U of M Labor and Community Strike Support Committee

September 10, 2007

President Robert H. Bruininks
202 Morrill Hall
100 Church Street S.E.
University of Minnesota
Minneapolis, MN 55455

Dear President Bruininks,

We write to you both as scholars and as members of the university community with grave concern over the current crisis faced by our community due to the university administration’s failure to deal fairly with the members of the AFSCME union. As faculty and graduate students in the department of anthropology, we teach undergraduate students to understand the workings of inequality, hierarchy, and power not simply for knowledge’s sake but to empower them to change the world for the better. Given the stark inequality exposed by this strike, it is thus imperative that the administration does not continue business as usual, but rather rise to the occasion and demonstrate to us, whose faith in the university is wavering, that you are indeed deeply concerned about justice. Without such action, we find it untenable to continue business as usual in our classrooms.

As anthropologists, reciprocity is fundamental to our understanding of human relationships and human practice; and as such, it is also fundamental to our understanding of how an institution such as the university should operate. More than a hundred years of anthropological research shows that social systems are complexly interconnected, and that inequalities within a system produce negative effects far in excess to the short term gains that result from the unequal distribution of resources. The university is such a system, its operations depending on respect and fairness to all constituents. As scholars, it is hard for us not to recognize these dynamics playing out in the current strike; as members of the community and fellow employees, we feel compelled to point this out to the administration. Too often, we draw on the rhetoric of community to describe our institution; it is time to turn that rhetoric to action and to give AFSCME members a fair deal.

At present, the administration approaches AFSCME from the normalizing perspective that is mainly informed by the flexibility of its most privileged employees. It is only from this point of view that the university’s “settlement” with AFSCME can be understood as a “great deal.” But, we ask you, do you really believe that this offer is truly just, or mainly the blunting of extreme inequality? A university – a place for the life of the mind, for education, for diversity – can be an ideal community, and as such, we believe that we must not only set our standards higher, but also think outside the box. One way to do so is to stand in the shoes of the lowest paid workers at the university and from that perspective, construct an institution that is just from the ground up. Only such a space can be truly sustainable in perpetuity for mind and spirit. For these workers, many of whom live paycheck to paycheck and cannot afford to strike, striking is therefore not motivated by greed or misguided notions of entitlement, but is a serious self-sacrifice. An ideal community must be judged by how its most vulnerable are treated. Striking is a sign that justice is not present.

We would also like to remind you of our collective goal to become one of the top three public research institutions in the nation. As scholars and teachers, we are striving to reach this goal but it is untenable to think such a goal is possible without a strong, dedicated, and fairly paid staff. AFSCME members’ work is central to the day-to-day operations of our department and the institution more broadly, and the strike is already affecting how we operate as a department. Short-term staffing is not a real solution, and important work is being put on hold. While our staff, teaching assistants, and faculty are doing our best to fulfill our duties to our students and our duties as scholars, the excellence we strive to achieve cannot happen in a vacuum. It relies on the often invisible work of AFSCME members who provide the ongoing support for the university’s vital work.

Finally, we must state that we find intolerable the implication in recent communication from the administration that faculty should essentially perform a surveillance function in tracking the movement and actions of other faculty and students as they attempt to act according to their principles during the strike. Such requests, however implicit, strike at the very heart of the university’s mission, and have already had a chilling effect on personal and professional relationships, on teaching, and on scholarship. In this time in U.S. American history, where unchecked surveillance has become par for the course and respect for civil rights and freedom of speech has reached a new low, demands to police movements and restrict the principled action of our colleagues and peers in a university setting are particularly ominous. Universities embody our society’s commitment to freedom, and therefore, how we engage with a strike is just as important as the outcome.

We do not see this strike as an administrative annoyance, nor a waiting game, but as a fundamental moment in the history of our institution where the principles we espouse in the classrooms have become part of our daily lives, where we must bring together what we teach with how we live. We thus urge the administration to return to negotiations with AFSCME in good faith so that an equitable solution may be found in short order. Attempting to break the strikers’ resolve is not an option: it will mean breaking our community and university into pieces.

Respectfully,

Naheed Aaftaab, Graduate Student
Murat Altun, Graduate Student
Aaron Armstrong, Graduate Student
Professor Daphne Berdahl
John Champe, Graduate Student
Ursula Dalinghaus, Graduate Student
Avigdor Edminster, Graduate Student
Namrata Gaikwa, Graduate Student
Ritika Ganguly, Graduate Student
Professor Guy Gibbon
Professor Steve Gudeman
Peter Harle, Undergraduate Advisor for Anthropology
Professor Karen Ho
Matthew Hunstiger, Graduate Student
Jennifer Immich, Graduate Student
Sa’ra Kaiser, Graduate Student
Karen Kapusta-Pofahl, Graduate Student
Claire Kirchhoff, Graduate Student
Professor Jean Langford
Robert Lusteck, Graduate Student
Professor Stuart McLean
Professor Kieran McNulty
Sahar Monrreal, Graduate Student
Alexandra Moyer, Graduate Student
Amy Porter, Graduate Student
Professor Gloria Goodwin Raheja
Gun Shin, Graduate Student
Burton Smith, Graduate Student
Professor Hoon Song
Professor Martha Tappen
Professor Karen-Sue Taussig
Professor David Valentine
Thomas Walton, Graduate Student