StudentNation

A Fight for the Soul of NYU

Rebecca Nathanson and StudentNation on August 15, 2013 - 5:10 PM ET

A protest at NYU on November 17, 2011. (Credit: Rebecca Nathanson)

This article was adapted from Noted. A version was printed in the September 2-9, 2013 issue.

When The New York Times reported earlier this summer that New York University gave large loans for vacation homes to administrators and star professors, the news was not met with much shock downtown. After months of faculty votes of no confidence against President John Sexton, and amid revelations of huge bonuses given to top administrators (which prompted Senator Chuck Grassley to launch an investigation into how NYU uses its tax-exempt status), faculty, staff and students have come to expect such things.

The news followed more than a year of organizing against NYU 2031, an eighteen-year campus expansion plan that will add 6 million square feet to the campus and cost $6 billion. So far, thirty-nine resolutions have been passed against the plan, most citing its financial irresponsibility. But it was the combination of this controversial plan and the increasingly top-down leadership style of Sexton and the board of trustees that prompted NYU’s arts and science faculty to organize the first no-confidence vote in March. The vote itself is symbolic, although a similar one against Harvard president Larry Summers led to his resignation in 2006.

NYU is the most expensive private university in the country. Its students graduate with an average debt load of $35,000. With its ever-expanding roster of campuses around the world, NYU also leads the way toward the corporatization of higher education. Resistance to this model of university governance is only gaining momentum, however, as more and more facts about the administration are unearthed. “Faculty are angry that the administration and the trustees have endangered NYU’s standing by adopting the ways of Wall Street,” says Andrew Ross, a professor of social and cultural analysis and the president of NYU’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, “and we are all the more resolved to push for a complete overhaul.”

Yesterday, in a university-wide e-mail, the NYU Special Committee of the Board of Trustees responded to the tension and outrage that has defined NYU in recent months. The committee announced that John Sexton will resign as president once his term ends in 2016, noting that it is still "extremely satisfied with the direction and leadership of the University." The e-mail also stated that the university will stop using its housing assistance mortgage program to buy vacation homes for administrators. Additionally, it outlined various ways in which the Board hopes to increase communication with faculty and the rest of the NYU community, writing that the search committee for Sexton's successor will include both faculty and students. But if NYU faculty, students and workers have learned anything in the past few years, it's that there exists a large gap between words and action.

#OutWithStudentDebt

StudentNation on August 12, 2013 - 4:04 PM ET

In this October 6, 2011 photo, Gan Golan, of Los Angeles, dressed as the "Master of Degrees," holds a ball and chain representing his college loan debt. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

With more than $1.2 trillion in outstanding student loan debt in America, we know that student debt is creating an enormous drag on the economy at the same time as it hampers, in many cases, direly, the ability of young people to make something of their lives.

The steadfast advocates at StudentDebtCrisis.org have launched a summer project aimed to put some human faces on the still-metastasizing student debt crisis in order to raise public awareness and get the attention of members of Congress who, ultimately, have the authority to overhaul the badly-broken student lending system.

Using a new platform created by Contest.is, the group hopes to collect one to two minute videos demonstrating how intractable levels of student debt has affected their lives. Participants are being asked to upload their videos to YouTube with the hashtag #OutWithStudentDebt in the title to have their videos automatically submitted.

As StudentDebtCrisis co-founder Kyle McCarthy explains, “Today, 41 percent of student borrowers are delinquent at some point within five years of graduating. The impact of millions of Americans being unable to pay has devastating consequences, both personally and to the economy. With so many people overwhelmed with student debt, it’s vitally important that people come out of the shadows and share how student debt affects their everyday lives.”

The first phase of the project began on Tuesday, August 6th and will end on Tuesday, September 3. Watch Aaron Calafato explain the idea and the philosophy behind the campaign and check out directions for how you submit a video.

Know Your IX

Samantha Lachman and StudentNation on August 8, 2013 - 2:54 PM ET

A cake celebrating the fortieth anniversary of Title IX. (Courtesy of Flickr)

Despite popular misconceptions, Title IX guarantees far more than equity for college athletes. It is, in fact, a guarantee that each student should receive an education free from sexual violence and harassment. Know Your IX, a new campaign aiming to “empower students to stop sexual violence,” intends to clarify widespread misunderstanding of Title IX and make clear what the statute provides and how to file a complaint when it is violated.

The campaign couldn’t come at a more appropriate time, as colleges across the country—from Swarthmore, Dartmouth and UNC Chapel Hill to UC Berkeley, Occidental, USC and UC Boulder—are coming under increased scrutiny and facing discrimination complaints for violations of Title IX and the Clery Act. In fact, a nationwide survey by Students Active for Ending Rape found that only 9.8 percent of students would give their college’s sexual violence policies an A—half of the respondents gave their school a C or lower.

Though the students behind Know Your IX emphasize that they are not lawyers, they strive to provide actionable firsthand knowledge of how to initiate anti-violence activism campaigns and how to challenge administrative reticence.

Dana Bolger, a rising senior at Amherst College and one of Know Your IX’s founders and organizers, told The Nation that the campaign is informed by personal experiences with violence, and frequently trying processes many face when attempting to report that violence to campus administrators.

“It’s sort of been a domino effect—I go to Amherst College and last summer we were thinking of filing a complaint with the Department of Education against our college, so I reached out to Alexandra Brodsky who had filed a complaint against Yale the year before. As more and more students are filing complaints on their colleges, we’re becoming connected online, through social media, so that’s how a lot of the organizing for Know Your IX happened,” she said.

