Few areas have been more controversial than the role played by UC Davis professors in the protests, both leading up to November 18 and following it.
In the Kroll report, many have focused on the line: “Professor Joshua Clover spoke to the group, warning them about cooperating with the administration, urging them to take matters into their own hands and stating, ‘Right now, we’re the law.’ ” Fewer have noted, “The activists ‘went back and forth’ about what to do next. At approximately 4:45 p.m., the activists used consensus-style decision-making to reach the decision to continue to occupy Mrak Hall after it closed at 5:00 p.m. and to ‘use bike locks and chains to lock the building doors open.’ “
The former suggests, perhaps, that Professor Clover led the group, but the latter suggests a more accurate depiction – Professor Clover was one voice among many. The protesters debated, discussed, and then adopted decisions based on a consensus-style model.
The Vanguard has attempted to interview Professor Clover, however, he declined, citing his pending legal charges for his role in the bank protests.
In the meantime, he does clarify some of the movement’s positions in an article published in the journal College Literature: A Journal of Critical Literary Studies.
As he notes, “The images of one corpulent and distressingly nonchalant officer disbursing military-grade pepper spray to the faces of a couple dozen seated students would swiftly become one of the iconic images of the year, not just for the campus or the university but globally.”
There has been considerable debate about removing the chancellor, and there has been debate about the presence of police on college campuses. But there has been perhaps less debate about militarization of campuses.
Professor Clover seems concerned about the “increasingly militarized form” of the police presence and the campus’ moving “toward the heavy hand bearing advanced weaponry.”
Professor Clover, however, writes, “I want to argue as directly as possible that grasping this new security regime as primarily pertinent to campus intellectual climate is misguided. While this line of inquiry is no trivial matter, it confuses and obscures core issues.”
He argues, “The first is the assumption that we can identify in each case a two-part sequence of cause and effect, in which students protest and police overreact disastrously. The second (with evident implications for the question of academic freedom tout court), is that this to-and-fro is to be conceived exclusively as a freedom of speech issue.”
He notes, “In this understanding, students first protest, as students are wont to do. The question arises as to the limits of protest, and to what extent certain actions – in this case, politicized camping – count as protected speech.”
“‘Time, place, and manner’ provisions are invoked; the police are summoned, heavy with tools. Orders to disperse are given, no dispersal is forthcoming, and then the intolerable thing happens, and everyone scrambles to understand and manage the aftermath.”
He does not doubt that these sorts of responses, which he calls “overreactions,” are calculated to produce a chilling effect on the students’ struggle.
“As with the endless nuisance charges levied against student (and other) organizers, they are designed to exhaust resources, both inner and material. And further, there can be no doubt that this chilling effect spills over to the entire campus,” he adds.
However, for reasons he lays out later, he believes this struggle moves well beyond the issue of First Amendment Rights. Indeed, he notes that the chancellor has conceded that the police “may indeed have curtailed what really should be protected rights of speech and assembly.”
He argues, “The fantasy at play here is that what has gone wrong somehow concerns the excessive assertion of First Amendment rights by students, or conversely, the excessive limiting of same by the administration. The logical remedy is inevitably discovered to be a rebalancing of these matters, extending adequate protections to ‘protest’ and ‘expression’ as abstract ends in and of themselves.”
Indeed, these are the arguments that seem repeated on these pages ad nauseum. The question is what is protected speech and at what point do the rights to that speech violate the rights of others.
This is, of course, the focus of the lengthy UC Campus report, “Response to Protests on UC Campuses.”
The report reviews best practices, informing the universities how best to respond to future demonstration.
In the UC report on the “Response to Protests on UC Campuses,” they tellingly write: “Civil disobedience by definition involves violating laws or regulations, and that civil disobedience will generally have consequences for those engaging in it because of the impact it can have on the rest of the campus community.”
Moreover, “The First Amendment does not guarantee any right to engage in civil disobedience – which, by its very definition, involves the violation of laws or regulations to communicate a political message – without incurring consequences.”
In fact, civil disobedience may require that the protester accepts the possibility of being arrested “as a sacrifice to the political cause in question.”
What Professor Clover, however, argues is that the base issue here is “radically different.”
He argues, “The initiating acts were not student protests but university policies designed to assure that the costs of running an educational system increasingly devolve to students, who are at once ever more compelled to pursue higher education for competitive advantage in a forbidding employment landscape, and concomitantly less able to afford the same without increased debt and workloads.”
