Steal This University

"Anyone with an interest in the future of American higher education will benefit from reading this collection of provocative and often brilliant essays. There are lucid and cogent analyses of the excessive and often corrupt influence of corporations on curricula and research, profiteering by academic entrepreneurs, the imposition of a demonstrably flawed corporate structure on the academy, and the overuse and abuse of poorly paid contingent faculty. The volume concludes with a call to recapture the university for the good of our students and our society." -- Jane Buck, Ph.D., National President, American Association of University Professors "The strength of the book is in the very readable essays of those authors who are working as or are organizing graduate asssistants, adjunct faculty, or tenure-track faculty. It is an accessible anthology for undergraduates as well as graduate students...this volume has a great deal to offer." -- Journal of Higher Education

Benjamin Johnson is Assistant Professor of History at Southern Methodist University. Patrick Kavanagh is a Staff Representative for the Communication Workers of America in Newark, NJ. Kevin Mattson is Associate Professor of History at Ohio University.

INTRODUCTION: Not Your Father's University or Labor Movement Any Longer Part I: THE RISE OF THE CORPORATE UNIVERSITY 1. None of Your Business: The Rise of the University of Phoenix and For-profit Education - and Why it Will Fail Us All, Ana Marie Cox 2. Digital Diploma Mills, David Noble 3. Inefficient Efficiency: A Critique of Merit Pay, Denise Tanguay 4. The Drain-o of Higher Education: Casual Labor and University Teaching, Benjamin Johnson PART II: LABORING WITHIN 5. How I Became a Worker, Kevin Mattson 6. The Art of Work in the Age of the Adjunct, Alexis Moore 7.Blacklisted and Blue: On Theory and Practice at Yale, Corey Robin 8. Tenure Denied: Union-Busting and Anti-Intellectualism in the Corporate University, Joel Westheimer PART III: ORGANIZING 9.The Campaign for Union Rights at NYU, Lisa Jessup 10. Democracy is an Endless Organizing Drive: Learning from the Failure and Future of Graduate Student Organizing at the University of Minnesota, Michael Brown, Ronda Copher, and Katy Gray Brown 11. Moving River Barges: Labor Activism and Academic Organizations, Cary Nelson 12. Social Movement Unionism and Adjunct Faculty Organizing in Boston, Barbara Gottfried and Gary Zabel 13. Renewing Unions and Democracy at the Same Time: The Case of the California Faculty Association, Susan Meisenhelder (with the writing assistance of Kevin Mattson) Conclusion Notes on Contributors