Ur wech e oa, ur wech e vo

UC is going global and hoping to get a painless divorce from the state and the people of California. Or so says the long email I got from the Council of UC Faculty Associations:

UC President Mark Yudof and Governor Jerry Brown are working out a deal behind closed doors that will loosen the most important ties between the university and the state.

Although they will both praise the deal by saying that it “stabilizes” funding while granting greater “flexibility,” its essence is that each will let the other off the hook: UC will mute complaints that it does not get enough money from the state and the state will stop holding UC accountable for the money it still gets.

The likely result is that UC will dump a larger number of eligible Californians onto the CSU and Community Colleges, which will in turn pass on their overflow to for-profit schools, where students take on inordinate amounts of debt with a very high likelihood of default.

Here are some key elements of the deal:

* UC will continue to raise tuition-at least 6% based on the Governor’s January budget proposal, likely more now that the Governor’s May revise reduces UC funding by $38 million, and much more if the Governor’s fall tax initiative fails to pass. See this article, pg. 2.

* UC will no longer promise the state that it will admit a fixed number of California students in return for the enrollment funding that the state provides. For next year, and presumably from now on, UC will be allowed to use taxpayer funding as it pleases, without being accountable for the number of in-state students it educates. See this article, pg. 19. This means that UC is likely to enroll fewer California students, and to replace them with out-of-state and international students who pay more. The likely result is that UC will be able make more on average from its enrollments, that the state is likely to pay less, and that middle-income Californians will get less access to UC.

* UC will henceforward be allowed to commingle the state funds it uses for operations, such as teaching, with the funds it uses to pay debt service on new construction. See this article, pg 43. UC has said that this added “flexibility” in its use of both state and non-state funds will allow it to squeeze out more for operations by delaying or stopping unnecessary construction projects. But since 2004 it has been doing the opposite, squeezing operational budgets that could be funded by higher tuition to leverage more construction. The state should have held UC accountable for its use of higher tuition on California students to gain greater access to the construction bond markets, which were impressed by its ability to increase enrollments while raising prices. Instead, the state will give UC carte blanche in its use of both state and non-state funds. It might use this greater flexibility to spend more on construction. But from now on no one will ask, and no one will know. Finally, UC will be able to say that how much it spends to educate Californians and how many of them it enrolls is its own business, and not the state’s. If UC thinks its traditional mission is a money-loser, it can now use its continuing, but declining, revenues from the state to diversify into fields where it sees a brighter future. It will not be expected to draw on its other, more entrepreneurial, activities to subsidize public higher education, but instead will be allowed to use state educational funds to subsidize these other activities – and especially the capital projects necessary to get them off the ground. he core of the agreement between the Governor and UC is that UC will no longer be held accountable for its priorities in the use of any of its resources (public or private) – and especially for making it a priority to educate Californians.

Under Governor Schwarzenegger, UC got the state to agree that it should provide only as much public higher education for Californians as the state is willing to pay for. Under Governor Brown it will be free to provide even less than the state is willing to pay for. Unless this agreement is reversed, state funding for UC will continue to fall as UC separates itself from the rest of California’s Master Plan. We are reaching the point of no return.

For at least a couple months, the *NYT* has had daily first-page articles on putative Iran’s nuclear plans and considered the military and diplomatic solutions available to the US and Israel. It has been blowing hot and cold on the problem, mostly hot. It has been careful, given its patsy role in the move towards war with Iraq (the Judith Miller affair). Today, for the first time as far as I know, the *NYT* mentions Ali Khamenei’s pronouncements on the matter in a piece indicating our intelligence is hard at work decripting the statements of Iran’s theocracy. Some of these pronouncements have been available on the web for a while, but never quoted or linked in articles in major US newspapers. Blowing hot continues at the *NYT*, however, starting with the title, “Seeking Nuclear Insight in Fog of the Ayatollah’s Utterances.” I’ll have to analyze the article in detail, but it’s enough to say it’s not giving us a full report. Quotation from the fifth paragraph:

Ayatollah Khamenei, who is not only the leader of Iran’s government but also the final authority on Islamic law, often uses religious language when he talks about the nuclear issue, which can jar Western analysts trying to gauge the meaning of such strong statements. With tensions over the nuclear program rising in February, he used that language to signal his opposition to nuclear weapons. “Iran is not seeking to have the atomic bomb, possession of which is pointless, dangerous and is a great sin from an intellectual and a religious point of view,” he said.

