No COLA, No Contract!

At 6pm last night, the UAW 2865 bargaining team held a pre-bargaining caucus to discuss their decision of the previous night to drop COLA as an integral demand across subsequent years of the contract. For now, this means retaining the $54k initial adjustment, but then reverting to static percentage-based increases for each year thereafter. Those who have lived through the duration of the last contract in a town like Santa Cruz, where rents soared 67% since 2018, can sniff the peril. As a point of fact, the bargaining team’s proposal was “packaged” with another article about rents in campus housing, which preserved their legal right to reintroduce COLA –– should the team suddenly develop the political will to respond to the persistent call of rank and file.

If recent encounters with the team are any indication, however, we might expect them to brush off this “minority” of workers pushing a “fringe” position in the name of a silent majority of tens of thousands of workers, whom our esteemed representatives supposedly consult (or intuit) between caucuses. Our reps are so secure in their deeper knowledge of what is reasonable, realistic, and right that the caucus was set up to preclude membership’s reconsideration of their decision, summarily ending the bargaining call later that evening. Yet, the team’s confidence was surely shaken when the pre-bargaining caucus—a Zoom room capped at 500—filled within minutes, and hundreds more members packed into an overflow. What they all witnessed was a dismally choreographed plan to flood the stack with a dozen sycophants off the top, in many cases reading scripted defences of the decision to strike COLA from the contract language. The fiery response from the packed meeting inaugurated a slogan that is gaining ground: No COLA? No Contract! It’s safe to say that our union local has never seen such intense and vocal backlash. In a setting like this, renewed appeals to a “silent majority” can only gesture to silence.

Beyond doubt, the swirl of frustration and anger demonstrates a definite base for the COLA demand and an enormous capacity for mobilization. The urgent question is how this might be channeled into strategic resolve. We are seeing calls for a no-vote campaign, or even a wildcat strike. It is not hard to see why attention turns to these alternatives, even as we remain on strike without a contract to vote down. At this moment, both these calls are premature and concede too much to our bargaining team, crediting them with more control over the direction of the current strike than they in fact possess. The bargaining team and the thin staff layer at UAW—who make several times the base TA wage—are not the union. It is not up to them whether the COLA demand is dropped. It will be dropped only if and when the rank and file relinquishes it. The organizing challenges, then, are to deepen and widen the commitment to the demand, and to develop a strategic orientation of patience and resolve that is sorely lacking in our bargaining team. In the case of our strike, power is wielded against the boss cumulatively, and that power builds as the strike unfolds and disrupts over time.

It is critical to recognize the dynamics of our strike during this abbreviated holiday week. This is a vulnerable period in which concessions might be made rapidly, if the team thinks it can sneak them by membership. It is a time when pickets might dwindle, and rallies might lack the energy of the first week. This is precisely the time to take action at the level of our departments, to find collective expressions of commitment to the COLA demand and the long-haul strike needed to win it, and to link these tactics across departments and campuses. We must return from the long weekend still on strike, and with widespread resolve to take this through finals and, if necessary, beyond.

UAW on Strike: COLA in context

At this point, UC labor relations and admin must be reflecting on the flatfootedness of their strategy. Entering the second week of a system-wide strike of grad workers, postdocs, and academic researchers, the determination of the rank-and-file to stay on strike until we win is entrenched and expanding. Pickets may be sparser this week due to the impending holiday, with students and workers deserting an already quiet campus a few days earlier than usual to spend time with loved ones. This fact should serve to remind us, however, that the true efficacy of our strike is measured not by the size of rallies or the rowdiness of the picket, but by the number of workers withholding their labor over time. This is something that our bargaining team fails to understand, as it volunteers major concessions on our core demand at a moment of power.

This strategic orientation has developed over several years of organizing behind the COLA demand. We’ve learned that short-term strikes, even with total shutdowns, do not threaten crises at UC in the way that they might at other worksites. The steady accumulation of missed instruction hours, especially late in the quarter, along with the passage of deadlines for finals, grades, and research grants, ratchets up the pressure on the administration as the cogs of university operations jam and effects begin to accumulate in other sectors of the campus workforce. This strategy was hard won in the first place, and was set in motion by meticulous organizing since the end of the wildcats at the onset of the pandemic. We would be remiss not to have it guide our action and tactics both on the ground and at the table.

This shorter, quieter week also gives us an opportunity to reflect on the deeper meaning of the struggle. Our strike has been the subject of overwhelmingly positive national media coverage—even if these stories often, predictably, miss the point. Last week we wrote in these pages that we’re not striking for higher wages, but for COLA— the demand that our compensation be determined by the cost of living in California, so that no worker spends more than 30% of their salary on rent. This, we reiterate, is much more than just a pay increase.

To grasp the significance of this demand, we can look to the history of our own union, the UAW. The tension that we can see between anxious bargaining representatives now pushing very hard to replace the COLA demand with simple raises is continuous with the larger dynamics of the labor movement since World War II. The end of that war saw a massive strike wave across the US, widely considered the most concentrated period of labor-management strife in U.S. history. Following the wildcats in auto during the war years, a strike of 225,000 GM workers exploded in November 1945 demanding a 30% pay increase without an increase in company prices. Workers that is, demanded that their victory not be immediately eaten up by inflation. In making such a demand, they anticipated the principle of COLA—the guarantee that compensation be determined in relation to the cost of living. In our own moment, where rent can rise by more than two-thirds over the life of a contract, our COLA demand strikes at the heart of a decades-long arrangement of price and wage stability amid soaring property values, where wage increases evaporate into the rent check, even when price inflation is steady (which, today, it is not). With this demand, we are saying that working people and tenants will no longer consign increasing portions of their wage to the benefit of real estate portfolios. And no one in California has a real estate portfolio as large as the UC. In both cases, the upward drift in the cost of living is an attack on the entire working class.

