Season finale!
The past year, we’ve talked a lot about just how much we’ve had to fight for the university. From authoritarian leaders who wish to suppress dissent and protests in universities, particularly protests in support of Palestine, to rudderless senior administrators who suspend programs, fire long-term staff, and hire expensive and useless consultancy firms, there’s a lot of reasons to feel disheartened because the odds seem stacked against us.
And yet, the fight continues. And we are seeing lots of victories. To counter Donald Trump’s attacks against higher education, more and more chapters of the American Association of University Professors are being founded. Unions are being established. And continued organizing for Palestine has led to a number of wins. The University of Toronto’s Faculty Association, for example, successfully passed a motion divesting from companies that fuel genocide in Palestine and in other illegally occupied territories.
On a more personal note, witnessing and reporting and mobilizing against senior administrators’ decisions has actually pushed me to get involved in the fight for our university. Overcoming my aversion to running for positions, I ended up running for a seat in our university senate, and won! So did all of my progressive, feminist friends who are sick of being told by senior administrators that we just had to trust that senior admin knows what they’re doing. We’re there to roll up our sleeves, dig up reports, and ask questions.
So organizing matters. Being savvy, strategic, and smart matters. And building relationships matters the most. This is the core of our organizing work.
In today’s episode of Academic Aunties, our season finale, my new friend, Dr. Elisha Lim, and I talk about organizing tactics, the importance of relationships, and the potentialities of artificial intelligence. That's right, AI can be be put to good use. Elisha is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Humanities and does groundbreaking research on AI, social media, critical race theory, and much more.
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