As Bolger explained, Know Your IX aims to reach two broad audiences—first, students who may lack an awareness of what Title IX requires, and second, those students who are already working on their campuses to change policies and practices, for whom various resources have been amassed, including a “guide to building a campus movement”; information on obtaining legal guidance and building support networks; advice on confronting racism, homophobia and media misrepresentation; tips on how to “harness the media for your movement” and suggestions for “Dealing With” a litany of challenges a survivor and/or allied activist may face.

“Feminism and the movement against sexual violence has historically been a very white, upper-middle-class movement; we’ve tried to remain very conscious of that in developing our resources. Our campaign itself, all of these resources are written by survivors, women of color, men. Making this a really inclusive movement that responds to a variety of experiences is really important,” said Bolger.

Know Your IX is part of an increasingly broad network of student campaigns to change administrative policies and practices. Indeed, a petition asking Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to hold schools that don’t protect their students accountable by enforcing Title IX has already garnered more than 150,000 signatures.

Though universities and colleges vary in their size, type and support networks available (women’s or gender centers, counseling services, bystander intervention programs), a student’s basic civil right to an education free from sexual violence and harassment should be a guarantee no matter what resources a school has available. By undertaking this education-based campaign to arm survivor-activists and allies with information to help them advocate for themselves, file complaints and transform their schools, Know Your IX is playing a critical role in the enduring struggle to raise up the voices of those who, for too long, have been targeted, stigmatized and isolated.

Ad Policy

Debating Students for Educational Reform: A Response

Catharine Bellinger on August 5, 2013 - 2:07 PM ET

On August 2, The Nation’s online portal for student opinions, Student Nation, ran a blog post by Columbia University undergraduate George Joseph, who has consistently attacked and made false statements about Students for Education Reform, an organization I co-founded as a sophomore at Princeton in 2009.

Almost immediately, there was an overwhelming response from SFER members on Twitter and social media calling on Joseph to tell their side of the story. Two of our members in our Los Angeles student coalition, both products of public schools, have submitted blog posts to StudentNation, and I am eager to see those run.

As co-founder of the organization, I admit that at first I was angry. Defamatory blog posts have appeared about our organization in the past—or even about me personally—and I have ignored them. But this time, seeing the righteous indignation and anger of our members, I felt that our members had been personally attacked. And yet… this debate is a hard one. I have found time and again that when students’ lives are at stake, the debate can turn bombastic. I understand that when students demand a system different than the status quo, it can seem radical. The debate can become heated.

Across the country, I have seen hundreds of SFER members enter the classroom as teachers, volunteer as tutors, partner with parents and community leaders to run events to engage local communities in our schools, and testify in state legislatures to tell their personal stories. I’d hope that soon, The Nation might write a post covering some of these events.

But right now, I’d like to respond to Joseph’s article. I’d rather talk about our members and their stories—but Joseph has asked me to respond to the inaccuracies. As a rising senior in college, as a founder of a nonprofit whose principles I believe in, as an aspiring teacher, as a leader of a movement whose students inspire me every day, I refuse to listen quietly to these defamatory statements. I have taken the time to go through Joseph’s blog post line by line.

In the post, Joseph calls us a “corporate group.” He implies our members support a “privatization agenda.” He implies our members cannot possibly be informed enough to choose to be part of our movement.

At Students for Education Reform, we believe that the ability for students to choose an excellent public school is a fundamental civil right. By generically conflating school choice with a “privatization agenda,” Joseph reveals his bias against student choice in the first line of his post. In addition, I wonder if The Nation, by running Joseph’s piece, has revealed its own bias.

The blog post vastly oversimplifies SFER’s mission and principles. We do support the ability of students to choose the right school, whether district-run or charter-run—that’s a fact. But Joseph makes a jump in rhetoric to then falsely claim that the mission of our organization is to promote the charter movement. Nowhere have we made statements or taken actions supporting a single silver-bullet solution such as a school governance model.

To many of our SFER members, some of whom are young parents themselves and many of whom are the products of school choice programs, the ability to choose a school is a civil right, not the “fashionable” privatizing initiative that Joseph so dismissively calls it. It saddens us to see The Nation diminish the struggles of our student members and their parents to choose a quality school.

Students for Education Reform has never received money nor will ever accept money from a PAC or a Super PAC. In fact, nonprofits legally cannot take money from a political action fund. We encourage Joseph to do his research before making such claims. And furthermore, by implying that our members are somehow “controlled by a corporate agenda,” Joseph implies that they are not intelligent enough to tell their own stories from personal experience in the public schools. The dozens of SFER members who have taken to Twitter to share their stories since the post was published indicate otherwise.

Many of our students who are aspiring teachers are disappointed to hear The Nation accuse us of taking an “anti-union” position. Our students have never taken an anti-union stance. We have at times supported policies also endorsed by local and state teachers unions, including the current school funding ballot initiative in Colorado, for which our members have collected over 15,000 signatures. We have also at times taken stances that differs from the union’s position, such as when our Connecticut members supported a bill expanding pre-K, supporting more meaningful teacher evaluations and creating funding equity for charter schools. Our members are independent and choose a policy agenda that they believe will lead to greater equity and opportunity for students. Taking a policy stance different than that of a union does not mean our members are “anti-union.” I personally find the “pro-reform vs. pro-union” or “corporate vs. union” rhetoric tired and unhelpful.

The writer states that SFER pretends to be an “open discussion group”—that’s incorrect for a number of reasons. Our organizing model goes far beyond being a debate society. Instead, we empower and support the individual stories and values of our members who attended local public schools. We encourage the writer to hear these real student voices on Twitter at #realSFERvoices. Our members tell stories speaking from personal experiences—often from exposure to educational inequity in their own lives and communities. We encourage The Nation to ask our members whether, at any time, SFER’s donors played a role in their motivations to join SFER or shaped their beliefs in education politics and policy.

