Remains,” December).

Malla “situates [himself] ideologically on the socialist left,” yet he has a “pretty capricious” relationship with “street-level protest,” by which he means G20 rioters smashing and burning things. He isn’t sure if “offending people rall[ies] support,” but quotes with approval CLAC members Robyn Maynard and Jaggi Singh’s observation that “in a world which is defined by, and maintained by violence… there can be no tears shed for the cars and windows broken by those who have had enough with the forces profiting from their exploitation.”

Since Malla finds Singh’s dedication to the anti-globalist movement admirable, I feel duty bound to call his attention to a virtually identical maxim expressing the same idea more economically: “Terror must be broken by terror.” It was the Nazi Sturmabteilung (SA) slogan from the early 1930s, before the dedicated disciples of “direct action” made Adolf Hitler’s National Socialism the leading political creed in Germany.

Malla hasn’t made a commitment to anarcho-terrorism yet. Even his guru Singh hasn’t. Nevertheless, Singh’s admitted purpose is to acclimatize the multitudes to the certainties of the Malla-Singh axis, so the radical becomes the mainstream in both media and society, and the language of radicalism becomes the acceptable and eventually the obligatory. Shades of Nazi Germany and Communist Russia not quite a century ago…

If The Walrus were looking to reincarnate itself as the Völkischer Beobachter by offering Canada’s conflicted intellectuals a friendly forum in which to morph from limousine socialists into limousine Nazis, all this would make some sort of (sick) sense. As The Walrus is unlikely to have such ambitions, it makes no sense at all.

Peter Munk
Toronto, ON

http://protestbarrick.net/

Website · by **MinM** » Sat Feb 26, 2011 12:24 pm

DrVolin wrote:Pannapacker aka Benton asks a question that I have been asking myself for a while now. And he formulates it better than I have so far: 'The real question is how to build an institution of higher learning that is not an incubator of evil.'

I don't think he has the answer, but he certainly has the problem nailed down.

http://chronicle.com/article/Getting-Me ... er/126008/

viewtopic.php?p=272176#p272176

by **DrVolin** » Sat Feb 26, 2011 12:42 pm

Branding is now a reality of University life. Externally, the University develops and markets its brand, and spends a great deal of money on doing so. Internally, philanthropy is the only way to setup new programs, buildings, or other structures that require an investment resouces. Most Development offices (the fundraising arm of the university) have a sort of menu, confidential or course, that lays out what you can get for what level of donations. The values usually hover around the 3M$ mark to name a building, and less for setting up a Chair or a new academic program.

The new trend is to offer multiple 'branding opportunities' for a single 'initiative'. For example, in setting up a new student center, which in my day would have been called 'The Union', the university might offer an opportunity to name the building, but a separate opportunity to name the office and yet another to name the directorship. In an ideal world, from the perspective of the university, you would have the McSomething Student Center, sitting in the Wilsomething building, headed by the Al-other director of student services, who greets guests in the Ledonor meeting room. All a la carte, and all newly with a stake in the running of the institution and a voice in the most powerful office in the University, Development and Alumni Relations (DAR is the usual, suitably sinister acronym).

I recently was denied the use of part of a building for a function quite critical to the good running of the University in a certain part of a certain building, and it was explained to me, in muted tones, that events had been banned from the area at the highest levels of the administration. Walking through it a few days later, I saw a rather large and boisterous event going on. Out of curiosity I picked up the phone and inquired. The Soviet reply at the other end was a simple 'DAR'. No other explanation needed, and further questions quite unwelcome.

by **Jeff** » Fri Mar 11, 2011 10:15 am

Members of the “Munk Out of UofT” campaign staged a banner drop this Sunday morning to bring attention to the man who wants to brand the University of Toronto’s Foreign Affairs School. The banner, which reads “‘Gang Rape is a Cultural Habit’ – Peter Munk” makes reference to a dismissive comment Munk made recently to a Globe and Mail reporter in response to his company’s security being implicated in the gang rape of many women near a Barrick Gold mine in Papua New Guinea. Barrick had denied allegations of gang rape at this mine for years, but recently supported an internal investigation when a Human Right Watch also confirmed these offenses.

http://munkoutofuoft.wordpress.com/2011 ... f-toronto/

by **wallflower** » Fri Mar 11, 2011 5:49 pm

I live in Pennsylvania and an important issue here is the exploitation of Marcellus Shale gas by hydro-fracking. Pennsylvania was un-prepared from a regulatory standpoint for it and there's been a scramble to catch up. It's a complicated political issue. Gas companies have been very aggressive in promoting their case as might be expected. I'm not sure why an op-ed a while back in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette by Dr. Bernard Weinsnstein got my goat, but it did.

