JOIN the Anthropology Library Occupation at UC-Berkeley: Fight to Win!
2nd floor of AAPB (Anthropology & Art Practice Building, UC-Berkeley, near Bancroft + College)
Chancellor Carol Christ: Keep your hands off our libraries! Our public libraries are not for sale!
Double Underrepresented Minority Student Enrollment
Defend Public Education
UC Berkeley Anthropology Library Occupation Update:
17 days* and counting: The library remains open through our occupation!
(*The occupation has been going strong since April 21!)
Sign the Petition – Email UCB Chancellor Christ (sample email) – Donate!
UC-Berkeley students and community members have been occupying the George and Mary Foster Anthropology Library for over two weeks. Our struggle to defend public education and stop the closure of three campus libraries including the Anthropology library continues to gather strength and support. Every day, new students join the occupation to hold study sessions or office hours, talk, play games, hold teach-ins, take votes, sleep, and gain the strength necessary to maintain our library open until we win. The occupation has been an integrated effort made up of people of all races and areas of study. For over one year, the library has been without a librarian, and the university considers it closed. Every day that our occupation keeps the library open is a victory for our movement to defend public education.
As a result of the strength of the occupation, the administration has failed to divide the faculty from the students. On May 3, the Chancellor’s proposal to turn the Anthropology Library into what amounts to a study hall in exchange for the end of the occupation was rejected by a majority of the faculty in the department. This sham of a proposal would leave the library without a librarian or any of the books and/or library materials and is opposed by the occupation. The Chancellor’s proposal to turn the library into a study hall is an insult to the students and community occupying the library. It is an insult to the ASUC (Associated Students of the University of California), the Library Committee of the Faculty Senate, and other campus organizations who have expressed their full support for keeping the library open.
Our position is clear: Nothing short of a fully operational campus library—open to the campus community and general public on regular hours comparable to those of the Main Library of the university, containing all the current books and materials in place and making them available—is acceptable to us. This library must employ a professional librarian, and the library itself must be under the control of the Anthropology Department, with university funds dedicated to the ongoing maintenance of the library.
Forty-three percent of the students in Anthropology are Latina/o/x, black, and other underrepresented minorities. The library itself serves as a hub for a multiracial and international group of graduate and undergraduate students to gather and share information as they seek to teach and cultivate a new generation of critical thinkers who can use knowledge and research to help guide an increasingly diverse society. If Chancellor Christ cared at all about black, Latina/o/x, Native American students and their surrounding communities, she would keep the Anthropology Library open. Closing the library would send a message to underrepresented minority students in our state that they are not welcome. This attack calls into question her goal of making UC-Berkeley a Hispanic Serving Institution. Either this goal of hers is simply self-serving, or she really is not serious about increasing Latina/o/x enrollment to the level required to make UC-Berkeley a Hispanic Serving Institution.
The only explanation Chancellor Christ has offered for closing down the library is the need to save the University the $400,000 it supposedly costs to keep the library open. For this supposed university pocket change, the Chancellor has spurned the official student and faculty representatives of the entire UC-Berkeley campus community. Meanwhile, the Chancellor has been all ears for the demands of the “anonymous” donors of roughly $500,000,000 for the new data sciences building. Privatization has become the watchword for Chancellor Christ and her administration—students and community are second-class partners.
On May 2, dozens of graduate, undergraduate students and community supporters marched to the UC- Berkeley Alumni House with signs and chanted outside of Chancellor Carol Christ’s Public Service Awards ceremony. Our protest was tremendously successful. The signs read “Defend public education,” “Our public libraries are not for sale,” and “Save the Anthropology Library.” Spirited pickets on both sides of the building made clear we want Chancellor Christ’s hands off our public libraries. Our picket was supported by award recipients, staff, other attendees, and the students and communities who cheered our march as we passed by them going to the picket and marching back to the occupation. Chancellor Christ decided not to show up and canceled her appearance halfway through what was supposed to be her awards ceremony, because she knows she is an enemy of public education and she has no reasonable explanation for this attack.
For almost 30 years, the University of California has failed to keep pace with the growth of our state’s thriving diverse multiracial communities and its demands for increased access to quality public education. The national attacks on affirmative action, integration programs and growing privatization have created a UC system increasingly separate and unequal and less and less representative of our state as the years go by. The University has abandoned its commitment to affirmative action and has remained silent as this issue is now being discussed by the U.S. Supreme Court and awaiting a decision. The Harvard and University of North Carolina cases being heard will further shape the future of higher education. Our campus and our occupation can be a leader in the fight for equality and integration that can impact the entire nation.
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 majority and their right to equal access to higher education. The Anthropology Library serves and should remain a place where underrepresented minority students feel and are welcome at UC-Berkeley, and an example of what the rest of the campus should be like. Latina/o/x, black, and Native American students make up 61% of high school students in California public schools, but only 23% of UC-Berkeley’s freshman admitted class of 2022. Our occupation must be the beginning of a fight to change the direction of the University of California and our state, to once again commit to real integration and being a public-serving institution.
We thank everyone who has supported our efforts either by joining us at the occupation, stopping by the library to study or do homework, participating in our direct actions, donating to our fundraising efforts, sharing our content on social media, and/or have reached out to express their support. While negotiations continue, we must continue to build on the strength of our occupation. Victory is within reach!
We invite everyone—students, faculty and community—to join us in our ongoing occupation. Together we can defend the anthropology library and the future of public education in California and set an example to inspire a national movement for quality public education.
May 8, 2023