Much of the writer’s blog post focuses on our work in Chicago. While we understand the writer chooses that city as his focus, we believe it presents a skewed picture of our movement given that our students are most active in Los Angeles, Minnesota, Louisiana, New Jersey, Massachusetts and North Carolina. Had the writer contacted any of our students beyond his hand-picked disgruntled former members in Chicago, he would have learned that the majority of our members and chapter leaders attended local public schools, identify as students of color and, for many, are the first in their family to attend college.

In Chicago, our former program director, with our support, did invite both a teacher and a spokesperson from the mayor’s office to discuss the teacher’s strike. We were glad to hear the number of perspectives on the strike, including the perspectives of our own members such as Christina Lamas, who attended Chicago Public Schools and published an op-ed about the strike.

We have had one staff transition in Chicago, but the writer’s speculation about the reasons for the transition is petty and borders on defamation. We call on the writer to retract his statement implying that the reason for the transition was related to the program director’s personal views about the CTU strike. At no time did the writer reach out to us for comment on that personnel decision. At no time did the writer contact our new Illinois program director, Tanesha Peeples, herself an alum of Chicago Public Schools and an experienced community organizer. We would hope that next time, Tanesha and our Chicago student members and leaders would have an opportunity to tell their stories.

The outside observer reading George Joseph’s post may assume him to be an unbiased reporter. In fact, it’s important to note that he is a blogger with a prior bias against Students for Education Reform. If Joseph wants to position himself as a reporter rather than blogger, then we call on him to reveal his personal stance on education policy issues before writing blatantly slanted posts defaming our organization. We call on him to reveal that he is a close personal friend of Stephanie Rivera, one of the founders of Students United for Public Education, a group praised by Diane Ravitch and other critics of student and parent choice. We call on him to reveal that he has rallied against our members and has a long-standing vendetta against our organization, which he has demonstrated in his prior—similarly slanted and misleading—blog posts and comments that indicate his disdain for our members’ personal stories. I have no problem with Joseph’s opposition to SFER, but I do have a problem with him pretending to be an unbiased reporter.

Finally, Joseph focuses on a few chapters who have disaffiliated from our large national coalition, jumping to the false conclusion that there is a “rebellion” within. I am happy to address this conclusion—I find it dramatized and overblown. We have no problem with student groups deciding that they have a different mission, and we support disaffiliation at any time. Our members believe in taking action based on personal stories and values, for example, and if a student group chooses to position itself as a discussion or a debate society then we are happy for them to chart their own course.

We are proud to have a unique student organizing model with a mission, principles and core values. We’re also proud of the diversity of student voices and stories within our movement, and of the deliberation process our members go through before taking action. What’s so exciting and inspiring about our student-led movement is that every chapter is different, yet shares a core commitment to our mission and model. As a movement, our strength lies in the independence and unique approach taken by each chapter; our ability to create positive change for kids lies in our commitment to each other to be a movement and take collective action. But we understand that approach isn’t for everyone, and are supportive of chapters that decide to branch off. Over the past two years, student clubs at Wesleyan, Haverford, University of Chicago and DePaul have disaffiliated, and we have supported that decision.

I have a lot of respect for all the former chapter leaders at those schools who have disaffiliated and remain friends with many. It’s always a tough call, but we support our leaders who choose not to affiliate with our national coalition. We have over 130 individual, independent campus chapters, and we believe it is healthy—and in fact, demonstrates our chapters’ independence—for a handful to disaffiliate each year, just as new chapters regularly join.

But let us be defined by those who are a part of us, rather than those who are not. Let our members like Kevin Sanchez and Miledy Hernandez, who submitted blog posts to The Nation, be heard. Let readers at The Nation know that we are a movement of diverse voices, diverse stories and diverse backgrounds.

We encourage readers of The Nation to see the diverse movement our members have built. Over the next few weeks, follow us at @sfernational on Twitter and see the pictures we post, the articles our members write, the testimony they give, the events we plan. Come see our good work for yourselves. I think you’ll be impressed.

From Tallahassee to Mexico City, the Youth Uprising Continues

StudentNation on August 2, 2013 - 1:59 PM ET

The Dream 9 in Nogales, Arizona, July 22. (Credit: Natonal Immigrant Youth Alliance

E-mail questions, tips or proposals to studentmovement@thenation.com. For earlier dispatches on student and youth organizing, check out last week’s post. Edited by James Cersonsky (@cersonsky).

1. When Will the Dream 9 Be Set Free?

How would you feel if you were forced to leave your home? Your family? Everything you’ve ever known? For undocumented youth, this is exactly what’s demanded of them. Either through deportation or lack of access to jobs and education, many are forced to leave for countries that are foreign to them. On July 18, three undocumented youth from the National Immigrant Youth Alliance left the US, where they have grown up for the majority of their lives, and went to Mexico. On July 22, they presented themselves to US Customs and Border Patrol agents in Nogales, Arizona, with six other youth who had been deported, and were arrested and detained at Eloy Detention Center. Joined by 70 other detainees, they have all been on hunger strike for the past week. Nationwide, the Bring Them Home campaign has urged immigrants and supporters to fight for the Dream 9—and the many more like them—to be allowed to come home. In the past, we’ve stopped hundreds of deportations by forcing the Department of Homeland Security to move its ugly business out from behind closed doors. We have infiltrated detention centers, participated in acts of civil disobedience and occupied campaign and congressional offices to force both friends and foes to take a stand. We’ve found the next door to kick down, and we won’t stop until we’ve won.

—National Immigrant Youth Alliance

2. What’s at Risk With Voluntary Detention?

Right before Lulu, an Undocuqueer activist in Chicago, left for Mexico City, we had many conversations about what we needed to do to empower the community to come out of the shadows and defend itself from more deportations. Within the detention center, the women collecting stories are organizing other women to fight their detention and threat of deportation. We remain autonomous UndocuQueer artivists with a strong stance against these injustices happening in our communities. As the most affected by anti-immigrant laws and people, we feel the need to speak for ourselves even if it means sacrificing our freedom.