In short, COLA intervenes anew in a historical process, and takes up the demand of workers before us that our salary guarantees us the ability to afford to live where we work, and to etch that principle into our contract so that this will always be the case. This is why COLA is about so much more than a raise, and so much more than our own strike. When we win, we ensure that the ability to reproduce our livelihoods will no longer be subject to the vicissitudes of the market. We set the stage for unions across the country to do the same, starting here in the UC. In the midst of a historic wave of unionization drives throughout different industries in the U.S., the potential of our movement to build this kind of worker power has potentially massive consequences.

So when we’re out there on the picket line this week, be encouraged not only by the determination of your comrades, the beauty of our collectivity, and the soundness of our strategy, but in knowing also that we take up the struggle of rank-and-file workers of the past. In winning our COLA, we have the potential to help shape the trajectory of the union movement in this country for years to come.

We’re striking for COLA, not for wages

Still nothing doing at bargaining. Putting the phlegm in phlegmatic, Nadine Fishel—UC’s stonewaller in chief—repackaged UC’s piffling offer between bouts of coughing. Nadine is under the weather, apparently, but no less determined to play the waiting game.

Four days on the picket line, and grad workers across the state continue to feel our power growing. Nothing builds resolve and solidarity like spending the day with our fellow workers, walking the picket side-by-side, eating meals together, and talking about ways to deepen our collective struggle. And our bargaining team members agree. We are at the height of our power, they say. The curious thing is that some of them think this is the time to start offering concessions to the boss.

At a meeting yesterday morning, some bargaining team members argued that this moment of collective power is the time to revoke the central demand of the negotiations, a demand that has been building for over three years: to permanently tie grad workers’ compensation to the cost of living in California. In other words, they would have us abandon COLA at the moment when our power is still building.

But in the midst of the discussion over this misguided proposal, some 300 rank-and-file workers from campuses across the state suddenly flooded a meeting that had not been advertised to membership beforehand. In no uncertain terms, they expressed a nearly univocal position—this strike is about a COLA, about the end of rent burden. Without the demand to tether compensation to cost of living, the wage increase we’re asking for becomes just another number. Lacking the organic connection to soaring rent prices, it becomes something eerily close to the “outrageous” demand that UC labor relations argues it is. With complete clarity, these rank-and-filers let their bargaining team know why they’ve gone out on the largest strike of academic workers in history, and why we plan to stay out until we win.

Without the COLA demand, our struggle loses its bite. COLA is a political demand, not simply a wage demand, because it links our compensation to market values. It makes it so that we, and all the workers who come after
us, can afford to live where we work. This is why administrative intransigence is the only face we’ve seen. Waves of sectoral unionization throughout the UC since the ‘90s have simply been incorporated into the university’s business paradigm, in which incremental wage increases are offered, but without any relation to the outrageous cost of living in this state. This is precisely how we ended up rent-burdened in the first place. Conceding the framing of the demand (COLA) in favor of its result (the $54K salary) has significant consequences for the UC system and for workers in higher education as a whole: it is the first step on the dismal path to capitulation without a real fight. The rank and file appears to appreciate this more keenly than our bargaining team.

Meanwhile, as STEM divisions begin a fresh round of strike-breaking and intimidation tactics, we find ourselves again confronted by the student-worker ambiguity so often exploited by our boss. Student researchers are now being threatened with academic consequences for their labor action because they’re earning required credits for the work they produce for the university. The message is clear, if opportunistic: even if your strike as workers is protected, we will punish you as students. But no less clear is the fact that academic progress is contingent on compliance to the labor process, revealing the fiction on which the student/worker distinction is based.

The fact of being a student is the justification for inadequate compensation as a worker (“part-time work”, as Labor Relations says), while that labor primarily functions to draw in grant money, carry out research operations, and keep the institution’s tuition-rent wheels turning. Here, too, the COLA demand marks a decisive intervention, refusing to accept rent burden as the price of being a student half the time, just as we must refuse to accept intimidation or retaliation as the lot of student-workers.

The cry for “COLA!” rings out on the picket line, but rank-and-file workers know it’s more than just a slogan. It means an end to rent burden for all grad workers, and it’s the only way to end this strike. Tell that to your bargaining team.

What is reasonable?

Why isn’t the UC coming to the bargaining table? Why is news of the strike absent from University communications? Where is the police presence at the picket? We’re three days into one of the largest strikes in California history, so why isn’t the university trying to stop us—whether through negotiation, ideological pressure, or brute force? The same questions are echoing around picket lines across the state. A whole week has passed since the TAs were invited to the bargaining table and we’ve seen no urgency to get to the heart of the matter — our rent burden — at the SR table either. What’s going on?

The answer is simple. The strike, we must reiterate again and again, is not powerful as a demonstration of force, but as a use of our collective power. In other words, it is powerful as a strike. Those who thought that the first day or two of the strike would bring Labor Relations to the bargaining table with their tails between their legs were mistaken. Our power lies not in the threat of the strike, but in the strike itself, as it unfolds over time. The university’s response shows us, loud and clear, that our success will be determined by how many grad workers are withholding their labor, and for how long they do so.

In official communications sent out before the strike, the University cooed about its dedication to undergraduate learning. But their utter lack of urgency about the cessation of countless hours of teaching by striking grad workers says otherwise. The stark truth is that the university system in the U.S. has transformed largely into a factory for manufacturing student debt. In this environment, the imperative of the admin is to get as many undergrads in the door and as indebted as possible. “Diversity” and “equity,” in this context, take on perverse meanings, resonant more in the register of finance than social justice. “Inclusion,” then, means exposing more students to more debt.
In short, admin needs butts in seats, and for those butts to get stamped with a grade at the end of term. For these university functionaries, what happens in the interim—that is, the totality of teaching and learning—matters little to the functioning of this process. The efficacy of the wildcat grading strike in 2019- 20 showed this clearly. The wholesale shift to zoom university in the pandemic, with no thought of restructuring tuition in that impoverished learning environment, speaks no less eloquently.

Admin has not responded meaningfully to our labor action up to this point because they know this is how the University runs—at least it is how they run it. A week or two of lost classes doesn’t diminish the swelling coffers, nor stem the indebtedness of its students. But as grad workers, we understand that the work we do matters, and we know that it matters to our undergraduates. The admin, sequestered in their professional offices, are utterly detached from this process. So long as the next batch of student debt receipts is not interrupted, there is no need for panic. And there’s some time yet, admin reckons. They’ll soon get tired.