Indeed, he argues that this misrecognition is further compounded by conflating Occupy Wall Street with what has happened on college campuses.
Professor Clover argues, “As the Occupy movement has not made a significant issue of education, and as students (especially at purportedly elite or top-tier universities) are often thought to be cushioned at least temporarily from the buffets of the economy (especially the employment market), the inference is frequently drawn that the campus variants of Occupy are lacking real content of their own, and are thus reducible to protest for the sake of protest.”
For Professor Clover, the Occupy movement was inspired by the Arab Spring and similar movements in Europe. Moreover, he notes it “has its local roots in recent US campus organizing, specifically the anti-privatization campaigns of 2009-2010 on UC campuses.”
“The shock over recent events at Berkeley and Davis this November must be taken with a grain of salt. After all, only two Novembers before, both Chancellors called riot police from multiple jurisdictions onto the same campuses to break up anti-privatization occupations,” he writes. “Both times, the police attacked non-violent protestors, and lawsuits are still pending.”
Situating the movement in this way, he argues, “we are looking at a clearly defined confrontation that has been in progress for some time, on the concrete terrain of economic crisis – not a timeless confrontation between academic freedom and policing, on the abstract terrain of rights.”
Professor Clover continues, “One suspects there will be some payouts to injured students, and that a cop or two will be pastured. And the matter will be tentatively resolved, despite the economic content remaining entirely unaddressed; thus, the administration wins by ‘losing.’ “
The professor strangely ends up in the middle of what he calls “the articulation trap,” in that “especially the professor’s, that she is not identified clearly with either side of the current struggle between the economic interests of students and administrators; at the same time, her job’s basic supposition (especially in the humanities) is that position-taking is itself an action.”
He adds, “I fear we professors are quite often guilty of looking for our car-keys under the streetlight – that is, participating in this particular antagonism in the ways we are best equipped for, rather than in the ways that the conditions and goals demand.”
Professor Clover returns to campus militarization, noting that “UCSC professor Bob Meister provides an extraordinarily useful account of the relation between campus securitization and securitization of university economies, as they have recently developed.”
William Bratton and Kroll, who investigated the pepper spraying, reveal for some “the link between the privatization of public universities, the financial services industry and the national security industry.”
This seems to be the core point: “Heightened campus security is inextricably linked to heightened campus securitization in its two main forms: the decision of universities to pursue a certain line of investment strategies which move money away from educational services and into capital projects; and the corresponding decision to cover those educational costs by shifting burdens to students at a rate which can only be financed though student loans, concomitantly providing profitable investment for banks laden with otherwise fallow capital.”
He sees that the rise in tuition and indebtedness is simply the militarization of campus. “They are one and the same,” he said.
He adds, “Even if one does adhere to the belief that the matters of intellectual freedom, free speech, and free assembly are fundamental to this unfolding political economic sequence, the place where such things will be arbitrated is not on their own terrain – the terrain of formal rights – but elsewhere.”
He believes believe the arena where such rights would be protected is “the arena of direct antagonism between, on the one side, those fighting against backdoor privatization and austerity programs on campus, and on the other, those who implement and enforce them.”
Professor Clover concludes, “Stand with your students, literally. It is the best thing to be done for academic freedom; it is the least you can do for them.”
—David M. Greenwald reporting
Mr. Clover blames the police for increasing militarization, but it is clear the protestors caused that to happen, their increasingly radical responses to selfish desires be it tuition, jobs, or something else. Case in point, the I-80 incident – they were going to go so far as to endanger themselves and motorists…. thats when cops in riot gear showed up. second case in point – uc riverside, where they tried to hold people hostage. If the protestors behave themselves, not a single cop will be seen in riot gear with batons or pepperspray.
second, thank you to the vanguard for outing just who in the university ought to be fired.
The protesters did not cause them to have military grade weapons – against regulation btw.
Also Professor Clover is tenured, so good luck on firing him.
oh, one other thing…. what was it the vanguard said? that Katehi and company ought to shoulder larger responsibility than protesotrs because she is in charge of campus?
well by the same token, does this professor, as a UCD representative, bear a higher responsibility to represent UCD principles of community, and to set a good example for the students? and how does he do that? by encouraging them to break the law? lol….
Liberte, egalite, fraternite!
I told you josh was brilliant. For more reading check out his fabulous book reviews on globalization in the Nation.