—Nicolas Gonzalez Medina

3. Obama v. America

Aside from the 2 million who have already been deported under the Obama administration, it’s estimated that nearly 5 million will not qualify for Registered Provisional Status under S.744, the Senate’s draconian immigration bill. Right now, we are asking President Obama to grant the DREAM 9 humanitarian parole and are calling for their immediate release. Numerous states from New York to Pennsylvania, Kentucky to California, have held solidarity actions calling for the release of the DREAM 9. On July 24, the New York State Youth Leadership Council organized a human chain outside of Senators Gillibrand’s and Schumer’s offices. We will continue to pressure New York legislators to actively fight for the release of the DREAM 9 and will begin a hunger strike next week to stand in solidarity with the DREAM 9—who are also on a hunger strike. These actions will continue until the Obama administration delivers its verdict.

—Razeen Zaman

4. Ryan v. Wisconsin

On July 26, hundreds of immigrant students, along with our families and activists, confronted Congressman Paul Ryan at a bilingual town hall meeting on federal immigration reform in Racine, Wisconsin. Students from Youth Empowered in the Struggle and Voces de la Frontera pressed Ryan on the need for citizenship for DREAMers and our parents. Twelve adults in the crowd, along with all children present, stood up to represent the twelve families that are torn apart by deportation every month in Racine. My grandfather recently passed away; because of current immigration laws, my father and I couldn’t see him the last thirteen years. Mine is just one of many similiar stories that the Congressman heard at the town hall. Ryan discussed a proposed timeline for piecemeal legislation with five separate bills. One of the bills included a path to citizenship that could take up to fifteen years—far from broad legislation that would prioritize family unity and a path to citizenship for all 11 million undocumented immigrants.

—Valeria Ruiz

5. Dream Defenders Launch Special Session

#TakeoverFL started on July 16, the first official Takeover Tuesday. Dream Defenders from across Florida came together to march into Governor Rick Scott’s office and demand a special legislative session to correct the environment in Florida that led to the death of Trayvon Martin and the acquittal of George Zimmeman. Scott was not in his office, but we made a commitment to stay until our demands were met. On day three, we met with the governor and laid out Trayvon’s Law, which addresses racial profiling, the repeal of Stand Your Ground and the school-to-prison pipeline. We demanded that he convene a special session—which he rejected. On Friday, July 26, we called a mass mobilization to the capitol and a visit from long time activist and entertainer Harry Belafonte. Around 500 people filled the capitol from the governor’s office out to the rotunda. We announced the proclamation that would be signed by the governor if he called a session. On Tuesday, July 30, our fifteenth day of living in the Capitol, we held Florida’s very first People’s Session, a special session to write, review and debate Trayvon’s Law, and were joined by Reverend Jesse Jackson. We have taken the necessary steps because the governor and the legislature have failed to do so themselves.

—Melanie Andrade

6. Youth of Color Ride to Florida

On June 24, Philadelphia’s Youth United for Change went to Tallahassee, Florida, to support the Dream Defenders on its campaign to end racial profiling, the school-to-prison pipeline and the oppression of black youth. Alongside people from DC, Baltimore, New York and Florida—and Harry Belafonte—we made a statement of youth power. Dream Defenders’ work is very similar to YUC’s, which includes Pushed Out, a campaign to address the drop-out crisis in Philadelphia, and Safe to Count on Me, a response to curfew laws and zero tolerance policies in schools. These problems have scared our communities across the country. YUC supports Trayvon’s Law.

—Tone Elliott

7. At Swarthmore, Title IX Breaks Ground

On July 12, the Office of Civil Rights announced a federal investigation of Swarthmore College for allegedly mishandling reports of sexual assault and sexual harassment. Thirteen students claimed that the College had violated Title IX, after receiving a staff member tip-off that the administration had taken steps to actively cover up or even destroy evidence of sexual assaults on campus. Four days after the announcement, Swarthmore announced major changes to its sexual assault policy which included hiring a new, full-time Title IX Coordinator, eliminating the Drug and Alcohol Counselor/Administrative Liaison to Fraternities position, hiring an advocate for survivors of sexual assault and harassment and reviewing the current alcohol policy. The College has stated that it is committed to fully complying with the federal investigation. While these developments are positive, we remain determined to hold Swarthmore accountable for its past missteps.

—Hope Brinn and Parker Murray

8. At Cooper Union, Free Education Lives

On July 12, Free Cooper Union’s sixty-five-day occupation of the presidents’ office ended with a negotiated agreement between the occupiers and the Board of Trustees. The board agreed to form a 16-member Working Group seeking alternatives to tuition, create a dedicated space on campus for organizing and grant amnesty to occupiers. This year’s incoming freshmen will receive full-tuition scholarships for their entire time at Cooper. Meanwhile, supporters of FCU are gradually taking over the board and Alumni Association. We’re working closely with trustees Mike Borkowsky and Jeff Gural on the Working Group; a write-in campaign during the occupation seated Friends of Cooper’s John Leeper and trust and transparency advocate Kevin Slavin as trustees; student representatives will join the board in December; and the Alumni Association Council, packed with FCU supporters, has begun to hold monthly, public, livestreamed meetings. Now, we’re building independent channels of communication and kicking off a “parallel fundraising” campaign. We’ve successfully incorporated FCU and are seeking fiscal sponsorship so we can start taking in tax-deductible donations. In the fall, we’ll be conducting a “disorientation” for incoming freshmen.

