UPDATE June 22, 2023:
Defend the UC-Berkeley Anthropology Library: Join the Occupation!
2nd floor of AAPB (Anthropology & Art Practice Building, UC-Berkeley, near Bancroft + College)
Stop the privatization of UC-Berkeley – Defend public education
Double underrepresented minority student enrollment
Defend free speech and critical thought
(*The occupation has been going strong since April 21!)
The struggle over the future of the UC-Berkeley Anthropology Library is a test of whether or not UC-Berkeley can maintain its historic tradition as a leader of the struggle for social justice, racial equality, critical thought and the defense of public education. Pride in our campus history has drawn so many students over the years, who want to change this society and has made so many of our Berkeley community outraged by the policies of Chancellor Christ. The increased privatization of the University of California jeopardizes the future of the UC System as a public institution that is open and accessible to all of California’s diverse, multiracial and multinational communities. This problem is most pronounced at UCLA and UC-Berkeley. Defending the UC-Berkeley Anthropology Library is a fight for the future of public education.
For close to one month now, the occupation has been conducting negotiations with the administration independently from the Anthropology Dept. faculty. The decision to conduct independent negotiations was made immediately following a discovery that the faculty had made an agreement with the administration to close the library, at the very beginning of our occupation! Once we learned of this, we immediately held an assembly. The occupation voted unanimously to negotiate directly with the administration, independent of the faculty, and draft our own demands to keep the library open. Our occupation and our demands for a fully functional public anthropology library have given voice to all those on our campus and beyond who want our campus’ traditions of struggle for progress to continue. We have already succeeded in removing Head Librarian Jeffery MacKie Mason who was centrally responsible for the closing of the library. Chancellor Christ has also been forced out, announcing her retirement at the end of next school year. These victories are a result of the independent power of our fight, but we will need to build on this power. We will need to continue to mobilize and draw more people into the occupation to win.
In two meetings with the administration’s lead negotiator with the occupation, Dean of Social Sciences Raka Ray, the occupation’s demands for a fully operating library have so far gone without a written counter-proposal. Rather than agreeing to keep the library open, she has suggested that the occupation should agree to accept a one-time payment of $45,000 that would mean closing the library in one year, and operating with half the books until then. Along with, once again, members of the faculty, they attempted to pressure the occupation to end. What she wants is to make the faculty and students fight each other for the crumbs the university is willing to throw at us. There is money for the dramatic revamping of UCB, razing to the ground and rebuilding whole sections of our campus, as part of a multibillion-dollar private fundraising campaign. Chancellor Christ and Dean Ray could easily find the money for the library because the money is already there. The wealth of California can sustain it. We can more if we hold strong. Our demand is still the same: A fully functional public Anthropology library.
Defend Anthropology at UCB—Defend Public Education—Double Underrepresented Minority Student Enrollment
The Anthropology Department at UCB has played a leading role in declaring the equality of all humanity—the truth. Fundamental social problems historically have been explained using racist and sexist ideology and/or anti-gay bigotry. Today, Anthropology at UCB breaks from these bigoted lies about human existence. The Anthropology Library is a precious resource to combat these lies, providing people from all races and nationalities the ability to gather and exchange ideas gained from the books and materials present in the library. It is crutical to the mission of this public university to provide a quality public education for our majority-minority state. The fascist Trump movement’s efforts to ban books, attack programs like critical race theory, or banning discussions of the LGBT+ community in schools is an attack against access to knowledge, freedom of speech and critical thought. UCB must lead in fighting for the broadest possible freedoms, not adapt to Trump’s attacks. Defending the Anthropology Library is a way to make this fight.
The attack on the Anthropology Dept. is a central part of the drive toward privatization of the UC System and prioritizing profits over people’s needs. The attack on the library is an attack on Anthropology and its mission in social science as a whole, and the search for a more just and more humane society. A UCB Administration that tries to close the Anthropology Library is an administration that cannot be serious about addressing the ongoing racist segregation on our campus or throughout this society, despite their hollow phrases to the contrary. Defending the library is central to building a UCB that can bring California’s diverse multiracial communities onto our campus instead of pushing them away. Building the movement to defend the library is a continuation of the fight to change the direction of the University of California and our state, to commit to real integration and being a public-serving institution once again. A victory here that keeps the library open will strengthen every struggle on our campus, including the fight to double underrepresented minority enrollment that could reverse the resegregation of our campus.
The current national attacks on affirmative action have put a spotlight once again on UC, in particular UC-Berkeley, as a center of the resegregation of higher education. Latina/o/x, black, and Native American students make up 61% of high school students in California public schools, but only 23% of UCB’s freshman admitted class of 2022.
At 43% underrepresented minority students, the Anthropology Dept. is far more representative of the state than the campus as a whole. The library serves and should remain a place where underrepresented minority students feel and are welcome at UCB, and an example of what the rest of the campus should be like. Our occupation represents not just our campus, but the Latina/o/x, black, Native American, other minority, poor, working-class and immigrant communities of our state—the real majority, and our right to equal access to higher education.
Defend the library. Defend the progressive tradition of the university. Join the Anthropology Library occupation! Fight to win!
June 22, 2023
Other Fliers:
“Join the Anthropology Library Occupation at UC-Berkeley: Fight to Win!” (May 8, 2023)
