Disaster Capitalism Comes to Higher Ed

Column first published in BG News in 2009

Disaster Capitalism Comes to Higher Ed

Naomi Klein, author of “No Logo,” and “Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism,” can be likened to the canaries that miners kept in cages down in the deep shaft mines. These canaries would sound alarms when the air would start to be thick with gases, before it was fatal for the miners allowing them to evacuate the mine. In Klein’s latest book, “Shock Doctrine,” she discusses the idea of disaster capitalism, and how has been implemented in many countries using “Shock Doctrine” on the heels of a war, a coup, and a natural disaster.

The idea of shock doctrine was first articulated by Milton Friedman, noted economist and who created the “Chicago School of Economics.” Friedman said that in order to impose economic programs that would be in normal times, not popular with the people, a crisis can be used to impose these programs. Friedman was an advocate that everything should be a component of the market place, all services, and products should be dictated by the market. This includes those things that are normally considered to be in the public domain, like education, transportation and safety. He was for the elimination of public schools and their portfolio turned over to private schools. He also said that there should be no regulation of trade, with no tariffs at all, a world where goods and services flowed back and forth over borders without any inhibiting factors. It sounds good in theory, but in practice it tends to create more poverty for those on the bottom and pushing all of the wealth created by it to the top 1%. We have seen the implications for NAFTA on our manufacturing sector in this country, as more and more jobs are shipped to low wage destinations offshore. Now the idea of Shock Doctrine has come home to public higher education, because of the plunging economy and the lessening of tax revenues by the state.

In the last year or so, for the first time, the impact of decreased revenues on higher education from the state is now being noticed by the public. This is happening even though tuition and fees have been spiking for the last 19 years in Ohio. Now, we are facing more cuts in the SSI, or the State Share of Instruction revenue stream from the state to the Universities. When I was a freshman in the fall of 1973 at BGSU, my tuition for up to 20 hours was $225.00. The state at that time was paying over 70% of the cost of public higher education. Now tuition will increase another 3.5% in the spring, we will be soon at a tuition level of $10,000 if these increases continue. Along with the tuition we have seen increases in fees, some for capital projects like the “Stroh,” others for services like the “shuttle fee.” The transference of educational costs from the public to the private person is a component of the “Shock Doctrine,” because of the ‘budget’ these transfers are explained as necessary to the idea of higher education.

Now we are seeing other components of “Shock” with the announcement last summer of mandatory furlough days for those who make $50,000 or more, now the news of a planned voluntary “University Employee Separation Program” (UESP) for faculty and staff in fiscal year of 2010-2011. This plan is different from many “buyouts” offered to public employees in that it does not offer any “retirement credit” but only money that will be paid out over an undetermined period of time. It is also different from other “buyouts,” that while it seems to be aimed at older faculty and staff, but is also available to those employees with as little of 15 years. This is similar to those programs in the private sector that offer only money with the idea of cutting the overall number of jobs. The other components of this voluntary UESP being, faculty who retire and take the buyout can only teach part-time for the year immediately after the separation. They can only be “rehired” after a ten year period has passed.

Logically, this could make more room for the NTT (non tenure track) professors to become tenured. But using the concepts of the Shock Doctrine, this is an opportunity to decrease the numbers of tenured and tenure track faculty and to increase the numbers of NTT and adjunct faculty, which will lower costs of instruction. Also it could have a chilling impact on academic freedom. In other words, faculty could become more cautious in what they say or write. We could see the evaluation of certain academic programs strictly on the basis of FTE, for some programs and departments, this would be a disaster. This is all part of the drive to make public higher education into a corporate model.

We are already part of the way there with a corporate influenced structure of administration that has been empowered by the state to do what it takes to cut costs; and to further commodify education at a price the market will bear. The ideal corporate model of higher education is a system that caters exclusively to the demands of the market place, and places no financial burden on them. Take a look around, “the canaries in the mine shaft” are sounding the alarm and we are running out of time.

“The Road to Megiddo”

This column written in 2008 and first published in the Norwalk Reflector

The Road to Megiddo”

In the time of the Tuthmosis III, one of the greatest Pharaohs of Egypt fought a great battle in 1479 B.C., in a town called Megiddo in Palestine. The outcome of that battle set the tone for the region for hundreds of years, in that Egypt reigned supreme, until she fell apart from the inside as most great powers do. That battle was of such significance at the time, that it became the fabric of a legend known as “Armageddon,” the battle to end all battles and to end the world, as we know it.