—Kristi Cavataro, Jon Cuba, Josiah Ellis, Casey Gollan and Anna Vila

9. In San Francisco, City College Holds On

While California undertakes sweeping reforms that will limit the accessibility of community colleges, the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges moved to disaccredit City College of San Francisco, effectively closing it by July 2014. For two years, students have worked in solidarity with faculty, staff and community to protect the mission of City College as an accessible, affordable and democratic institution. We have held teach-ins and rallies, lobbied elected officials and engaged the San Francisco Bay Area and the entire campus community to resist the downsizing of our college and the rise of privatization. Once we heard ACCJC’s decision, thousands came out to support our demonstration in front of the Department of Education in San Francisco in July. We know our college’s record of high academic quality—and that the ACCJC is an arm of the movement to privatize education, led by foundations like Lumina and Gates. We are working to build unity with faculty, unions and students elsewhere to resist privatization and promote the narrative that education is a human right.

—Shanell Williams

10. In Chicago, Students Don’t Shut Down

The Chicago Students Organizing to Save Our Schools participated in another speakout during the Chicago Board of Education meeting this past Wednesday, July 24. Students focused on themes ranging from charter expansion, to school closures and budget cuts, all the way to a “Declaration of Education.” Each speech ended with the same question to the board: “Are you listening to us now?” The final student delivered a speech asking the board to agree to CSOSOS’s demands: monthly meetings between students and the board; an elected, rather than appointed, board; and the usage of excess funding from Chicago’s TIF program for public schools. The board ignored the question; in response, the student began a “mic-check,” and others began chanting while creating a human chain. Within moments, security officers forced the students out of the Board of Education building.

—Chicago Students Organizing to Save Our Schools

Interns' Favorite Articles of the Week (8/2/13)

StudentNation on August 2, 2013 - 11:15 AM ET

Members of the Republican Guards stand in line at a barricade blocking protesters supporting deposed Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi (pictured in poster) near a Republican Guards headquarters in Cairo, July 9, 2013. (Reuters/Khaled Abdullah)

— Darren Ankrom focuses on climate change.

Follow @darren_ankrom

“US Cities Sinking Under Climate Change, Study Suggests.” Huffington Post Canada, July 30, 2013.

A new study claims that 1,700 US cities and towns, including Miami and New York City, could fall below sea level by 2100 if the climate continues to change at its current pace. At least eighty areas could be underwater within the next decade barring a “sharp and immediate curb in greenhouse gas emissions.” These are jarring numbers highlighting the need for action much stronger and more immediate than anything President Obama has proposed thus far. Without it, we’re likely ensuring significant changes to the American coastline.

— Humna Bhojani focuses on the War on Terror and the Middle East.

Follow @bhojani_h

“Wildcatting: A Stripper’s Guide to the Modern American Boomtown,” by Susan Elizabeth Shepard. Buzzfeed, July 25, 2013.

American mining and drilling towns through the eyes of strippers: this is a fascinating piece showing how the struggles of female exotic dancers mirror those of the towns to which they cater. This piece has everything: the pursuit of the American dream in dreary motel rooms, shitty wages paid in Walmart gift cards, the slow environmental rape of beautiful towns and the American miner finding respite in sex.

— Rick Carp focuses on media, psychology and environmentalism.

Follow @rick_carp

“Missing the Forest and the Trees,” by Steven Dewitt. Earth Island Journal, July 26, 2013.

This photojournalism project features pictures of forests filled with North American lodgepole pines, which are being ravaged by mountain pine beetles. The beetle population used to be kept in check because many of them would die during late fall/early spring freezes, but a warming climate has steadily curbed that process. And now the beetle population has reached “epic proportions” with very destructive consequences.

— Keenan Duffey focuses on Middle East national politics.

Follow @LarryOfMcArabia

“Egypt’s civilians should control military,” by Steven Cook. Politico, July 4, 2013.

The recent coup in Egypt has created strange bedfellows among Middle Eastern activists and analysts. The secular protestors in Egypt have sided with an anti-democratic coup, while the usually conservative thinking of the Council on Foreign Relations now overlaps with the demands of the Muslim Brotherhood. Steven Cook, who is no friend of the Muslim Brotherhood, does a good job explaining the ways civilians must increase their power over the military in Egypt, or Egypt can never hope to sustain democratic governance.

— Prashanth Kamalakanthan focuses on racism, imperialism, and student/worker activism.

Follow @pkinbrief

“Obama’s Master Class is Demagogy 101,” by Michael Hudson. Naked Capitalism, July 28, 2013.

Michael Hudson, an economics professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, harshly critiques Obama’s recent rhetoric on the struggling middle class. “The idea,” he notes, “is that if a President can spell out how unfair the economy is, voters will imagine that he will take the next step and do something about it.” Shockingly, he shows how some 80 percent of workers’ incomes (40 percent housing, 10 percent bank debt, 15 percent FICA withholding, 15 percent for income/sales tax) are distributed to the FIRE sector before they can even begin to spend their money. Hudson moreover points out a number of ways in which Obama has helped intensify household indebtedness—what he sees as the biggest drag on the economy—and warns that talk of infrastructure spending signals a Trojan Horse of public-private partnerships where, again, “taxpayers will foot the bill to pay Wall Street.”

— Eunji Kim focuses on gender, race, media and East Asian politics.

Follow @eunjiiikim

“Statue Brings Friction Over WWII Comfort Women To California,” by Aaron Schrank. KUHF Houston Public Radio, July 29, 2013.

As a Korean and as a feminist, this part of my country’s history is hurtful. It’s painful to know that this happened to so many Asian women (the number of enslaved women falls somewhere between 80,000 and 200,000, according to Amnesty International), but it’s even more painful to know this still haunts the surviving victims. While it’s important that Japanese and Korean governments take this issue to heart, I find it equally important that this isn’t simply dismissed as the past. After all, such acts of violence against women still continue in various parts of the world, including communities close to us.

