From Edinburgh to Sri Lanka: STRIKE!

University of Edinburgh on strike, by Joel Sharples

This is really, really late, but I was deep in deadline hell last week when this post would have been at it’s most relevant. That said, we haven’t won yet, in fact it feels like we’ve only just got started defending higher education, and arts education specifically, from being undermined by education for profit. I wrote about University of Edinburgh students going into occupation ahead of the #N30 strike last week, and reposted the RSAnimate lecture about de-industrialising education this morning.

I wanted to post the section of an article read out by Prof. Jonathan Spencer, at the teach-out organised by the Edinburgh University Anti-Cuts Coalition at the library picket line last week. Prof. Spencer also emailed this round to the whole anthropology department, and his email is reproduced below.

Library picket line teach-out, N30, from Alasdair Thompson

Dear Colleagues and Students

As you know, many of us are on strike today in protest at the changes imposed on our pension scheme by University employers. As background I thought I would share with you some passages from a long article, co-written by our recent graduate Harini Amarasuriya (now a Senior Lecturer at the Open University in Colombo), and published in the national press in Sri Lanka earlier this year. The strike by FUTA, the academic union, in Sri Lankan universities this year was an extraordinary event which opened up a space for dissent and critical discussion in a society where dissent and criticism had been ruthlessly crushed in the last days of the civil war. Here are some highlights from the article:

The impulses that led us to seek employment and a career within academia were clearly not economic. We all walked into the university system with our eyes wide open as to what our economic condition would be. Most of us took the plunge because we hold on to an ideal of university life where ideas matter; independence and critical skills are valued, not feared. We have listened wistfully to stories of the past of fiery debates and arguments in senates and faculty boards, of brilliant and colourful personalities stalking our corridors, of their intellectual achievements and eccentric exploits. These legends also inspired us to choose this career path. We chose academic careers because we believed in a certain way of life, a certain form of engagement with the world. Over the years what we got was under-funded and under-resourced institutions coming under increasing political control by governments to whom education was no longer a priority. Given their environment, combined with the impossibly low salaries offered, the universities no longer attracted the best minds and inevitably took a turn towards mediocrity and apathy. And with a few exceptions and while trying to maintain some standards of excellence, most of us went with the tide!

This is not the first (and will not be the last) regime to use political power to interfere with the autonomy of universities. But safeguarding that autonomy requires academics to take their rights and privileges seriously and to fight to protect it. We reiterate that these rights and privileges are intrinsic to our ability and our obligations to fulfil our core functions in civil society. It is important that we do not forget that this fight has to happen within as much as outside the universities. As the UNESCO Lima Declaration on Academic Freedom and Autonomy of Institutions of Higher Education says, university autonomy is what enables the academic community to speak out with responsibility and independence on the ethical, cultural and social problems of their time. The current FUTA trade union action has enabled us to reflect on and act on these issues both inside and outside our institutions. The trade union action being suspended does not mean that our fight to protect our privileges and fulfil our responsibilities need come to an end. It is up to us to also hold FUTA accountable for the challenge they laid before university teachers at the seminar in Jaffna when one speaker asked us what we were going to do when our wallets and handbags were filled. The trade union action has been suspended even prior to our wallets and handbags being filled; perhaps our union leaders who have been exhorting us to keep fighting need to explain why they gave up the fight long before we were ready to do so.

The current mood of the academic community shows that it was not merely the salary issue which drew us on to the streets. The intransigence and inanity of the current regime and the humiliating treatment meted out to university teachers has had a positive effect. It has, without doubt been a significant factor in causing them to finally rise up and say enough is enough. You can push a community so far and no further. Perhaps, a more significant factor is the threat to the very future and survival of the country’s much cherished public education system. University teachers are now making it clear that they will not stand silent and watch the dismantling of this system. The demand for decent salaries is based not merely on self interest but also on real fears that the erosion of adequate funding is an insidious way of destroying these institutions from within. FUTA is also asking for adequate funding of education as a whole which is a sine qua non for sustainable development.

The article can be read in two parts here:

http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=31101http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=31156

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