Over the past week, we’ve learned that MU is laying off the coordinators of all 5 social justice centers at the Columbia campus. These include:
- Gaines/Oldham Black Culture Center
- LGBTQ Resource Center
- Multicultural Center
- Relationship and Sexual Violence Prevention Center
- Women’s Center
Other than the fact of the layoffs, MU has declined to produce any kind of concrete details about how the organization of the social justice centers is changing, except to insist that they aren’t going away and will be even better than before. It’s your normal, everyday, vacuous neoliberal bullshit. We’re left to imagine what exactly they are up to.
There are two issues that I think provide context for what is going on with the social justice centers. The first is the neoliberal restructuring of MU from a liberal arts and sciences university to a research and worker training operation that is designed to primarily benefit private industry which has happened over the last 70 years. The second would be the 2015-2016 protests which were deeply disturbing to conservatives and brought national attention to MU.
The Neoliberal Restructuring of University Education
Back in the day, only families with money could afford to send their children to university, and the purpose of a university was to enhance students by providing them with a broad education, including things like the arts, languages, and philosophy. As Americans realized that real upward mobility required a university degree, more and more people began going to college, which changed the goal of a university education from “growing as a person” or “being well-rounded” to “getting a job”. This is a very long-term trend that began after World War 2.
Simultaneously, American conservatives decided that universities are a breeding ground for dangerous leftist ideas, and sought to squash that kind of culture. (In truth, the people radicalizing their children aren’t usually university professors, but, rather, other young people — but conservatives have never cared about the facts.)
The convergence of these two issues has been to repurpose American universities over the last 70 years to be a combination of worker training centers and producers of basic research to benefit private enterprise. Both neoliberals and conservatives want to produce workers tailored to the current needs of private enterprise, and neither side wants university students to waste time on becoming more well-rounded or really thinking deeply about how the world works. That’s the road that leads to artists and rebels.
The 2015-2016 Protests
While many of today’s MU students might not even be aware of the 2015-2016 protests, they were a very big deal in the media — especially conservative media. Conservatives wanted the protests squashed — they would have been very please if the leaders had been imprisoned or even killed; but instead, the protest just kept going and even though the protest leaders never developed clear goals, they managed to get two administrators fired (or at least that’s how it was perceived at the time). The fact that MU caved to the demands of uppity Black people was deeply disturbing to conservatives, and Missouri conservatives (specifically) found the national attention embarrassing.
Following the protests, the Missouri legislature chose to severely cut funding for higher education (i.e., the University of Missouri system) — a move that I believe was motivated by a desire to punish MU for the protests and the way it had handled the protests. Of course, they’re blaming the economy, but the legislature had enough control over funding that they could have chosen to continue to support higher education.
2016 to Now
Since the 2015-2016 protests, the University has been doubling down on the neoliberal restructuring in every aspect of operations. In terms of diversity and inclusion, this means social justice is not something to strive for, but rather a marketing issue that must be managed to continue attracting liberals (by portraying MU as supportive of social justice) but also conservatives (by portraying MU as focused on providing lucrative job skills and muting the issue of social justice). The goal is to reduce MU’s social justice function to a performance of social justice, but without pissing off liberal MU students.
Simultaneously, administration is no doubt determined to prevent another long-term protest from occurring, and thus needs to get positive control of any of its internal institutions that might contribute to a new one. They know that they can’t satisfy such a protest — because that would piss off conservatives and ultimately constrict the flow of money — so they have to find a way to muffle or erase the demands of MU’s marginalized students. The social justice centers can easily be seen as a place where such a protest might be born, and if the MU-funded leader has more solidarity with the students than with administration, that person might provide structure to student anger.
Everyone at MU is more or less aware of these issues and always looking out for the next sneaky change from administration. So, when administration notified the coordinators of the 5 social justice centers that their jobs were being eliminated, everyone assumed that it was exactly what it looks like — even though we have not been given any details.
That’s the most salient detail of the “restructuring” — the fact that MU hasn’t explained it at all. We’re left to just imagine what it is they’re up to. Here are a few interesting ideas, which I’ll organize from least convincing to most convincing.
1. MU is eliminating the social justice centers to save money. It might be that the initial plan was to eliminate the social justice centers. They’ve denied that this is their plan, and are now saying that the centers will be even better once restructured; however, it’s entirely possible that elimination of the centers was the initial plan and they’re simply doing an about-face in response to the aggressive pushback from the MU community. Regardless, neoliberals claim that every change they make will make things better than ever, so it’s an empty claim. It does seem unlikely, though, that they would eliminate the centers entirely since the do provide a nice bullet point for the marketing department.
2. MU is collapsing the 5 centers into a single one. One read of the facts seems to be that MU is planning to eliminate the separate social justice centers and just have a single, amorphous center that serves all students representing marginalized groups. They’ve now stated that the physical buildings will remain and that the domestic violence center will not really be altered. Despite that, it could definitely be true that in terms of staff organization, the centers are being collapsed down to one center.
3. MU is eliminating expensive staff, reducing total staffing, and replacing some staff with student volunteers. This is how neoliberalism does everything, so it’s a great guess. The only problem is that they are claiming that new positions have been created that are “higher level” which would mean higher pay. What might be the case is that these new executives will preside over a center that doesn’t really do anything except provide a nice bullet point for marketing materials.
4. MU is less interested in saving money than in getting positive control over potentially rebellious marginalized people. To this end, they might want to get rid of existing coordinators because those coordinators are simply more interested in serving the community than in serving administrators. Their replacements would be chosen specifically because of their willingness to comply with administration and quell any potential protests. Administration will view this as making sure that social justice centers promote unity rather than division, which sounds nice until you realize it is the same kind of thinking that says that Obama “sowed division” by simply being elected while Black. The point of the social justice centers from the administration’s point of view is to make sure marginalized people look happy — not to serve their needs or ensure their safety.
I like option 4 because it completely fits with everything MU has said about the restructuring since the lay-off emails were leaked on social media. In their view, social justice centers that focus on the appearance of peace and unity better serve MU students and will “heal wounds” within the campus community — basically, by making the students served by those centers more docile and compliant. However, it seems likely that aspects of the other three options will be present in the restructuring as well.
What we know is not true is that they will be providing more resources and greater autonomy to the social justice centers. That’s simply not possible.
Regardless of how this turns out, I’m personally sick of this shit.