But we won’t. And as we continue to withhold our labor, our power and leverage will accumulate. The exams and papers that turn into grades will begin to pile up. The lack of classes will begin to threaten accreditation. Missing research data will halt publications and grants. The pressure will mount with the duration of the strike and the approach of deadlines. This is essential to understand, because however “reasonable,” or even “generous,” the current offer on the table may seem to these haughty bureaucrats, or to faculty, we know that a few percentage points above the present misery cut it. The status quo is shit. We need to shift the balance between the bosses and the workers, and not only here. We need to radically change what seems reasonable, such that what is unreasonable is a wage that can’t pay the rent. This claim takes our struggle beyond our own situation, and makes it a fight over the parameters for what is possible for workers and students everywhere. This is also why our boss is so adamant, in the words of labor relations, that cost of living is not a big factor in the wages article.

In this context, it’s a positive development for UCOP to now be openly proclaiming that our demands are incompatible with their business model, and explicitly acknowledging that they have a political dimension rather than being narrowly economic. Calls for “neutral” mediation are calls to bring all this back to earth. But the fact that secure housing or adequate childcare are unreasonable under the present paradigm shows that business as usual (or “continuity of education” in the boss’s preferred idiom) has already failed. We, of course, already knew that.

We have to stop asking what’s reasonable, and to whom, and start asking what we’re capable of fighting for. Our fellow grad workers at Columbia were out for 9 ½ weeks and won big wage raises and a huge childcare package. If we are prepared to struggle for our demands, we may be in for a long strike. The University has not been cowed into serious bargaining by a threat of force. But they can be forced to concede what we’re demanding if we use our collective power for as long as necessary.

Day 2: This is not free speech

With thousands of grad workers and postdocs striking a second day at every UC campus, the University has meekly announced that it supports “protected free speech activities.” But this is not a free speech activity. It is not a demonstration or a protest. This is an exercise of collective power.

Those of us at UC Santa Cruz three years ago, walking the familiar intersection of Bay and High, might be forgiven for thinking that something has changed at the top. Gone are the daily emails full of claims about our “illegal activity” from EVC Kletzer or then-grad dean Quentin Williams. There’s also no sign of deporter-in-chief Janet Napolitano, looming in the background, ready to issue another inimitable firing threat, signed “Yours very truly.” Most conspicuous, surely, is the absence of some 30–40 patrol cars and a rotating row of cops clad in riot gear.

Is the Drake administration really more humane than that of the former Director of Homeland Security? On one level, we can attribute the tamer response to the fact that we’re on a sanctioned ULP strike this time, rather than a wildcat. Things are “above board,” even if, as should be obvious to everybody, the UC’s bad-faith bargaining is just a sideshow to the real struggle over wages and working conditions. The pressure is off our local administration too, at least relative to last time, since the COLA demand has now gone statewide.

But if the only bargaining to transpire on day one of the strike is any indication, the Drake administration has inherited Napolitano’s hallmark ruthless attitude toward contract negotiations. While tens of thousands of workers struck ten campuses, the top lawyers at Labor Relations bickered with our SRU bargaining team over the formatting of our transit proposal (how could we possibly forget to underline previous changes at this stage of bargaining!). For all the many “impossible” things we shifted during the wildcat, we never did manage to get the University to any bargaining table.

What’s more, none of the overarching trends of the Napolitano years have wavered. The upward pressure on student tuition (and therefore student debt), interrupted momentarily in the face of the COLA movement, remains constant under Drake. Enrollments and class sizes continue to climb, even in the face of a TA shortage, at least here in Santa Cruz. Rents in campus housing have increased systemwide, and the value of UC’s invested endowment enjoys record growth. It is also clear that our demand to bring every grad worker out of rent burden is no less preposterous to Labor Relations under Drake than it was under Napolitano.

In the most important respects, Drake has done Napolitano’s legacy proud at the head of California’s biggest landlord and biggest boss. With administrators
like this at the helm — however the tone of their emails and their display of police power may vary — it is clear that the only intervention that can salvage the decline of public higher education takes the form of major and prolonged strikes. The recent wave of strikes across the country has shown that when workers fight, we win. This strike is an opportunity not only to get paid enough to live where we work, but to shift the balance of power in public education away from the bureaucrats and investment officers and back toward those actually doing the teaching and research that serve the mission that this administration pretends to.

We know that power lies with those who do the work, and the picket line is an opportunity to continue building it. The conversations and community we find here are not just an affirmation of our power, but a way to strengthen it. So what we win in this strike won’t be determined by what administrators, faculty, or colleagues think we deserve, but by how strong our solidarity and resolve is. And that has very little to do with what the bosses deem “protected free speech.”

UC INSTAGRAM: @PAYUSMOREUCSC
WWW.PAYUSMOREUCSC.COM

Let’s keep talking out here , and keep walking the picket.
Another day longer, another day stronger.

Day 1 at the Picket

Today, more than four years since we signed our last contract and three full years since we went on wildcat strike, we begin our open-ended strike across four academic-worker units on ten campuses. Depending on how things play out, this may end up one of the largest strikes in the history of California.

For grad workers, the universal goal is the end of rent burden — to be paid enough to live where we work, or COLA. As things stand at the bargaining table, there is some $30k difference between UC’s proposal for annual wages and our own. We are asking for $54k as an annual base. They are proposing a 7% raise on current rates.

Continue reading “Day 1 at the Picket”

Carlos Cruz Suspension Rescinded – End of UC Boycott

Dear signatories of the UC boycott, 

This is an important update regarding the status of our struggle. 

After months of struggle, Carlos Cruz – the single remaining wildcat striker who faced employment discipline from the UC Santa Cruz wildcat strike – will no longer be suspended. Though Carlos remains on conduct probation for two years, this decision means he can both work and complete his PhD again. Though we continue to fight for his student discipline to be entirely rescinded, this represents a victory, the culmination of months of organized efforts to fully end the discipline against wildcat strikers. (Carlos’ letter to comrades and supporters is included in full below.) 

