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| | -- By WillDamarjian - 20 Feb 2025 |
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< | “A relation of surveillance, defined and regulated, is inscribed at the heart of the practice of teaching" Foucault Discipline and Punish |
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> | “The free mind is a mind that is constantly practicing and in praxis. Nefarious forces of oppression will always target a mind in praxis and one that is committed to practicing towards freedom.” Birzeit Union of Professors and Employees |
| | Campus Crisis? |
| | Disciplinary Instruction |
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< | Columbia utilizes education as a disciplinary mechanism instructing students in proper values. The Center for Student Success Intervention (CSSI) described its mission for the Spectator, “Instead of ending with the completion of sanctions, student conduct will proceed with the center’s educational approach and guide students to learn from their experiences.” CSSI |
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> | Columbia utilizes education as a disciplinary mechanism instructing students in proper values. The Center for Student Success Intervention described its mission for the Spectator, “Instead of ending with the completion of sanctions, student conduct will proceed with the center’s educational approach and guide students to learn from their experiences.” |
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Another discipline apparatus, the Office of Institutional Equity OIE repeatedly references educational goals in its guidelines “A Report concerning allegations of Prohibited Conduct that would typically result in Sanctions no more severe than a warning or reprimand may proceed through Educational Resolution.”This ‘resolution’ is granted on the basis of mere allegations; a supposed alternative to ‘discipline.’ The disciplinary structures diagnose ‘failing’ students and offer them corrective work. |
| | Resistance |
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< | While more obvious repression is a response to the student solidarity movement, there is a long genealogy of the American university’s role in reproducing cultural hegemony. Small resistance to the logic of discipline through refusing to administer exams or calls to protect international students are insufficient because they do not address the base of the problem. |
| | The very crisis that brings disciplinary pedagogy to the forefront contains a possibility of a way forward. On May 7th, Columbia University Apartheid Divest posted their call to action, “Over 100 people have just flooded Butler Library and renamed it the Basel Al-Araj Popular University…The Popular University is not only a demand for divestment. It is a living counter-institution, a revolutionary pedagogy in practice, and a declaration that another university—and another world—is already in formation.” The protest highlighted the University’s willingness to brutalize its students and the role of officially designated education as a cudgel to alternative education, “Disrupting academic activities in Butler Library during the reading and final exam period, as alleged, is among the most serious violations that can occur under the Rules.” Spectator |
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> | Palestinian struggle offers an alternative model of education. Birzeit professor Khalida Jarrar, imprisoned for her trade unionist activity, hosted university classes from within her prison cell and encouraged her fellow prisoners to study literature as a means of feminist empowerment and mental liberation within the occupation’s prison. In her 2020 letter from prison, Jarrar describes the work of smuggling in literature and learning behind bars, “We are turning the prison into a cultural school where prisoners learn about other experiences and where we spoil the occupation’s attempts to isolate us from the rest of the world.”Letter from Damon Prison |
| | Conclusion |
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< | The absence of cops' formal presence on campus and the relative calm does not demonstrate a return to the ‘true’ mission of the University, to educate not punish. Surveillance allows the University to know and discipline individual students, eliminating the needs for brute force. This is not at odds with education, rather it betrays a sinister pedagogy central to the University. The advance of surveillance technology coupled with the internalization of being watched, normalized judgment, and control over essential resources allows the University to exercise power over everything from walking across a closed lawn to inappropriate speech. |
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> | While more obvious repression is a response to the student solidarity movement, there is a long genealogy of the American university’s role in reproducing cultural hegemony. Small resistance to the logic of discipline through refusing to administer exams or calls to protect international students are insufficient because they do not address the base of the problem. If the campus crisis shows anything, education is not outside of politics but an essential site of struggle. Addressing Columbia’s repression requires looking beyond its most extreme moments and seeing the University in a wider context. This is daunting and can inspire defeatism but through imperfect moments of revolutionary pedagogy aimed at undoing the crime of occupation, Palestinians and their allies show we must look to the past to see our conditions in context and not as immutable characteristics of education and we must take lessons from those working to use education for liberation in the bleakest of circumstances. |
| | Notes: |
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< | Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish 1-92 (Alan Sheridan trans., Vintage Books 2d ed. 1995) (1975). Accessed: https://monoskop.org/images/4/43/Foucault_Michel_Discipline_and_Punish_The_Birth_of_the_Prison_1977_1995.pdf
Legal Education as Training for Hierarchy, in D. Kairys, ed. The Politics of Law (1982, 2nd ed. 1990, 3d ed. 1998) Accessed: https://duncankennedy.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/legal-education-as-training-for-hierarchy_politics-of-law.pdf
Isabella Ramirez, New Center for Student Success and Intervention aims to reimagine student conduct, Columbia Daily Spectator Accessed: https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2022/10/25/new-center-for-student-success-and-intervention-aims-to-reimagine-student-conduct/ |
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> | Refaat Alareer and I both attended UCL but he was killed on December 6th by an Israeli airstrike for daring to write against the genocide of his people. It is not enough to talk about free speech when our government is funding a genocide and Columbia arresting students who dare to oppose it. |
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