Dr. Weinstein is Associate Director, Maguire Energy Institute at Southern Methodist University. He also is a consultant to Reliant Energy one of the big players in gas extraction and related commercial activities associated with the Marcellus gas play. The newspaper offered his academic association, but not his employment by Reliant. Anyhow because his op-ed made me angry I took at look at Maquire Energy Institute http://www.cox.smu.edu/web/maguire-energy-center/. The Institute strikes me as not particularly academic, for example under "papers" they all seem to be by Bernard Weinstein and I don't see even a list of research areas.

Southern Methodist University was selected by George W. Bush for his presidential library--the first President Bush has a similar arrangement with Texas A&M. Along with the library come various foundations and there is a George W Bush Institute. So SMU is closely associated withe George W Bush and his political project. Looking at the Wikipedia entry on SMU http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Methodist_University it would seem they've corporate sponsorship to the "next level."

In contrast there's a great Web site called FracTracker http://www.fractracker.org/p/about-us.html. It is managed by Center for Healthy Environments & Communities of the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public Health, hosted by Foundation for Pennsylvania Watersheds, the data tool built by Rhiza Labs and receives funding from The Heinz Foundation. They are quite transparent about all of this. The remarkable thing is FracTraker not only is a platform to disseminate information, it is a platform for collecting data. While the management is out of the University of Pittsburgh engagement with research at other universities and scientific organizations is easy and cooperative.

For me the differences between Maguire Energy Institute and FracTraker are stark. The former dedicated to marketing an lobbying and the latter to scientific research and public policy to promote public good.

by **Allegro** » Sat Mar 12, 2011 10:23 pm

.
The book’s Short Description is found at the link.
Paragraph spacings and the underscore were added by me.

Released by Tower Books | August 30, 2007
Author | Mahmood Mamdani

Scholars in the Marketplace: The Dilemmas of Neo-Liberal Reform at Makerere University, 1989-2005

The book warns against commercialisation of public universities as the subversion of public institutions for private purposes

by **Jeff** » Thu May 05, 2011 11:08 pm

I'd heard it told as a joke before the election, but:

Hours after leading the Liberal Party into its worst defeat in history, Michael Ignatieff declared his intention to put political life behind him forever and return to the classroom – a door the University of Toronto opened for him with multiple teaching assignments and a residency at the university’s Massey College.

...

He will teach in the law faculty, the department of political science, the Munk School of Global Affairs and the School of Public Policy and Governance.

...

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/pol ... le2011390/

by **Luther Blissett** » Thu May 05, 2011 11:56 pm

DrVolin wrote:Branding is now a reality of University life. Externally, the University develops and markets its brand, and spends a great deal of money on doing so. Internally, philanthropy is the only way to setup new programs, buildings, or other structures that require an investment resouces. Most Development offices (the fundraising arm of the university) have a sort of menu, confidential or course, that lays out what you can get for what level of donations. The values usually hover around the 3M$ mark to name a building, and less for setting up a Chair or a new academic program.

The new trend is to offer multiple 'branding opportunities' for a single 'initiative'. For example, in setting up a new student center, which in my day would have been called 'The Union', the university might offer an opportunity to name the building, but a separate opportunity to name the office and yet another to name the directorship. In an ideal world, from the perspective of the university, you would have the McSomething Student Center, sitting in the Wilsomething building, headed by the Al-other director of student services, who greets guests in the Ledonor meeting room. All a la carte, and all newly with a stake in the running of the institution and a voice in the most powerful office in the University, Development and Alumni Relations (DAR is the usual, suitably sinister acronym).