The recent happenings in Southwest Asia, referred to by many as the Middle East, with Israelis’ attacking the “Hezbollah” in Lebanon, after some of their soldiers were kidnapped by them, could open the entire region to more strife and suffering if that is possible. But the burning question is, what will we do, the most powerful nation in the world about this latest threat to the peace of the world? As the talking heads talk ceaselessly about yet another challenge to the administration of George Bush, I wonder what is really going on in his mind, as he confronts what amounts to a multi-faceted problem in dealing with a region, whose significance in terms of importance is best articulated in the prices posted at the local gas station?

Up to now, we have been dealing with problems that are at most two dimensional, Iraq, Afghanistan and the Al Qaeda. Now we have fires breaking out all over, the Iranians are in the mix for hegemony in Southwest Asia (as they did in the days of Alexander the Great), a group of Islamic Taliban style fundamentalists are on the verge of taking over in Somalia, trains are blowing up in India, the North Koreans have fired missiles of different shapes and abilities in a challenge to that region and us, the IDF (the Israeli Army) has rolled back into the Gaza Strip in retaliation to the Palestinian Militia capturing an Israeli soldier, and now Lebanon is erupting again after a relative lengthy period of quiet (even with the strife about the assassination of the former Prime Minister, it was still quiet compared with the years of war prior). The one player that has the ability to control or bring some sanity to the process is our country in all of these issues.

But when you have a President who seems to be under the sway of evangelicals who believe in the end times, and the last battle, the battle of Armageddon, will he act in such a way to stem the movement towards chaos or will he let it flow as if to fulfill the prophecies of the Christian evangelical movement?

The Islamic “evangelicals” also believe in the re-creation of the Caliphate in that region, in which an Islamic government headed by a single person will rule as in the days after the rise of Mohammadism. The Christian Evangelicals believe that this will be the beginning of the return of the Son of God to Earth and his establishment of his kingdom. In Israel, there are also the Jewish “evangelicals” who believe in the re-establishment of the Jewish Kingdom of old; and it will rule as in olden times. These folks are also part of the settler movement on the West Bank. It is their fondest wish to foment the chaos needed to set in action, the return of the Kingdom of David.

In some ways, there is similarity in these dueling beliefs; all entail the establishment of monarchial governments. The Islamists see a caliphate headed by a man, picked by the imams and mullahs to carry out the word of Allah. While the Christians see a return of Christ to Earth to rule and I am sure that they see themselves (Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, etc.) as the chosen to assist in this rule. The Jewish “evangelicals” see a Jew ordained by God on the throne of David, ruling and in the just manner of David, with the aid of Yahweh, or God, the Jewish God, which incidentally is the basis for both Christianity and Islam. All of these ideas are utopian in nature that each of these kingdoms will be perfect and harmonious in their rule over the Earth.

I guess that there could be some hope, if it was not for the human factor attached to all of them, for all of these ideas, although divinely inspired; the framework for them has come from man. For it is man, who set these ideas to paper and created the texts that outline these coming events; and after you look at the history of man kind on this planet, it gets rather disheartening, for as long as man and human kind are part of the equation, it seems like we will be subject to its (humanity) failings, as demonstrated in the past. For the bottom lines in all of these harmonious kingdoms, are the forced imposition of a belief system on everyone and the eradication of those who will not accept that belief system. Which does not sound any different than spreading freedom and liberty by us, which is not going over to good in Afghanistan and Iraq at the present or when the Taliban tried to force their beliefs on the Afghanis?

History has shown us that our time on earth is transitory, and at some time in the future, the residents or perhaps visitors to this planet we call earth, will be searching the archaeological ruins of our time, like we searched the ruins left by that Great Pharaoh, Tuthmosis III. Will they, our children's children's children's children's children, ad infinitum, be as dismayed at what they find to be cause of end of our epoch, that dismayed the majority of us who lived during that time? Which are our human failings of prejudice and hate in dealing with each other’s beliefs, cultures and differences; and to make a world based on harmony and peace? Will these human failings truly be the cause of our “Megiddo,” that great battle of legend, or can we learn from the past and not be condemned by it?