As such, we have agreed that the UC boycott is officially over. We thank you for the continued pressure you have continued to exert upon the vast power of the UC. 

Though the UC continues to refuse to make any public concessions to the COLA movement,  over the past year striking student-workers forced many material gains across the system, winning wage increases and benefits on every campus that participated in labor actions. Many of these are charted here. We can only conclude that when we fight, we win.

The university’s disciplining of labor organization cannot go unchallenged; we have shown that it will be resisted to the end. 

In solidarity,
UCSC Wildcat Strikers


Letter from Carlos

March 7, 2021

I want to start off this letter by thanking every ame for my head. A huge shout out to those of you who have supported me financially, emotionally, who have written and sent out letters, engaged administrators in meetings, signed petitions, testified on my behalf in front of a conduct board, and to those who woke up early in the morning to make some noise outside the administrator’s homes. A huge thank you from the bottom of my heart. Gracias!

Today, we received news that I will not be suspended for two-years, but will be on conduct probation for two-years. While this may still not be the ideal situation, this is a victory. I will be able to continue in my journey to obtain a Ph.D. for the time being, but we should keep in mind our struggle against the university is far from over.

We know the university is not a place meant for poor people. The University, a Western colonial project, was created with the intent to destroy indigenous communities on the continent of the Americas. In a 1997 Indigenous Forum, indigenous groups in Oaxaca declared that the university has been wielded as a tool that attempts to not only destroy their culture, but their people as well. They ultimately claimed that the Mexican educational system, like in many other places across the Americas, was meant to both extract and destroy the “indianity out of the indian” (unitierraoax.org/english/).

UCSC and the UC system are no different than those universities in Mexico that those folks in Oaxaca were referring to. UCSC engaged in (highly militarized) counterinsurgency tactics to break our movimiento and our spirits. Those of us who are interested in advancing the struggle of our communities saw up close and personal the many facets of counter insurgency that the university is willing to engage in in order to silence and crush our resistance. The university did not hesitate to call up the police from other universities and counties. It did not hesitate to borrow and use technologies meant to single us out and then consequently create a narrative that criminalized one person, held responsible for something hundreds if not thousands of people engaged in.

Like hundreds of my peers, I have had a visible and public role in bringing attention to workplace and living conditions uniquely faced by UCSC teaching assistants and graduate students. I remain concerned about the difficulties of Teaching Assistants, marginalized undergraduate students, adjunct faculty, and other precarious workers at UCSC. These groups are the backbone of the university.

I have been vilified, racialized, and criminalized as a militant protestor that is “out of control,” but this is not who I am. I have been unfairly singled out because of my race and gender. I remain concerned that this is a moment of criminalization that Chicanx scholars are far too familiar with as its persisted throughout history, and sadly, continues today; the racialization of people of Mexican descent as criminals, bandidos, thieves, cartel members, drug dealers, and “bad hombres”. The UC will label any affront to its authority as an act that has to be punished and, through student conduct processes and other forms of targeting and surveillance, will attempt to stop students from engaging in acts of resistance. We see the violence of the state reproduce itself in the neoliberal university as it labels, punishes, and pushes out people who are constructed as “threats” to its violent foundation and ideology. Unsurprisingly, men of color are least likely to make it out of higher ed institutions.

The violence of U-S imperial control has become so widespread that it becomes invisible, almost achieving normality, but when uprisings occur, we see the violence of the U-S war machine up close. We saw this one year ago here at UCSC in the terror inflicted on students by the militarized university and its assorted police forces at the picket. We see it daily in the harassment and intimidation police everywhere uphold. We learned that the university is not hesitant to resort to physical violence and brutality to subdue resistance. We saw many of our colleagues be brutalized by the police, and got an up-close example of how the university will easily spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on cops; funds they preferred to use on violence than to create conditions where students and workers can, at the very least, survive. The administrators will always use police to protect their own paychecks, meanwhile our comrades are still dealing with the physical and emotional effects of the university cops. Sabrina, we see you and hope you beat those bastards!!

As U-S imperialism and the globalization of the U-S war machine is reproduced within the university, we must think about the ways in which the ivory tower is complicit in reproducing war in different places across the Earth. We should take the events of the past year to be a constant reminder of the university’s complicity in creating, funding, and profiting from warfare and militarization.

On February 19th, 2020, Chief Nader Owens at UCSC PD asked for the California State Threat Assessment Center, which is partially funded by the Department of Homeland Security, to provide back up at the picket. As described on a Vice article on the matter, the California Threat Assessment Center is a “fusion center set up to monitor terrorism and other extremist activities.”

We understand that the university’s move to label those of us resisting U-S imperial violence as “terrorists” is nothing more than a projection because we know the University is in the business of terror. The U-S war machine brings terror to communities all across Mother Earth, it is a global manufacturer of terror. The university is complicit in the production of U-S terror as it produces the means and discourses through which the U-S can both exploit and profit from others suffering and justify their killing.

However, the student conduct process imploded and it exposed itself for what it really is. An impotent tool wielded to silence political dissent. This small victory should stand as an example of how our collective power and solidarity is crucially important in standing against the university. Because we know our struggle against the university will not end until it is abolished, it is important that we continue to build community, to stand up for and with each other, and let the admin know we won’t forget, we won’t be complicit, and we won’t submit.

Like comrades before us have said,
“See you at the barricades!” <3
Carlos H. Cruz

Boycott Details

Details of the UC Boycott. See also: the call for the boycott, and the case for the boycott.

What falls within the purview of the UC academic boycott and how can academic laborers show further solidarity with the COLA 4 All movement?