“The images of one corpulent and distressingly nonchalant officer disbursing military-grade pepper spray to the faces of a couple dozen seated students would swiftly become one of the iconic images of the year, not just for the campus or the university but globally.”
So succinct, who else has iced it with “corpulent” coupled with “distressingly nonchalant” in such a dismissive derogatory manner. The problem Davis has with Clover is that ten major universities would hire him in one second, based on the power of his prose and the volume of his productivity. The problem Davis has is retaining Clover not how to punish him.
Oh let him go you will argue, but only a fool would make that statement without reading him, or, having some argument about moral turpitude and certainly revolutionary fantasies about sitting in front of a bank door don’t measure up.
how does that mean he cant be fired?
breaking the law and encouraging others to do so, whether you are considered their technical leader or not toady – would be grounds to fire anyone, on nearly every job on this planet.
I didn’t say can’t. But the reason tenure was invented in the first place was precisely to protect teachers from getting fired over teaching things that people like Octane didn’t agree with.
The protesters did not cause them to have military grade weapons – against regulation btw.
no, but no doubt, them showing up in riot gear is in response to increasingly radicalization forms of protesting.
How did such a young man get Tenure at such a major university? If you met him or read him or both you would know. He is one of those university type people, who when you see his work, you stand back in awe. Ask the people who granted him tenure, his ex-students or the people he works with.
Oddly, the name that comes to mind for me for comparison is Fred Wood, the embattled Vice-chancellor.
I have had the chance to work briefly with each of these men and was deeply impressed by both, Fred Wood about 20 years ago and Josh perhaps 3 years ago. Both struck me as having awesome giant intellects. Both were a delight to work with.
That was part of the problem Octane, it’s what even Spicuzza warned against doing. Riot gear was one of the big mistakes on November 18 and even before that. And that was the police who did it against the advice of others.
Since Clover is against “militarization” on campus, he must be happily embracing w joy the university’s new peaceful approach – arrest law breakers after the fact in a non-confrontational way…
[quote]oh, one other thing…. what was it the vanguard said? that Katehi and company ought to shoulder larger responsibility than protesotrs because she is in charge of campus?
well by the same token, does this professor, as a UCD representative, bear a higher responsibility to represent UCD principles of community, and to set a good example for the students? and how does he do that? by encouraging them to break the law? lol….[/quote]
Nicely said!
“Since Clover is against “militarization” on campus, he must be happily embracing w joy the university’s new peaceful approach – arrest law breakers after the fact in a non-confrontational way…”
So if I am against something am I necessarily for something that is not what I am against?
[quote]I didn’t say can’t. But the reason tenure was invented in the first place was precisely to protect teachers from getting fired over teaching things that people like Octane didn’t agree with.[/quote]
If you remember the university said Clover was “acting outside his scope of employment” when he resorted to his antics in regard to the bank blockage. It will be interesting to see what happens to Clover as time goes on… he may find himself on the outside looking in even if he is not fired… there is more than one way to skin a cat…
Outside of the scoop makes it less likely that they can do anything to him. If he were in a classroom, that might create the most legal authority to act.
Toad is correct, clover is huge in his field, if he were let go another university would snatch him up in a heartbeat.
I wonder if Clover can keep his position if he fails to teach his classes while serving a sentence in Yolo county jail.
I was surprised to see on his web page that Clover does not even have a Ph.D.
A Ph.D is the minimum qualification for a Professorship at a research university.
Education & Interests:
MFA (University of Iowa). Interests include poetry and poetics, film studies, Marxist/post-Marxist theory and political economy.
What qualifications does Clover have to lecture on economics?
Why is UC Davis hiring Marxist pseudo intellectuals?
“Why is UC Davis hiring Marxist pseudo intellectuals? “
That’s funny. Clover is a world renowned writer and you are what exactly? You hide behind your pseudonym taking pot shots at people far more brilliant than you.
[quote]I was surprised to see on his web page that Clover does not even have a Ph.D.
A Ph.D is the minimum qualification for a Professorship at a research university. [/quote]
An MFA is a terminal degree, which is the minimum qualification to be a poetry professor. He can teach whatever related material he wishes within those courses (Marxist/post-Marxist theory and political economy).
Toad is correct, clover is huge in his field, if he were let go another university would snatch him up in a heartbeat.
if that is the case, then that doesn’t say much about University hiring practices.
