Take a lesson from Greek campuses
I started reading with interest Nathan Brown’s article “Reviewing the case for Katehi’s resignation” in Sunday’s Enterprise. Then I came upon the passage “Meanwhile, articles have brought to light Chancellor Katehi’s co-authorship of a report recommending the return to militarized police to Athens Polytechnic University as a deterrent to the ‘politization’ of the campus…,” a subject of which I happen to have first-hand knowledge and experience.
At this point, I started wondering about the degree of Brown’s knowledge and judgment regarding the other issues discussed in the article, some of which, independently, are of major importance.
I would advise him to stick to issues he has competence and knows something about, and stop worrying about the “militarization” of the Greek universities. Should he have the slightest idea of the sorry state of those universities, and their literary destruction since 1981 when “democratization” took place, he would applaud the adoption of any measures, which would restore some semblance of decency.
Unfortunately, the Greek universities constitute by now a classical example how the dominance of the universities by political parties and self-serving groups can irreparably damage an educational institution.
George Roussas
former chancellor, University of Patras, Greece
Davis
Short URL: http://www.davisenterprise.com/?p=117887
View this story on page A6
Posted by Letters to the Editor
on Dec 20 2011.
Last Login:
Filed under Letters. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry
“Dr. Roussas or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Militarization”
Let’s assume that Dr. Roussas is right and that Greek universities have serious problems caused by politics taking precedence over academics (as if they were ever completely separable). Let’s even go so far as to agree with his assertion that their “literary [sic] destruction” started with Papandreou’s election in 1981 (just ignore the scare quotes Roussas puts around “democratization”—it’s not like Greece had formerly been under the thumb of a military dictatorship . . . oh, wait).
Even if we grant that professors at Greek universities have become de facto political appointees (as Dr. Roussas asserts in a 2010 interview) and that this interferes with education, it simply does not follow that sending paramilitary units onto campus is the solution to that problem. Nor does the situation in Greece bear directly on that of UC campuses in the same way that Katehi’s record of favoring police intervention does.
Dr. Brown’s point remains: it is troubling that surveillance and police are used by chancellors to stifle opposition to the privatization program that they are advancing at our public universities.
So I would ask Dr. Roussas whether he thinks this agenda of privatization avoids being “political” and “self serving.” And “I would advise him to stick to issues he has competence [sic]” and “take a lesson” from the UC Davis students who “have first-hand knowledge and experience” of being spied on and brutalized by the chancellor and her enforcers.
Katehi could play Slim Pickens in the remake…
In in the immortal words of Major T.J. “King” Kong.
(Best known for riding a dropped H-bomb to a certain death, whooping and waving his cowboy hat, not knowing its detonation will trigger a Russian doomsday device.)
“Yahhhhhh Whooooo….”.