The goal of the UC academic boycott is to show support to COLA4all students and faculty and to publicly declare that the administration’s firing of graduate student-workers deserves to be rebuked and must be reversed. However, the boycott actively avoids interrupting the educational process. In other words, this boycott is aimed specifically at the administration, not students and faculty. To these ends, we suggest the following:

Boycotters should feel free to participate in, and help co-organize, events off-campus that would benefit UC students and faculty. However, given that university-sanctioned talks will likely be held via Zoom or Skype, we encourage people to think creatively about a digital picket. For example, avoid lecturing digitally in UC courses or as a part of UC-sponsored lecture series on non-UC platforms. Whenever possible, boycotters should clearly state that they are canceling their participation due to the boycott rather than COVID-19, for example. This could be done with the hashtag #boycott4COLA and by tagging @colasolidarity on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to allow for your message’s amplification. 

Job talks or other lectures/visits related to departmental hiring practices do not fall under the purview of the academic boycott. Similarly, we do not consider the individual scholarship produced by UC academics to belong to the boycott sphere. Therefore, those engaging in the boycott are welcome to buy, read, peer-review, and cite the work of UC scholars.

We suggest that boycotters avoid donating to the university administration, and instead reallocate those funds to the COLA strike fund. This will be an especially powerful message on April 22, the university’s Giving Day. Please make a statement about your decision to reallocate these funds to strikers on social media whenever possible. 

We encourage boycotters to speak to your students about the strike, the history of strikes, and other concomitant labor actions if it fits in the curriculum, especially addressing questions of higher education and the history of the wildcat strikes

We encourage boycotters to use other public platforms to speak out about UC’s retaliation against students demanding a Cost of Living Adjustment, such as opinion pieces in local or national media.

The Case for a Boycott

The case for the UC Boycott, in which prospective visiting speakers refuse to give guest lectures or provide public speeches, either remotely or in person, at the University of California. Read more about the call for a UC Boycott.

  1. A boycott is a natural extension of a strike in that it strategically withholds labor until certain reasonable demands are met. It is a natural way to spread the strike and stiffen the resolve of colleagues at UC who are wavering in their support. 
  1. A boycott represents a PR nightmare for the UC administration. As the budget is set by UCOP (UC Office of the President), any solution to the current impasse will have to be UC-wide given that graduate workers on multiple UC campuses are currently striking for a COLA. 
  1. A boycott is a powerful way for non-UC supporters – especially those with more academic privilege – to declare that they will not cross the picket line. In so doing, it will help students and faculty at UC build solidarity with related struggles nationally and internationally (i.e. the UCU strike). As supporters of the boycott, we also commit to supporting graduate student workers at our own institutions and to stand against austerity education in all its forms. 
  1. A boycott sends a clear message: in times of new forms of academic “restructuring,” we will not allow the summary dismissal of graduate workers to go unnoticed. This is especially crucial in the current moment, when the shift to teaching online next quarter risks normalizing worker movements across the UCs. 
  1. The boycott – which includes an express call to build robust critical departments – seeks not to “stifle free exchange” but to encourage discussion and debate around some of the most important issues of our time. These include the use of technology for surveillance purposes, widespread precarity, and police brutality on campuses. Indeed, there are numerous historical precedents for boycott campaigns: the civil rights movement, the grape boycott called by the United Farm Workers, and the opposition to apartheid South Africa. One could also mention the current BDS movement and the boycotts aimed at states that have passed anti-LGBTQ laws.  

The Call for a UC Boycott

A CALL OF CONSCIENCE NOT TO SPEAK AT ANY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA CAMPUSES UNTIL THE ADMINISTRATION REINSTATES ALL GRADUATE STUDENTS FIRED FOR STRIKE ACTIVITIES.

The case for a boycott is laid out in five points here.

We, the undersigned, will not give guest lectures or provide public speeches, either remotely or in person, at the University of California. We invite all signatories to reflect on other forms of protest and boycott they might employ.

This boycott should be honored until all graduate students fired for participating in the wildcat strike are reinstated and the administration vows that there will be no subsequent retaliation either against individual students or against their respective departments. However, since we strive to support individual academic laborers and to build possibilities for critical thought, exceptions will be made for lectures or visits related to departmental hiring practices.

Here we lay out these exceptions as well as the concrete actions this boycott may entail given the lack of a physical picket due to COVID-19.

The grading strike began when graduate workers removed their grades from Canvas, thereby withholding grades from the administration (but not from students). Part of the disciplinary process has focused on the obligation of faculty and TAs to use online tools such as Canvas and Zoom in ways mandated by the university. At one point, a “tattle-bot” was integrated onto Canvas so that undergraduate students could report “disruptions” in the curriculum that resulted from the strike directly to the administration. As we enter into an unprecedented time of online teaching, these issues are at the very heart of academic freedom and the struggles that we all face going forward.

On 28 February 2020, a number of graduate students who partook in this wildcat strike were terminated from their spring appointments; the total number of graduate workers fired is around 80. This includes international students and could lead to their deportation, thereby going against the campus’ declared commitment to protecting international students. In addition to losing their appointments and their income, all the fired students will lose their health insurance. In the midst of a global health pandemic, it is unconscionable that these students will be stripped of their health care and/or forced to relocate. 

We therefore call upon our colleagues to join this very targeted academic boycott. We hope that this strategy can serve to rapidly shift the terrain, since the status quo currently favors the administration against student workers striking for their most basic of rights.


CURRENT SIGNATORIES (to sign on to this call, please click fill out this form or email adhoc4cola [at] gmail.com):

See this published Google Doc for the most up-to-date list.