— Samantha Lachman focuses on reproductive justice, health care access and intersectionality.

Follow @samlachman

“America Is a Place Where Doctors Need Bullet Proof Vests to Protect Themselves from Christian Fundamentalists,” by Valerie Tarico. Alternet, July 25, 2013.

In the wake of the murder of Dr. George Tiller in Wichita, Julie Burkhart founded the “Trust Women” PAC and Foundation and has just opened a new clinic on the site of Tiller’s old one. I was struck by one line of Burkhart’s: “What good are politics if there are no providers and clinics?” Her courage in the face of constant harassment and stalking is admirable, as is the essential service that’s she’s providing to women not just in the community, but in the region. “It’s unfair to abandon women in our part of the country simply because the climate is so hostile,” she remarks. The interview provides great insight into both the perspective of the women who travel there, and into the challenges that those opening (or trying to keep open) clinics face given increasingly insurmountable state-imposed restrictions.

— Rebecca Nathanson focuses on social movements, student organizing and labor.

Follow @beckynathanson

“For Fast-Food Strikers in New York, It’s About ‘Moral Values,’” by Sarah Jaffe. In These Times, July 30, 2013.

This week, in yet another example of workers organizing outside of traditional unions, fast-food workers around the country went on strike in a coordinated effort to bring attention to wage-theft and poor working conditions. In this article, Sarah Jaffe not only captures the optimistic feeling of these actions but draws a very important parallel between the fast-food strikers and the “Moral Monday” protesters in North Carolina: both groups are reclaiming the language of morality from the conservative right.

— Jake Scobey-Thal focuses on human rights and conflict in Asia and Africa

Follow @jakescobey

“When Liberian Soldiers Grow Up,” by Clair MacDougall. Newsweek/Daily Beast, July 31, 2013.

Thousands of girls who fought in Liberia’s civil wars are coming of age. Liberia’s wars were notoriously brutal—government and rebel militias have been implicated in mass atrocities including systematic torture and rape. McDougall tells the story of one former child soldier and challenges she faces in moving beyond the war.

— Aviva Stahl focuses on Islamophobia in the US and the UK and its links to racism, homophobia/transphobia and the prison industrial complex.

Follow @stahlidarity

“Dream 9 Mom: ‘My Son Is a Warrior,’” by Aura Bogado. Colorlines, July 26, 2013.

Last Monday, nine activists with the National Immigrant Youth Alliance—“Dreamers” who were raised in the United States but do not have legal status—attempted to return to the country they have long called home. In this article, Aura Bogado speaks to family members and friends of Marco Saavedra, one of the participants who risked being permanently separated from his family by crossing into Mexico for this action. The Dream 9 are facing harsh conditions at Eloy, the private, for-profit detention center where they are being held. As of Tuesday, thirty-three members of Congress had signed a letter to Obama asking for their release.

— John Thomason focuses on pieces that situate contemporary American political debates in historical and/or intellectual contexts.

Follow @john_thom_

“The MOOC Racket,” by Jonathan Rees. Slate, July 25, 2013.

Critiques of MOOCs (massive online open courses) by university faculty are nothing new, but few cover the bases as well as this one. And it gets at the conceptual truth that MOOCs are the quintessential corporate solution: the MOOC regime privileges management and administration over labor, markets a cheap luxury good (online lectures) as a necessity, enriches the few (the ‘superstar’ instructors and MOOC distributors) and decimates the bargaining power of labor.

Students for Education Reform: The Rebellion Within

George Joseph and StudentNation on August 1, 2013 - 12:41 PM ET

Thousands of public school teachers march on streets surrounding the Chicago Public Schools district headquarters on the first day of strike action over teachers' contracts on Monday, September 10, 2012 in Chicago. (AP Photo/Sitthixay Ditthavong)

This post was corrected on August 5 at 11:48 to delete the mistaken accusation that SFER received money from SUPER Pacs

In the midst of the Chicago school closings, New York City’s new high-stakes testing teacher evaluation method, and the accelerating privatization of the American education system, it often seems that the corporate throttle on education reform is unshakeable.

One glimmer of hope for public education comes from an unlikely source—Students For Education Reform. “SFER,” a student group I have criticized in the past for its hedge fund backing and deceptive agenda, is undergoing a rebellion from members within, a hopeful indication that the corporate narrative on education may finally be starting to unravel.

The college student club has won national attention over the last three years for its promotion of the charter school movement and other fashionable privatizing initiatives.

“I came into my first year pretty interested in education. SFER was growing pretty rapidly,” said Matthew Collins, founder of the University of Chicago SFER chapter. “I caught wind of it in Time’s top twelve activists list. I was hoping to start some organization on campus, and there were no other education policy groups.”

Behind the altruistic intentions of student organizers like Collins are millions of dollars from anti-union corporate groups like ALEC and the Walton Family Foundation, who profit from the PR benefits of a seemingly grassroots student movement backing state attempts to “hold teachers accountable” and “put students first.” While the national organization strives hard to maintain the façade of an open discussion group, students who seek to explore alternative perspectives on the education reform debate tell of being systematically shut off and misled, forced to take directives from a national organization flooded with corporate donations.

During last year’s Chicago Teachers’ strike, for instance, DePaul University SFER members wanted to hear a voice other than SFER’s handpicked spokesperson from the mayor’s office. After failing to reach out to the CTU, SFER later abruptly “replaced” the Illinois Program director who had suggested it would be a good idea to hear from a teacher. Furthermore, despite promises of chapter autonomy, DePaul members consistently felt that SFER’s approach was blatently one-sided, unconditionally supporting the “school turnarounds and the power of the mayor.”

