I've enabled word verification on the comments. This will block the spammers who've recently flooded this blog, but i'll still allow people to make anonymous comments, so folks who read will not have to get blogger profiles to comment, which is just silly.
I listened today to the entire two hour realaudio file of July's NYU Town Hall meeting on the administration's "proposal" to not negotiate a new contract with GSOC. A great deal of this sounds familiar (and not just because Sarah Wolf appears towards the end sounding quite like Sarah Wolf.) I'm struck by the strong faculty support the union has. NYU clearly has not (yet) suffered the despicable kinds of divisive intimidation tactics used by Yale to such disastrous effect in the mid-1990s. I feel a little reticient about my relief at the support GSOC does have, like it could all go away if Sexton decides to start threatening unionists with deportation and pressuring the profs to start sabotaging job recommendations, but it's also ultimately extremely reassuring to hear people with whom i will be studying (several of whom I haven't met) speak out to support the union. (It seems like in the years since the 2003 strikes, GESO's support among faculty and undergrads has increased significantly, thanks to the success of the surveys and subsequent platform organizing. I mention their post-grade-strike difficulties to try to get at some of my own fears about grad school and to try to understand what could lead a supposedly progressive intellectual like Ian Shapiro or Sara Suleri Goodyear or Richard Brodhead to act in the way that they all did.)
The point i made about Sexton's frequent invocations of the sanctity of "Student Voice" in an earlier post todaybears repeating and a bit of exposition here. very simply, Student Voice is not ultimatley something that is John Sexton's to foment. Indeed, the racous cries of solidarity captured by the DAT recording strike me as rather potent expressions of a very strong chorus of voices which Sexton and his administration have proven quite determined to ignore. If Sexton is truly concerned with "student voice"[s], he should perhaps start listening to them and responding in good faith rather than with empty promises and near-assurances that he will not be dissuaded from refusing to negotiate. Claims that graduate students will continue to be provided for though they are not being "allowed" to enter the discussion about the future of graduate teaching and education in any meaningful way strike me as insultingly paternalist. So I turn to something Mark Wilson said on March 4th, 2003, at the Med Center strike rally with Andy Stern and Dennis Rivera. At least, i think that was when he said it. It could have been later that week, but anyway, Mark said, "If they won't let us in the picture, we'll take the camera and make our own picture."
The graduate students who spoke were eloquent in articulating the very important point that teaching courses or sections, grading papers and exams, and doing research is very much within the realm of work - time consuming, challenging, and crucially important to the visions of universities as we want them to be.
There's a big rally on the 31st. I'm meeting with faculty the day after to select classes.
Twin Cinemas, the new New Pornographers cd i told you i'd be gushing over today yesterday is indeed gushworthy and grows on me more on more with each listen. Unlike Electric Version, which for me really rested on the stregnth of "July Jones" and the unbelievably wonderful "It's Only Divine Right," Twin Cinemas is thoroughly impressive from start to finish, and Bejar's contributions fit in almost seamlessly with A.C. Newman's compositions. Pitchfork already noted how prominent and kickass the drumming is, but it bears praeteritio here, so i won't get into it any further. Ha, i made a funny. Speaking of which, I -- oh screw it. I was going to correct my earlier mangling of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme song lyrics, but there really are many more important things i could be doing right now. Like reading.
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