Or perhaps it just suggests that you are not the best judge of such things.
someone who breaks the law, then gets hired? Umm, the first thing that I got when I got hired was a background check. meaning no-one is going to hire an ex con…. except a university.
“So if I am against something am I necessarily for something that is not what I am against?”
And, that is sometimes a problem around here. Too much is innuendo and implication until you’re questioned or challenged. Then, you say, “I didn’t say that….” or “You misunderstand what I meant….” or you say it in the form of a question.
Sometimes, it takes a lot of time and effort to tease out just what point is being made, if any. It would be great to read a clear point of view and be able to support it or challenge it without engaging in a lot of back and forth to determine whether the Vanguard has taken a stand and, if so, what it really is.
I’m not sure any brilliance jumps out of Clover’s article, but it certainly contributes to his other statements to confirm his anarchistic approach to higher education.
To suggest he’s not a leader of the students who crossed the line in demonstrating and adopted law-breaking as an on-going strategy is to ignore evidence from many sources. That demonstrators practice consensus-building as part of their routine doesn’t negate his influence on their decisions.
His desire and attempts to be the principle influence on the group have been documented be the media as well as bank officials and his writings. We’ll see how good a job the DA and police have done in establishing his role when his trial begins. My guess is that his own words and actions will confirm his colleagues’ views of his radical stands.
Agree or disagree with Professor Clover’s world view on the purpose of a university, but give him credit for his dedication to influencing student demonstrators. When he tells them “…we’re the law,” he’s leading them down a destructive path. But, then, again, that’s his purpose.
“He’s leading them down a destructive path”
Oh, come on. Can you people be bigger conspiracy theorists? “HE’S INFLUENCING THESE STUDENTS! HE BROKE THE LAW ONCE! HE’S AN ANARCHIST!! OH THE HUMANITY, WHO WILL THINK OF THE CHILDREN!?”
Did it ever occur to you that these students are [i]probably[/i] fully capable of making their own decisions and thinking critically?
Actually, no, that’s a silly question- all you reactionaries can do is regurgitate the paternalistic discourse of the administration.
Hemlock anyone?
91,
“if that is the case, then that doesn’t say much about University hiring practices.”
In what way does firing Prof. Clover benefit UCD and its students?
“Umm, the first thing that I got when I got hired was a background check. meaning no-one is going to hire an ex con…. except a university.”
Was Prof. Clover convicted of a crime?
“So succinct, who else has iced it with “corpulent” coupled with “distressingly nonchalant” in such a dismissive derogatory manner. The problem Davis has with Clover is that ten major universities would hire him in one second, based on the power of his prose and the volume of his productivity. The problem Davis has is retaining Clover not how to punish him.”
While some at UCD apparently are agonizing about how to compete with all the other schools that crave his prose, some campus officials probably are calculating the money UCD would save if we lost the good professor’s services to another employer. The blockade costs we’ve incurred as the result of Professor Clover’s leadership “outside the scope of his employment” keep mounting.
How many scholarships could UCD afford to provide to students if Clover isn’t here to generate law-breaking confrontations with police, businesses and university leaders and the associated expenses?
Professors are in a position of power over students. That is why they have an extra obligation not to sexually harass students, or to bully them into following their political views. Those faculty who violate this code are a disgrace to the university.
Excerpts from the Kroll report
Page 35
The administration was informed by Student Affairs staff that there was “considerable faculty involvement” with the rally and Chief Spicuzza reported that she was “being told [that] instructors are telling students to attend the Quad event and receive extra credit.134 Spicuzza followed up with an email that UCDPD officers had received from a UC Davis student, in which a professor offered extra credit to students who attended the noon rally on that day and wrote a two page report “on what you learned/saw.” Chief Spicuzza forwarded this email to Wood, Meyer and Hexter, writing “kept [sic] it to just the three of you at this time.”135
Page 36
“Professor Joshua Clover spoke to the group, warning them about cooperating with the administration, urging them to take matters into their own hands and stating, “right now, we’re the law.”
Offering extra-credit for attending a rally and writing about it is certainly reasonable because a lawful rally is a peaceful assembly, it is different from an act of civil disobedience. In writing about it the students are free to express agreement or disagreement.
[quote]Offering extra-credit for attending a rally and writing about it is certainly reasonabl[/quote]
Good try, but you are incorrect. You should look at the university rules for academic personnel.
[url]http://www.ucop.edu/acadpersonnel/apm/apm-015.pdf[/url]
Types of unacceptable conduct:
1.Intentional disruption of functions or activities sponsored or authorized by the University.
