Equally urgent is the question of what role universities will play in our
society. Will scientific and medical advances be available to a broad section of
the public, or be restricted to a wealthy few? Will education be considered a
basic right for all, a public good, or a rare privilege? It is no accident, for
example, that corporatization of higher education has been accompanied by a rise
of private schooling and decreasing public commitment to fund education at all
levels.
Expanding corporate involvement and influence in research and the
devaluing of teaching through innovations like distance learning and on-line
courses both undermine the control of teachers and researchers, while
emphasizing the profit potential of our work. Yale is at the forefront of both
these trends.
The Patent and Trademark Act Amendments of 1980 (better known
as the Bayh-Dole Act) allowed universities, for the first time, to patent
discoveries that had been supported with public money. The result has been a
sharp increase in the number of patents issued to universities, more than two
thousand each year by the mid 1990s. Supporters of the legislation argue that it
has made a growing number of discoveries available to the public and encouraged
private investment in research at universities. But with the federal government
providing more than 60% of the funding for academic science research, it is hard
to escape the impression that Bayh-Dole has in fact made universities a conduit
for converting public money into private profit.

*****

The labor movement has two powerful lessons to offer academics: the
necessity of collective action to secure personal freedom and the importance of
respecting our work. Unionization encourages us to throw out the myth of the
cloistered scholar and the illusion that we can individually win our right to a
voice through hard work, brilliance, and a recognized, secure position within
the university (tenure). We realize that we will not secure academic
freedom
through personal dedication or bravery (although there is plenty of room for
these), but will have to reclaim it through organization and collective action.
By supporting each other and engaging with the entire community around us, we
help create space where academic debate can thrive and scholars can afford to
take risks in their work.

Even more importantly, unionization puts us back in touch with the truth
that intellectual work is indeed work and should be respected as such. How many
times have I heard (or even said) that what we do as academics is really mostly
fun, just sitting around reading books? Who among us has not had our moments of
thinking, “I can’t believe that they pay me for this!” But these kinds of
attitudes denigrate the very thing that is most valuable about the academy—the
opportunities it provides to do interesting and rewarding work in an atmosphere
of respect and dignity. These are precisely the things that are most endangered
within a capitalist economy. To downplay their value is to surrender to
evaluating our work in market-driven terms and to fail to appreciate the crucial
role universities play in safeguarding democracy. Worst of all, when we become
convinced about the worthlessness of our own work, we are unwilling to fight for
it and instead put ourselves more readily in the service of those in power.

Universities need to be public spaces where the needs of human beings come
before the pressures of the market. Although some faculty worry that
unionization could institutionalize the corporatization and casualization of the
academy, my experience in GESO has instead encouraged me to think about the
social importance of my teaching and research. For us to impart the
humanistic values and ideas that lie at the heart of education to our students,
we need to recover those ideas for ourselves.

-Anita Seth, "Unionizing for a More Democratic and Responsive University."