By investing in their own “student movement” at the university level, the SFER funders have distracted from the voices of students and teachers actually affected by the neoliberal push to standardize and privatize education. While students from Philadelphia and Newark public schools have recently organized massive walkouts in protest of draconian budget cuts, SFER’s rallies in favor of charter schools and high stakes testing pose as a legitimate alternative student movement, despite usually featuring an unpresentative cluster of elite university students.

Fortunately, SFER members themselves are beginning to wake up to the motives of the national branch, particularly in Chicago, where the devastating impact of Rahm Emanuel’s school closings are impossible to ignore. Last month, the University of Chicago and DePaul University chapters made the decision to disaffiliate from SFER’s national apparatus, citing their inability to foster fair discussion while being handicapped by the national organization’s dogmatism.

In DePaul’s disaffiliation letter to SFER national, the group voiced its dissatisfaction with the national organization’s consistently one-sided, anti-teacher narrative, in spite of the chapter’s own attempts to bring in voices from the community. Recalling a similar experience, University of Chicago chapter leader Collins said, “It was disappointing to see a lack of engagement from national on these major issues. The school closings were a huge problem to comprehend and this past quarter we were very surprised by the lack of engagement on it by national.”

Hinting at the powers behind the throne in its gently worded letter, the DePaul chapter explained that, contrary to SFER’s deep ties with union-busting groups like Teach For America and the Academy for Urban School Leadership, “true change in education will come in the form of grass-root organizing- involving students, parents, and communities alike.”

Likewise, the University of Chicago chapter released a letter of disaffiliation that stressed the need for less scripted discussion and a truly grassroots movement that actually listened to the voices of students.

Hannah Nguyen, a USC sophomore, recalls entering college, eager to become a teacher: “I thought SFER would be the perfect group, but it seemed that they didn’t actually seek to engage with and elevate students—the ones actually experiencing this everyday reality.” Nguyen soon quit the group, after finding that SFER preferred a “top-down” approach, as her chapter president put it, rather than actively organizing with community members. “The president referred to students as ‘babies’, which I found condescending,” she said. “SFER speaks for students, instead of letting them speak for themselves.”

Consequently, new groups are springing up like Students United for Public Education, with which Nguyen is now affiliated, and which has spread to ten campuses across in the country in conscious opposition to SFER. We knew something was up about SFER, they consistently failed to show both sides of the debate,” said SUPE cofounder, Stephanie Rivera. “Some University of Wisconsin students and I were angry about the misleading agenda they were promoting. So we decided why not create an organization that solely exists to defend public education?”

What You Should Know About the National Student Power Convergence

James Cersonsky and StudentNation on July 31, 2013 - 12:40 PM ET

On August 1, students from across the country—Dream Defenders, Moral Monday arrestees, high schoolers resisting school closings and police brutality, statewide organizers from Ohio, New York, California and beyond—will descend on Madison, Wisconsin, for the second annual National Student Power Convergence. Last year, Columbus, Ohio, hosted the first. The charge: trading tactics and experiences, elevating disenfranchised voices, linking struggles from different regions to build something bigger. Prior to this week’s convergence, The Nation spoke with Stephanie Rivera, a founder of Students United for Public Education; Alyssia Osorio, the Northeast regional organizer for Movement Summer, a program working in conjunction with the convergence; and Kirin Kanakkanatt, the convergence’s project director.

James Cersonsky: Last year was the first convergence. What kind of movement-building have you seen come out of it?

Alyssia Osorio: Out of last year’s convergence, a lot of statewide student organizations have formed, like the Colorado Student Power Alliance and the North Carolina Student Power Union. When I came to the convergence, I was a New York student, and I knew absolutely no one. Right after, I joined up with New York Students Rising. I was a part of actions regarding twenty-four-hour library accessibility at my school, then a campaign around a multicultural gender resource center on campus. Statewide, we launched a student debt campaign with Jobs with Justice.

Stephanie Rivera: Coming from the convergence, I helped start Student United for Public Education. Before then, we didn’t really see a student organization at the higher ed level that was focused on K-12 education or defending public education. Since we launched in November, we now have about eleven chapters. We’ve been going to public meetings, challenging charter schools, fighting against parent trigger laws. We had one of our chapters, in Chicago, provide a space for high school students to organize and reflect on the movement that they want to build in their own community.

Kirin Kanakkanatt: A lot of the success that we’ve seen in this past year—especially in the wake of this radical conservatism, especially as a woman of color—I think draws from coming together and seeing each other. We’re always acknowledging that every conversation that we have is contributing to the movement. Especially with groups like SUPE or Dream Defenders—it’s not something that’s happening in Egypt, or Chile, or [just] on Twitter.

As organizers, what will it take to continue growing the movement?

KK: For me, I think that we need to start looking at intersectionality and recognizing that it’s not just some magical vocabulary word that progressives throw around. You have to start internalizing that narrative, and internalizing what that really means. Identity is a process. Once we start really thinking and living through what it is, that’s where we think about where we want to go. If we want to think about “another world is possible,” we need to see each other as humans, working face-to-face.

SR: In order to get there, it’s so important for us to step back and remember why we’re in the student movement. Often when we’re in organizing, it’s getting the work done, physical tasks. We become robotic.

AO: When I think of the American student movement, I think we have to think of it as part of an international student movement, because young people all over the world are experiencing a lot of oppression, and students have been leading voices in fighting back. That’s how I see things like immigration, and LGBTQ rights, and racism and colorlism—beyond the political binaries of Republican and Democrat.

Kirin, you hit on the idea of putting “intersectionality” into practice and building an inclusive movement. As organizers, what does this look like?