I recently was denied the use of part of a building for a function quite critical to the good running of the University in a certain part of a certain building, and it was explained to me, in muted tones, that events had been banned from the area at the highest levels of the administration. Walking through it a few days later, I saw a rather large and boisterous event going on. Out of curiosity I picked up the phone and inquired. The Soviet reply at the other end was a simple 'DAR'. No other explanation needed, and further questions quite unwelcome.

We still only offer naming opportunities for buildings or schools here. Sometimes, we do "gift" out names for suites or areas to honor someone who has past, without any money having changed hands.

We recently named something after someone who passed almost a century ago, all of whose progeny are unaffiliated with the University.

We have many problems with corporatism here (can't have any soft drinks that aren't of a certain family, admin thinks students want chain fast food, but when we bring in an unknown burrito restaurant, it quickly becomes the most popular food vendor on campus, the sushi sucks, etc.) that I have problems with. But I think some of those problems are just business as usual in 21st century Imperial America. If anything, I see those issues diminishing rather than increasing.

by **DrVolin** » Mon Jun 06, 2011 8:25 pm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/201 ... g-ferguson

I don't even know where to start. The fact that the star professor/shareholders will use a permanent underclass of indentured tutors to generate dividends for themselves? The fact that they are keeping their publically funded dayjobs while doing this? The fact that the reputations that allow them to behave like stars and launch this dubious venture were paid for by the taxpayer in the first place? The assumption that star lecturers can teach without being in meaningful contact with the students? Or perhaps the more pedestrian concern that they are setting equality of opportunity back to pre-WWI levels, after themselves benefitting from its post-WWII levels?

Or perhaps that their 18k pound a year dividend cow will depend on a publically funded institution to award degrees, and presumably for lecture halls and other facilities? The fact that the pressure in the system they designed will inevitably result in the rich purchasing the degree that they weren't able or willing to work and compete for? That they are creating a machine even more efficient than the traditional university at converting inherited money into academic credentials? That these intellectual luminaries are at the very bleeding edge of socialization of risk and privatization of profit? There are some defence contractors and bankers out there feeling blindsided and madly scrambling to copy this model as of tonight, I am sure.

by **Feilan** » Mon Jun 06, 2011 10:24 pm

^^^yes.

DrVolin wrote:I can only wish that we had enough tenure track positions for all the qualified applicants. The reality is that there are so many more good people than positions, that in a typical search, you could pick a candidate at random and most likely get someone who can do the job just fine. Good luck getting most of my colleagues to admit this though. So instead, most of them retreat to absurd selection criteria, mostly involving symbols of class membership. These criteria actually manage to beat the odds and often fail to identify a functional recruit, not surprisingly, which then allows everyone to claim that even with so many candidates, it is extremely difficult to find anyone who is truly qualified for the job.

Universities do actually provide many worthwhile services to their communities. They usually give access to their libraries for nominal fee, and provide cont. ed. or university extension courses at reasonable prices and flexible hours. Strangely though, this is true despite the fact that these are often the activities least valued and rewarded by the academic power structure.

As for the pressure to standardize, you are quite late to the party. The best we can do right now is do it to ourselves on our own terms, lamely limiting the damage, if it hasn't already been done to us on someone else's. There is still much good in universities, and much worth saving. The corporate assault has been making steady but thankfully slow progress.

^^^ and yes.

Excerpt of an excerpt: The Trouble with Billionaires by Linda McQuaig and Neil Brooks:So, for $19 million (or less) of his own money, Munk has not only gotten his name on a prominent public building, but he’s managed to direct at least $66 million of public money towards a project of his choosing: a global affairs school. And it’s likely to be a global affairs school that will fit with the political views and sensitivities of Peter Munk.

Indeed. Up-chuckably predictable. Of course, funding from the private sector ought to be rinsed out in public in the form of taxation and distributed widely at something quite a bit further than arms-length from the pet interests of those profitable corporations required to pony up a sliver they can do without; a brave new world where investing in publicly accessible education is not a charitable act and you don't get to name it after your wallet. amen.

"The Munk School of Globalization - Where Lesser Evils are Re-purposed for a Greater Good" sounds like a good fit for Iggy.