Asma Abbas, Director of Advanced Studies and Associate Professor in Politics and Philosophy, Bard College at Simon’s Rock

Sadia Abbas, Associate Professor of English and Women’s and Gender Studies, Rutgers University

Hosam Aboul-Ela, Associate Professor of English, University of Houston

Nadje Al-Ali, Robert Family Professor of International Studies and Professor of Anthropology and Middle East Studies, Brown University

Anthony Alessandrini, Professor of English & Middle Eastern Studies, Kingsborough Community College-CUNY and the CUNY Graduate Center

Patricia Alessandrini, Assistant Professor, Department of Music and Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), Stanford University

Lori Allen, Reader in Anthropology, SOAS, University of London

Eyal Amiran, Professor of Comparative Literature, University of California-Irvine

Sinan Antoon, Associate Professor, New York University

Talal Asad, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies, CUNY Graduate Center

Cristina Bacchilega, Professor of English & Graduate Director, University of Hawai’i

Toby Beauchamp, Associate Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Joel Beinin, Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History, Emeritus, Stanford University

Daniel Benson, Assistant Professor of International Cultural Studies and Foreign Languages, St. Francis College

Anna Bernard, Senior Lecturer in English and Comparative Literature, King’s College London

Tithi Bhattacharya, Professor of History, Purdue University

Timothy Brennan, Samuel Russell Chair in the Humanities, Department of Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature and English, University of Minnesota

Neil Brenner, Professor of Urban Theory, Harvard Graduate School of Design

Stephen Brier, Professor of Urban Education, CUNY Graduate Center

Kylie Broderick, Graduate Student, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Melissa A. Brzycki, Assistant Professor of History, Monmouth University

Susan Buck-Morss, Distinguished Professor of Political Science, CUNY Graduate Center

J. Mijin Cha, Assistant Professor of Urban and Environmental Policy, Occidental College

Sophie Chamas, Senior Teaching Fellow, SOAS, University of London

Piya Chatterjee, Professor of Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Scripps College, Claremont Consortium

Ajay Singh Chaudhary, Executive Director and Core Faculty in Social and Political Theory, Brooklyn Institute for Social Research

Zahid Chaudhury, Associate Professor of English, Princeton University

Noam Chomsky, Professor of Linguistics, MIT

Samantha Christiansen, Assistant Professor of History, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs

Kandice Chuh, Professor of English, CUNY Graduate Center

George Ciccariello-Maher, Visiting Scholar, Decolonizing Humanities Project, The College of William & Mary             

Daniel Aldana Cohen, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania

Altha Cravey, Associate Professor of Geography, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Carole Crumley, Professor Emerita of Anthropology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Elyse Crystall, Teaching Associate Professor of English, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Ayça Çubukçu, Associate Professor in Human Rights and Co-Director of LSE Human Rights, London School of Economics and Political Science

Jocelyne Dakhlia, Directrice d’Etudes, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris

Monisha Das Gupta, Professor of Ethnic Studies and Women’s Studies, University of Hawaiʻi

Frank Deale, Professor, CUNY School of Law

Geneviève Dorais, Professeure d’histoire, Université du Québec à Montréal

Lisa Duggan, Professor of Social & Cultural Analysis, New York University

Başak Ertür, Lecturer in Law and Co-Director of Birkbeck Centre for Law and the Humanities, Birkbeck, University of London

Eric Fassin, Professor of Sociology, Department of Gender Studies and Department of Political Science, Université Paris 8 Vincennes – Saint-Denis

Roderick Ferguson, Yale University

Michelle Fine, Distinguished Professor of Critical Psychology, Women’s Studies, American Studies and Urban Education, CUNY Graduate Center

Cynthia Franklin, Professor of English, University of Hawai’i

Candace Fujikane, Associate Professor, English Department, University of Hawaiʻi

Diane Fujino, Professor of Asian American Studies, University of California at Santa Barbara

Libby Garland, Associate Professor of History, Kingsborough Community College

Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi, Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University

Richard Gilman-Opalsky, Professor of Political Theory and Philosophy, Political Science, University of Illinois

Bassam Haddad, Director of the Middle East and Islamic Studies Program and Associate Professor, Schar School for Policy and Government, George Mason University

Dyala Hamzah, Professeure agrégée, Département d’histoire, Université de Montréal

Michele Hardesty, Associate Professor of US Literatures & Cultural Studies, Hampshire College

Stefano Harney, Honorary Professor, University of British Columbia

David Harvey, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Geography, CUNY Graduate Center

Salah Hassan, Associate Professor of English, Michigan State University

Christina Heatherton, Assistant Professor of American Studies, Barnard College

Marc Lamont Hill, Professor of Media Studies and Urban Education, Temple University

Fredric Jameson, Professor of Literature, Duke University

Caren Kaplan, Professor Emerita of American Studies, University of California-Davis

Rebecca Karl, Professor of History, New York University

J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, Professor of American Studies, Wesleyan University

Joseph Keith, Associate Professor of English, SUNY Binghamton University

Robin Kelley, Distinguished Professor and Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U.S. History, University of California-Los Angeles

Laleh Khalili, Professor of International Politics, Queen Mary University of London

Sherryl Kleinman, Emerita Professor of Sociology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Troy Andreas Araiza Kokins, Lecturer in Latin American Studies, University of California-San Diego

Mark Lance, Professor of Philosophy, Professor of Justice and Peace, Georgetown University

Zachary Levenson, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of North Carolina, Greensboro

Mark LeVine, Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History, University of California-Irvine

Susana Loza, Associate Professor of Critical Race, Gender, and Media Studies, Hampshire College

Simeon Man, Associate Professor of History, University of California at San Diego

James McDougall, Professor of Modern and Contemporary History, Trinity College, Oxford

Liz Montegary, Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, SUNY Stony Brook University

Bill Mullen, Professor of English and American Studies, Purdue University

Donna Murch, Associate Professor of History, Rutgers University

Premilla Nadasen, Professor of History, Barnard College

Don Nonini, Professor of Anthropology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Mimi Thi Nguyen, Associate Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and Asian American Studies, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Hussein Omar, Assistant Professor, University College Dublin

A. Naomi Paik, Associate Professor of Asian American Studies, Gender and Women’s Studies, and History, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Michael Palm, Associate Professor of Communication and AAUP Chapter President, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

David Palumbo-Liu, Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor, Stanford University (PhD, UC Berkeley)

Nicola Pratt, Associate Professor of International Politics of the Middle East, University of Warwick, UK

Tiana Reid, Graduate Student Worker, Department of English & Comparative Literature, Columbia University

John Rieder, Professor Emeritus of English, University of Hawai‘i

Boots Riley, Filmmaker, Performer, and Activist

Beth Robinson, Assistant Professor of History, Texas A & M University – Corpus Christi

Dylan Rodríguez, Professor of Media and Cultural Studies, University of California at Riverside

Andrew Ross, Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis, New York University

Sandrine Sanos, Professor of Modern European History, Texas A & M University – Corpus Christi

