Response from UC professors Lichtenstein and Flacks
concerning the recent cuts to the University of California's
Institute for Labor and Employment
Colleagues:
As many of you already know, the Schwarzenegger administration has
eliminated funding for the UC Institute for Labor and Employment. The
ILE, founded just three years ago by an act of the California
legislature - and with the full support of the California labor movement
- quickly established itself as a national leader in labor education,
strategic research, and scholarly investigation of topics of interest to
active unionists and concerned academics.
Right-wing "think tanks," including the Manhattan Institute and the
Pacific Research Institute, began a campaign against the ILE and other
labor studies programs last summer. When Schwarzenegger became governor his Bushite transition team immediately targeted the ILE for
elimination, using the state fiscal crisis as the occasion and excuse
for their action. An excellent article on this subject, "Class Warfare"
by David Bacon, can be found in the January 12, 2004 issue of The
hyperlink [direct link to article not possible].
We know that this right wing attack on labor studies and the new
working-class studies movement is hardly limited to California.
Right-wing journalists have also targeted programs or individual
researchers at the University of Massachusetts - Amherst, at Cornell,
and at the University of North Carolina. We would very much like to
catalogue information about other such attacks, successful or not, that
have taken place during the last few years. We are forming a national
"Committee to Defend Labor Studies Scholarship" and will shortly be
asking for your support and participation. So, if you have knowledge of
such instances please send particulars to Nelson Lichtenstein at
In solidarity,
Nelson Lichtenstein, History
Richard Flacks, Sociology
University of California, Santa Barbara
Nelson Lichtenstein
Professor of History
UC Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106
(0) 805-893-4822
(h) 805-966-5745
(fax) 805-893-8795
3:00:33 PM 
|