2.Incitement of others to disobey University rules when such incitement constitutes a clear and present danger that violence or abuse against persons or property will occur or that the University’s central functions will be significantly impaired.
3.Unauthorized use of University resources or facilities on a significant scale for personal, commercial, political, or religious purposes.
Clover appears to be in violation.
Toad, you are also incorrect that Mr. Clover would be able to find a job elsewhere. He is not highly considered within his field, he is not cited in the literature, and he has not published in distinguished journals. If let go by UCD he would probably wind up as a homeless agitator, as he seems to have no skills that are useful to society.
JR
“1.Intentional disruption of functions or activities sponsored or authorized by the University.
2.Incitement of others to disobey University rules when such incitement constitutes a clear and present danger that violence or abuse against persons or property will occur or that the University’s central functions will be significantly impaired.
3.Unauthorized use of University resources or facilities on a significant scale for personal, commercial, political, or religious purposes.
While I agree with you that it appears that Mr. Clover’s actions in support of the bank blockade were in violation of these principles, that would not mean that a professor, including Mr. Clover, would be in violation of these principles by simply offering class credit for observing and writing about a political protest. Unless he were actively exhorting them to break the law at the time of the assignment, this is actually no different than a music teacher offering extra credit for attending a particular concert and writing about it. Were his motives different ? Probably. But that does not make the assignment itself unreasonable or a violation of community principles.
“Toad, you are also incorrect that Mr. Clover would be able to find a job elsewhere. He is not highly considered within his field, he is not cited in the literature, and he has not published in distinguished journals.”
You are not serious. Let us see about that. I know he wrote a book about when the wall came down and is a published poet. He writes for The Nation Magazine and, if you would read some of his work, that is easily found on line, you would begin to understand the depth of his writing ability and the breath of his knowledge on political economy. If fact, it can easily be argued that taking a principled stand against tuition increases is an application of his expertise. David’s article today cites an article published in College Literature: A Journal of Critical Literary Studies. Sounds pretty academic to me
Clover holds an MFA, a terminal degree, from the Iowa Writer’s workshop, probably the most distinguished writing program in the country. He has won awards for his writing; the Pushcart twice and the Walt Whitman. The people who work with him are in awe of his intellect. You can buy four of his books on Amazon. His magazine credits are too long to list. Davis, despite whatever disruption he has caused, is lucky to have him.
medwoman, you are aware of Clover’s role in the demonstrations, rIght. He does not fit in your category “simply offering class credit….” While professors who simply made such assignments might have had less than honorable motives, they probably at off the hook since they can be credited with using the events as learning experiences.
And, while Clover might have repeatedly violated his contract and his employer’s rules, his firing likely would result in another round of demonstrations that the university wouldn’t wouldn’t want to suffer. What he deserves and what he gets in the way of legal prosecution and university actions will be two different things.
“Davis, despite whatever disruption he has caused, is lucky to have him.”
How is that, Mr.Toad? His distinguished vita pales In comparison to the damage he has wrought. UCD’s finances, reputation and operation all suffered mightily, thanks to his destructive “outside the scope of employment” actions. How can you consider us lucky on balance?
I think you are confusing him with a man named Pike.
UCD’s finances suffered because of him? What are you referring to? Did he somehow cause the budget deficit that led to massive tuition increases? Oh maybe you are referring to US Bank. I’m not sure about his role but I will say that every student ID this year has two things on it that reflect the times in which we live; a bar code and a US Bank logo. Now that US Bank logo I think more than anything was seen by the misanthropic youth who took to protesting at US Bank as unacceptably over the top. While people like Greg Kuperberg, who has done some intelligent posting over the years, was dismissive of that little logo, even though he admitted he didn’t think it appropriate either, I just keep coming back to how I think this never would have happened without that little product placement on student ID’s. By the way, just for the record, I have never approved of the actions at US Bank.
I just want to ask all you guillotine toting critics, can you find examples where someone of Josh Clovers stature, complete with tenure, got fired? Even Angela Davis stayed on at UC for many years.
Correction: Eventually even Angela Davis returned to work at U.C.
Edward Ross was fired from Stanford University.
112 years ago
Wait, was Clover the professor who offered the extra credit? Does it say that somewhere? Can you point me there? Or is this just further evidence of the reading skills around here?
Yeah, that’s what I thought, you factless wonders.