Nadya Sbaiti, Assistant Professor, Center for Arab and Middle Eastern Studies, American University Beirut

Naomi Schiller, Associate Professor, Anthropology, Brooklyn College and The Graduate Center, CUNY

Malini Johar Schueller, Professor of English, University of Florida

Michael Schwalbe, Professor of Sociology, North Carolina State University

Zach Schwartz-Weinstein, Bard Prison Initiative

S. Shankar, Professor of English, University of Hawai‘i

Naoko Shibusawa, Associate Professor of American Studies/Ethnic Studies, Brown University

Ella Shohat, Professor of Art & Public Policy and Middle Eastern & Islamic Studies, New York University

Eric Smoodin, Professor of American Studies, University of California-Davis

Robyn C. Spencer, Associate Professor of History, Lehman College-CUNY and the CUNY Graduate Center

Rei Terada, Professor of Comparative Literature, University of California-Irvine

Jeanne Theoharis, Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Brooklyn College

Molly Todd, Associate Professor of History, Montana State University

Alejandro Velasco, Associate Professor of History, New York University

Françoise Vergès, Former Global South(s) Chair, FMSH, Paris, Public Educator, Decolonial Feminist Activist

Dana Ward, Professor Emeritus, Pitzer College (UC Berkeley ’71)

Cornel West, Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy, Harvard University; Professor Emeritus, Princeton University

Catherine Zimmer, Adjunct Professor, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Professor, Graduate Center, City University of New York

Elizabeth Bishop, Core Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program, Université d’Oran 2

Camara Starks, Student, Santa Ana College

Maria DeGuzman, Professor of English & Comparative Literature, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Dina Al-Kassem, Professor, University of British Columbia

Adam Miyashiro, Associate Professor of Literature, Stockton University

Angela Naimou, Associate Professor of English, Clemson University

Roxanne Panchasi, Associate Professor, Simon Fraser University

Arang Keshavarzian, Associate Professor, Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, New York University

Nabil Al-Tikriti, Associate Professor, Department of History & American Studies, University of Mary Washington

Andrew Pope, Lecturer, Committee on Degrees in History & Literature, Harvard University

Keri Leigh Merritt, Independent Scholar-Historian

Jacob Lee, Assistant Professor of History, Pennsylvania State University

Pete Moore, M.A. Hanna Associate Professor of Politics, Case Western Reserve University

Richard Anderson, Postdoctoral Scholar, Pennsylvania State University

Shannan Clark, Assistant Professor, Department of History, Montclair State University

Caroline Grego, Visiting Assistant Professor, Queens University of Charlotte

Todd Shepard, Arthur O. Lovejoy Professor, Johns Hopkins  

Anne-Marie Angelo, Senior Lecturer in History, University of Sussex (UK)

Lucia Hulsether, Assistant Professor, Skidmore College

Osamah F. Khalil, Assoc. Professor, History, Syracuse University, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs (PhD, UC Berkeley, 2011)

Wendy Craig, Assistant Dean, retired

Trenton Coleman, UCI Alumni

Philip Grant, PhD, Sociocultural Anthropology, UC Irvine (2012)

Hunter Bivens, Literature, UCSC

Dana Francisco Miranda, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Muhlenberg College

Dawson Barrett, Associate Professor, Del Mar College

Christina Sharpe, Professor, York University (Canada)

Hugh McDonnell, Assistant Professor of European Politics, Literature and Culture, University of Groningen

John Rufo, Graduate Student Worker, CUNY Graduate Center

Alexander G. Weheliye, Professor of African American Studies, Northwestern University  

Dmitri Nikulin, Professor of Philosophy, The New School for Social Research

Pierre Bélanger, Landscape Architect, OPEN SYSTEMS  

Aren Aizura, Associate Professor in Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies, University of

Minnesota

Drew Flanagan, Visiting Assistant Professor of History, The University of Pittsburgh at Bradford

Peter Hill, Vice Chancellor’s Research Fellow, Northumbria University (UK)

William Horne, Postdoc, Villanova University

Naomi Walzer, Student undergrad

Christopher Breu, Professor of English, Illinois State University  

Bret Benjamin, Associate Professor, University at Albany, SUNY

Colin Dayan, Professor, Vanderbilt University

Ricardo A. Bracho, Writer

Kiana Borjian, Student in solidarity

Craig Willse, former associate professor

Lauren Berlant, George M. Pullman Distinguished Service Professor University of Chicago  

Neferti Tadiar, Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Barnard College, Columbia University  

Chad Shomura, Assistant Professor, University of Colorado Denver

Eric Covey, Visiting Assistant Professor, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi

Lucien Baskin, Student, City University of New York

Bryant W. Sculos, Visiting Assistant Professor, Dept. of History & Political Science, Worcester State University

Richard  Grusin, Director, C21, UW-Milwaukee

Elizabeth Ferrari, UCB Class of 1987 L&S

Ronald Williams II, Assistant Professor of African American Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Kelly L Sears, Assistant Professor

Lisa Kahaleole Hall, Associate Professor and Director, Indigenous Studies, University of Victoria  

Albert Ponce, Professor of Political Science & Social Justice, Diablo Valley College

Lilia Soro, Associate Professor, University of Wyoming  

Ron Smith, Associate Professor, Bucknell University

Kimberly Drake, Associate Professor, Scripps College

Dorothy Kim, Assistant Professor of English, Brandeis University

Jack Jackson, Assistant Professor of Politics, Whitman College

Erin Brady, Assistant Professor, Indiana University  

Danielle Seid, Assistant Professor, Baruch College  

Melanie Richter-Montpetit, Assistant Professor of International Relations and Director of the Centre for Advanced International Theory, University of Sussex

Donatella Izzo, Professor of American Literature, “L’Orientale” University, Naples, Italy

Nada Elia, WWU

Martha Copp, Professor, East Tennessee State University

Lauren Parsons Muller, Professor, City College of San Francisco

Jacob Mundy, Associate Professor, Colgate University

Daniel Altshuler, Assistant professor, Hampshire College

Mauro Resmini, Assistant Professor of Film Studies and Italian, University of Maryland  

