StudentNation | The Nation

In December, the University of California abandoned its sleek new logo in response to widespread outcry from students and alumni. Some said the logo looked like a fruit label. Others saw a kickboard. But the general consensus among the nearly 55,000 signatories of a petition demanding a restoration of the old logo—which features an open book and the university’s motto, “Let There Be Light”—was that the new one appeared overly corporate, more befitting of an Internet startup than an esteemed center of learning and discovery.

The logo debacle is not an anomaly. It is simply the most visible manifestation of a drastic change in the way public education across the United States is being marketed, financed and administered. It is well known that public universities are facing an identity crisis. States are drastically scaling back support for higher learning, forcing public universities to find new revenue sources. Tuition increases, out-of-state enrollment drives, increased class sizes, online instruction and investment in profitable medical and sports facilities have become the signature strategies of “privatization.” University administrators have maintained that privatization is now the sine qua non of public university survival.

While the fiscal woes of public universities are indeed dire, the quality and extent of institutions’ swift and deep embrace of corporate strategy is not simply a matter of necessity. Public universities are corporatizing because they are increasingly led by administrators with business backgrounds and ongoing ties to Wall Street. These leaders see the problems facing public universities, and the best solutions to them, in business terms. Consequently, as public universities struggle to rebrand and refinance, they often lose sight of their core missions.

(Credit: Flickr/Takver)

A new movement to convince colleges and universities to divest from fossil fuel companies that own the majority of global carbon reserves has taken off across the nation. The inspiration for this wave of activism originated in a Rolling Stone article by Bill McKibben last summer. Coordinated by 350.org, divestment is spreading like wildfire. With cities, religious groups, individuals, and 210 campuses already involved, divestment has brought climate change to the forefront of local and national dialogues.

I became an environmental activist at the age of twelve, and my commitment has never wavered. Still, I have been frustrated by fragmentation and insularity within the environmental movement. Now as a student leader of Divest Harvard, I have seen how divestment is engaging more students than any similar campaign in the past twenty years. Why is it so successful?

When I arrived on campus at Rutgers University in 2009, my Jewish identity was the furthest thing from my mind. The thrill of selecting my own coursework, meeting new friends, and seeing just how much I could consume at the university dining halls seemed more pressing. It wasn’t until my interview for Taglit-Birthright’s sponsored trip to Israel, when I was asked, “What type of Jew do you consider yourself?” that the question of my Judaism became salient; I found myself responding, “Russian-Jew more than anything else.”

It was from this answer that my Jewish journey at Rutgers began. By the end of the fall semester of my sophomore year, with the help of a fellow student, Jane Vorkunova, and the support of the Rutgers Hillel community, I founded the university’s Rutgers Hillel Russian-Jewish Club.

The need for such an organization seemed to me to be rooted in the bipolarity of the Russian-Jewish identity.  On the one hand, we are Russians. We listen to the same music, eat the same pelmeni (Russian dumplings), and watch the same television programs with our families. However, in Russian, to claim your identity as a “Russian-Jew” is an oxymoron. The term “Pусский” (pronounced “Russkie”) automatically connotes ties with the Russian Orthodox Church—thus, a Russian-Jew could never truly be Russian. Family members living in the 1918 Soviet Union were ethnically designated “Jews” as a “национальност” (pronounced “natsionalnost”) or an ethnicity. Discovering my parents’ USSR passports and seeing their nationality listed as “Jew,” it was odd to see what I’d strictly considered to be my religion and a part of my culture defined as an ethnic identity.  

The nonprofit Vision Maker Media is partnering American Indian and Alaska Native college students with Public Television stations for summer internships, a great opportunity for Native Americans to get a toehold in a media landscape traditionally bereft of Native perspective.

The nonprofit, which receives funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, will select undergraduate and graduate students to complete a 10-week paid internship at a Public Television station in the US. The program is meant to further develop a strong tradition of digital storytelling. Interns can also be located at Vision Maker Media's offices at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

To apply, students should submit a cover letter, resume, work samples, an official school transcript and a letter of recommendation from a faculty member or former supervisor. To find more information and apply, go to visionmakermedia.org/intern. Public Television stations interested in hosting an intern should contact visionmaker@unl.edu.