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French Universities Occupied
Against Neo-Liberal Reforms

By Michael Galvin

12 March, 2009
Countercurrents.org

My friend Pierrick calls me Tuesday afternoon with the news that the general assembly of students at his university voted for an occupation and blockade of academic buildings in reaction to the recent application of the Pécresse Law. When we got to the auditorium of IEP (Institute of Political Studies, in Toulouse), students were mulling about, talking, chain-smoking and preparing the chains and barricades of tables and chairs for when the last classes of the day let out. As soon as that happens, everything gets thrown up against the exits closing the institution off from the outside world while politicized students rule the halls of the interior, debating, holding meetings, eating and drinking as life goes on as normal on the outside. According to Pierrick, this is only the third time that his university has ever been occupied - as it is adjacent to the right-wing law school - the previous time being in reaction to the passage of the Pécresse law last year when half of the universities in France were occupied and shut down by mobilized students for a period ranging from weeks to months. Therefore, this is a movement that effectively began last year when the law was voted, went into a brief hibernation, and is now being revived in conjunction with the law's application by the right-wing Sarkozy government's minister of higher education Valéry Pécresse.

Generally speaking, French universities are meticulously organized and highly democratic places. For example, during mobilizations last year in only a two week period, there were over 48 general assemblies organized around the country with the vast majority having over 500 students in attendance. Such massive organization of young people and ideas toward political ends is something that is unparalled in "public" institutions in the United States for example. While the realization of such mobilization is largely due to the very open and militantly public and popular - in the literal sense - nature of French institutions of higher learning (in fact an often heard chant in protests is “For a critical and popular university”), many denigrate the fact that some French universities risk being blockaded for several months out of the year by certain 'leftists' preventing others from being able to attend their classes and actually get an education in the formal sense. Yet the fact is that these occupations are organized and enacted democratically giving French students the possibility to understand how democracy works, take part in their system, and feel like they have a say in not only the democratic process that is higher education, but in the application of government policy as well; in other words, the experience is very educational.

This all may change however as the French government's application of the Pécresse Law threatens the very root of these ideas. In fact, the most amazing and scary thing is how strikingly American the changes appear. Under the rubric of "Autonomy" and "Professionalization," the Sarkozy government intends to liberalize the functioning of university administration and funding. In terms of "Autonomy" the law calls for less funding from the state while pushing universities to take ownership of their own individual properties, and create foundations through which private money can fund or develop programs, which essentially means that the hand of the private sector will firmly take control of the current public system of education; and of course, these private funders could not go unrewarded. By restructuring the university administration, diminishing the power of professors in choosing administrators and replacing these decision-making bodies with corporate board-like entities, the private sector interests will easily gain their foot in the door to affect not only the functioning of the institution but also curriculum. This moves perfectly into the government’s "Professionalization" theme which strives to provide students with "orientation and professional insertion;” in other words, an education that will provide them with direct professional insertion into the marketplace, and preventing them from studying “unproductive” subjects like history or the humanities. In fact, not only will there be large budget cuts in which less "useful" departments and faculty will be axed, but there will be an increase in inscription fees, tuition, as well as increased competition between universities to create the best educational brand in order to attract the most desirable students. All of this seems to foreshadow leaving the French in precisely the same predicament in which the American university exists today as even so-called public American universities are, on average, only 30% financed by the state with the rest coming from quintuple digit tuition for students, and "investments" from private corporations pushing their own research goals and profit interests, killing all possibility for an education that takes into account the situation of the society, its history and the collective interests that its individual citizens within it represent. For me, the last few years has made this more and more clear.

Two years ago, while in the throes of the Bush administration and some of the worst moments of the war on and occupation of Iraq I wrote an article for an independent publication on the differences between American and French university protest movements entitled, "The Money is the Matter" (you can read the whole article as well as see pictures from recent mobilizations in France at www.mdgalvin.wordpress.com). I was intensely frustrated by the insane discrepancy between the massive movement in France concerning the passage of a law that would begin privatizing the higher education system there, and the total lack of any movement within the already fully privatized higher education system in the United States after seven years of a bloody, imperialist and illegal war in Iraq. However, the point of the article not only connected those two dots but argued that it was precisely this privatization and the social deformations that it engendered that allowed such exhorbatantly absurd atrocities to be committed without the slightest reaction. The two went hand in hand; and in fact, no American universities were occupied due to the war.

Nevertheless, the French seem to understand the American model and fortunately can learn from it - or rather, to avoid it. The head of the prestigious Sorbonne in Paris recently wrote that “professionalizing higher education would be devastating. Adapting to the needs of private corporations is not a good solution, because in a world of perpetual change, the needs of corporations are always changing thus leading to an education that after only a short time is outdated and useless.” A major French newspaper Libération also recently ran an article in which four French professors with experience working in America commented on the neo-liberal American model and its application in France. They write that such a system “claims to have confidence in the market but instead only serves to reinforce hierarchy. The current reform, in reality, impoverishes the forms of solidarity that are effective in our societies.” Thus, while the left is holding firm on the claim that the government should revoke the new law without any conditions, Sarkozy and his ministers are working to split the movement by seducing professors with compromises in an attempt to isolate the student movement. While such backhanded efforts have succeeded in forcing past legislation and repressing popular dissent, the current atmosphere appears positive as more and more universities are erecting the barricades against the imported neo-liberal policies that strive to kill the very possibility to collectively organize to express dissent.

Original Quotations:

http://lafauteadiderot.net/spip.php?article143 ; The President of the Sorbonne:
« professionnaliser les études initiales serait dévastateur. S’adapter aux besoins des entreprises en travaillant à leur fournir une main-d’oeuvre hyperspécialisée n’est pas la bonne solution, parce que dans notre monde en perpétuel changement, les besoins des entreprises évoluent très vite, vouant à très court terme toute formation hypertechnique à être périmée. »

http://sciences.blogs.liberation.fr/home/2009/02/universits-le-v.html
Quatre enseignants-chercheurs français travaillant en Amérique proposent leur regard sur le « modèle libéral »; « il prétend faire confiance au marché alors qu’il ne fait que renforcer la hiérarchie. La réforme actuelle entérine en réalité la paupérisation générale des formes de solidarité qui affectent nos sociétés. »

Michael Galvin: Originally from St. Louis, MO, Michael Galvin attended a liberal arts college in Minnesota from 2004-2008 where he worked with various anti-war organizations. Spending his entirely politically conscious life in George W. Bush's America, Michael decided to leave following the end of his studies, taking a job with the French government where he teaches English to 4th and 5th grade near Toulouse, France. He will be going to Palestine this summer in solidarity with Palestinians working to end the Israeli occupation.[email protected]

 


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