S. Charusheela, Professor, Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, UW Bothell

Kirstine Taylor, Assistant Professor, Ohio University

Allison McCracken, Associate Professor, American Studies, DePaul University

Sean Cashbaugh, Lecturer, Princeton Writing Program, Princeton University

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, University Professor, Columbia University

Amanda E. Rogers, NEH Visiting Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies  

Ian M Hartshorn, Assistant Professor of Political Science, UNR

Samantha Knapton, Lecturer at University of East Anglia, UK

Aram Shabanian, MA Candidate in Non-Proliferation and Terrorism Studies, Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey  

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, Assistant Professor, Philosophy Department, Georgetown University

Kamran Rastegar, Professor, Tufts University

Sam Bowden, PhD candidate Rutgers University

Avital Ronell, University Professor of the Humanities, New York University

Peter Magnuson, Independent Researcher

Anna Campbell, Assistant Professor, UW-Madison

Megan Hyska, Assistant Professor, Philosophy Department, Northwestern University

Tiffany Dang, PhD Candidate, University of Cambridge

Morwan Osman, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Department of Medicine, University of Cambridge

Tania Lizarazo, Assistant Professor, University of Maryland Baltimore County

Marcos Balter, Associate Professor, Cali School of Music, Montclair State University

Didem Ertem, Student

Chloe Avery, Graduate Student, University of Chicago

Stephanie DeGooyer, Associate Professor, Willamette University /Visiting Professor, Harvard University

Eli Meyerhoff, Visiting Scholar at Duke University

Siddhartha Deb, Writer, The New School

Pilar Alvarez, Professor of Spanish, Emerita, California State University, Chico

Amanda Armstrong, Assistant Professor of History, Fordham University

Ravi Arvind Palat, Professor of Sociology, Binghamton University

Murtaza Batla, Providence

Sophie Kurland, Undergraduate Student at UCSC

Marco Durazo, Alumni, UCLA

Kristen Hatch, Associate Professor, Visual Studies Program/Film & Media Studies, UC Irvine

Barbara Foley, Distinguished Professor of English, Rutgers University-Newark

Sayres Rudy, PhD Politics Columbia

Ana Maria Candela, Assistant Professor, Binghamton University

Manuel Schwab, Assistant Professor in Sociology, Egyptology, and Anthropology at American University in Cairo

Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda, Assistant Professor, Grinnell College

Kate Doyle Griffiths, Brooklyn College

Charles Post, Professor, Sociology BMCC and the Graduate Center-City University of New York

Abigail Boggs, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Wesleyan University

Jerome Whitington, New York University (UC Berkeley PhD 2008)

Magdalene Kate Moy, Drexel University

Ian Fleishman, Assistant Professor of German and Cinema & Media Studies, University of Pennsylvania

Oyku Tekten, PhD Student, English Department, The Graduate Center

Magalí Rabasa, Assistant Professor, Lewis and Clark College

Corinne Teed, Assistant Professor, Art, University of Minnesota

Jason McGraw, Associate Professor of History, Indiana University

Nataly Escobedo Garcia, Graduate Student, University of California, Irvine

John D Márquez, Associate Professor, Northwestern University

Sarah Zimmerman, Western Washington University (UC Berkeley PhD 2011)

Emily Lyons, Adjunct Professor, University of Arizona

Jean Lee, Assistant Professor of English, Western Washington University

Wendy Matsumura, Associate Professor, UC San Diego

Raj Chetty, Assistant Professor, San Diego State University

Ashon Crawley, Associate Professor of Religious Studies and African American Studies, University of Virginia

Christoph Hanssmann, Assistant Professor, San Francisco State University

Jed Murr, Senior Lecturer, American & Ethnic Studies, Cultural Studies, University of Washington Bothell

Lissette Tatiana Olivares, Visiting Instructor, Pratt Institute

Paula Ioanide, Associate Professor, Ithaca College

Isabel Montanez, Distinguished Professor of Geosciences, University of California, Davis

Yumi Pak, Assistant Professor, Department of English, CSU San Bernardino

Jessica Levy, Postdoctoral Research Associate, University of Virginia

Bob Buzzanco, Professor

Francisco Gonzalez Camelo, Adjunct Professor BMCC-CUNY

Stephen Sheehi, Sultan Qaboos Professor of Middle East Studies, William & Mary

Christa Salamandra, Professor of Anthropology, Lehman College, CUNY

Timothy J. Reiss, Emeritus Professor, New York University; Visiting Scholar, University of Hawai’i-Manoa

Greta LaFleur, Associate Professor of American Studies, Yale University

Judith Norman, Professor of Philosophy at Trinity University, San Antonio TX

Katherine Gillen, Associate Professor of English, Texas A&M-San Antonio

Michelle Eirini Padley, Graduate Student in the Department of Geography, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Alexa Firat, Assistant Professor of Arabic Studies, Temple University

Helen H. Jun, Associate Professor, University of Illinois at Chicago

Lilly Irani, Associate Professor, Communication & Computer Science, UC San Diego

Noura Erakat, Assistant Professor, Rutgers University

Sean Leah Bowden, Doctor of Musical Arts, UC San Diego

Marcelo Flores Lazcano, PhD in Music Composition, UCSD 2018

Lauren Hayes, Assistant Professor, School of Arts, Media + Engineering, Arizona State University

Alissa Lund, Theater Arts Alumna Class of 2010

Rumman Chowdhury, PhD, UCSD. Responsible AI lead, Accenture

Kevin Toksöz Fairbairn, Researcher, Leiden University

Susan Anderson

Iván Ferrer, Freelance Composer

Michael Zbyszyński, Lecturer: Goldsmiths, University of London. UCB alumni, PhD 2000

Tom DePaola, Researcher, Pullias Center for Higher Education, USC

James Best, Lecturer, California State University Dominguez Hills

Robert Warrior, Hall Distinguished Professor of American Literature and Culture, University of Kansas

Jessica Hatrick, USC PhD Student at Annenberg School for Communication

Bonnie Burns Price, Retired professor