KK: In general, making sure that people feel seen without just having quotas. For me, it’s not assuming experiences. I’m 23 years old and dropped out of college—just being aware of what I don’t know and leading from that. I had this opportunity to meet Harry Belafonte. I was feeling really stressed about the amount of work that it would take to make the convergence possible. He told me, at the end of the day, you need to always know where you, yourself, are going.

SR: From what I see, students don’t have a voice in what’s happening in their schools—especially historically marginalized populations. We are working to make sure that voices of the high school kids are leading the chapters. They’re the ones who know their schools best. How can we work with our college chapter leaders to make sure that they aren’t telling high school and middle schoolers what to do, but empowering them?

AO: A lot of the time stop-and-frisk is seen as a racial justice issue; it’s also an LGBTQ issue. Student debt is not just a middle-class problem but a lower-class problem. Looking at all the different scopes of the issue is what it means to be inclusive.

What hopes do you have for this year’s convergence?

SR: Last year, it kind of taught me what organizing was, what on-the-ground activism was. I got to see behind the scenes what it takes to do that—and that it’s possible to do that. Also, learning how all our struggles connect—especially, in K-12 education, getting to learn how that connects to environmental issues, student debt, immigration.

AO: I see the convergence as an opportunity for people to gain skills and tools as well as the support and motivation of—this time—400 people with you. I see the convergence as a launching point into the new semester, a place that sets the tone of organizing. I remember last year, a lot of people made their own caucuses, and talked about their oppression. Going back into the school year, a lot of people were more aware of anti-oppressive politics and how to treat people. I would love to see that again this year.

KK: You can see in the outreach structure—everything is building beyond August 5. Being able to sit in the room and acknowledge one another and genuinely see each other is something that’s really powerful. The convergence seeks to provide the national table under which folks can come and find our similarities—versus “Hey, this is our new national political party.” This is a launching point.

Fossil Fuel Divestment Is About More Than Reducing Emissions

Ali Roseberry-Polier and StudentNation on July 30, 2013 - 4:09 PM ET

Anti–mountaintop removal activist Larry Gibson, who passed away last year, saw most of his family’s land on Kayford Mountain in West Virginia razed by the coal industry. (Flickr / Blaine O’Neill)

This article was originally published by the invaluable Waging Nonviolence.

Two and a half years ago, I arrived home from the last of several trips to West Virginia, where I had gone with a group of ten fellow Swarthmore College students to witness the impact of mountaintop removal coal mining. Knowing that our school was invested in this practice that is decimating rural communities—and wanting to support their organizing against it—we decided to ask Swarthmore to divest its stock holdings from fossil fuels. Although we knew that our school wouldn’t have a huge impact on the situation, we hoped our actions would encourage other schools to start similar campaigns—thereby drawing more attention to the daily struggles of people on the frontlines of fossil fuel extraction, and possibly even posing a threat to the industry itself.

By certain measures, we’ve had more success than we could have ever imagined. There are now over 300 student campaigns for divestment and already six colleges, numerous cities, towns and churches have committed to pull their money out of fossil fuel stock. Additionally, over the past two weeks, I’ve spoken to organizers in the United Kingdom, Europe, Japan, Australia and South Africa who want to start divestment campaigns in their countries. Even President Obama lent support to the movement during his recent speech on climate change. And The New York Times just published its second story on divestment, which noted the president’s speech and the power of a large-scale movement to spark meaningful government action.

Despite all the positive attention, however, there’s been little-to-no mention of the environmental justice issues that inspired me and my classmates to push for divestment in the first place. Much of the discussion—not just in the media, but within the movement itself—has revolved around finding so-called market solutions to the current crisis, without recognizing the role of the profit-driven economic system in creating it. In other words: How can we be sure these market solutions won’t just continue to exploit front-line communities or create new ones?

Part of divestment’s strength as a tactic is that it can appeal to many people who take issue with the fossil fuel industry, regardless of their political beliefs. And while I understand that we need such diversity to build a strong movement, I can’t help but feel that we are selling ourselves—as well as the people living on the front-lines of extraction—short when we focus solely on carbon emissions and the future of our planet. For me, divestment—and more broadly environmental and climate justice—has always been about fighting fossil fuel extraction and working in solidarity with those whose homes, communities and lives are already being threatened.

Right after President Obama said the word “divest,” he stated that “there’s no contradiction between a sound environment and strong economic growth.” But if you ask the people whose communities and environment are being destroyed by the pursuit of profit from energy extraction and processing, you’re likely to get a different answer. Certainly President Obama’s proposed solutions—such as increased fracking—would not provide a “sound environment” for people living along the Marcellus Shale region in Pennsylvania and New York. Furthermore, when the entire issue is framed as being about carbon emissions, the other threats posed by fossil fuels go overlooked. For instance, the Keystone XL pipeline is not just a concern because of the carbon it would release, but also because of the threat it poses to indigenous communities at the points of extraction in Alberta, Canada, and to working-poor communities of color in Texas, where the oil is refined. As we search for solutions, we need to make sure that they do not come at anyone’s expense.

I hope that college presidents, mayors, churches, heads of pension funds and many others follow President Obama’s demand and divest from fossil fuels. I also hope that we can find ways to cut back on national carbon emissions. I just don’t want this “mass political movement” that The New York Times is heralding to stop there. I hope that it can become a movement about environmental, climate and economic justice that addresses the intersecting issues of race, class and the environment. I want us to find solutions that challenge the underlying problems causing the crisis, not just the individual corporations that are causing the most harm.

Student Power '13

StudentNation on July 30, 2013 - 11:48 AM ET

The Nation will be reporting from the 2013 National Student Power Convergence taking place in Madison, Wisconsin, starting on August 1. Last year's Convergence, the first of its kind, inspired and informed a year of unified student action. There are still spots left for this year's confab. Register here — food, housing, and registration are all free!