The words “Nuclear weapons” are linked, and I was hoping it was to the full text of Khamenei’s February declaration to Iranian nuclear personnel, but it goes in fact to a short page on the New Start treaty. I’ll have to get back to all of this.

A lecture of interest presented by the Taube Center for Jewish Studies at Stanford:
Michael Walzer on “Holy war in the Bible—and after,” Tuesday, April 24, 2012 at 7:30pm, Levinthal Hall, Stanford Humanities Center. Reflection from the philosopher Michael Walzer on the holy war tradition in the Bible and later culture. When do we begin to think of holy wars as morally condemnable?

Avot Yeshouroun, an anv kemeret gant Yehiel Perlmutter e 1948, hervez ar wiki, a embannas ur barzhoneg-se e journal *Haaretz*, 23 mae 1952. An degemer a oa fall, kleiz ha dehoù. Met evel ma lavaras: “Al lennegezh hebraek a gasas ac’hanomp da Zion, hag e oa dleet dezhi lavarout ar wirionez diwar biv a veve er bro, n’eo ket lavarout e oa goullo.” (M. Gluzman, *Politics of canonicity*, 2003, 141)

Niverenn 4 eus levr לפני השער האפל pe *Dirak an nor teñval*, adembannet , e David Fogel *Poems*, aozet gant A. Komem (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz hameuchad, 1998. Hebraeg).

Concerning post-modernism and modern historical criticism in Biblical studies. There was a little spat a while ago (3 years!) involving an article written jointly by Aichele, Miscall and Walsh (“An elephant in the room: historical-critical and postmodern interpretations of the Bible.” *JBL* 128 (2009): 383–404.); this article drew an acrid answer from one of the good rational historians of ancient Israel: Van Seters (“A response to G. Aichelle (sic!), P. Miscall and R. Walsh, ‘An elephant in the room: historical-critical and the postmodern interpretations of the Bible’.” *JHS* 9, no. a26 [2009]:1–13).

What I miss in this exchange is a sense of the people whose lives, or rather shells of a life (texts, temples, palaces, houses, pottery, jewels, tools, etc.), became the subjects of that history. The so-called or self-baptized post-modernists wish to stay away from ontological or essentialist frames and give voice to unrecognized, silenced, or displaced texts, histories or identities, away from authors or authorities and their claims to control everything, but often end up framing new ontological categories. Most historians of ancient Israel and Judah, on the other hand, tend to be more preoccupied with visible structures, archaeological, textual or not, and do not elucidate sufficiently the links to the people’s lives by studying further language, family structure, labor, tenancy and tax systems, indebtedness, links to religious structures, etc. Great progress has been made, but much is left to do, thanks to the absent subject of history (others call this shadow of ourselves God). Good thing too.

Another reaction I had when reading this was how insular the post-modernist claims appear to be. “This time period is that of a much less confident modernity than that of the nineteenth century.” (page 396 of the *JBL* article). My initial movement is to agree, but what is the basis for this opinion, aside from the need to link “historical criticism” to 19th century’s bourgeois, tainted thinking? At one end, what does nineteenth century mean here? The likes of Wellhausen, Berthelot, Renan and US railway barons, all in a big bourgeoisie bag? At the other end, is the purported present lack of confidence oozing from philosophy and theology books in the US and Europe representative of the thinking of an endangered intellectual middle class but of little else? This is but a small part of the world…

On the great desire to see where the “plain of truth” is (ἡ πολλὴ σπουδὴ τὸ ἀληθείας ἰδεῖν πεδίον οὗ ἐστιν), which Plato describes in *Phaedrus* 248b, and after reading the article by Bainard Cowan on “Walter Benjamin’s theory of allegory” *New German Critique* 22 (1981), 109–22:

When trueing a building frame or a wheel, I use tools which in turn refer or bring me back (beyond?) to the plenitude or fullness of the ocean already there. The bubble in the liquid sealed in a hardwood frame in an act of imitation of the horizon line and of adequation to the laws of physics. When the framing of a window for instance is true—and it is a shock or rather a revelation to discover it—I do not simply take my studs to be symbols by referring them to absolutized measures or tools severed from being (my trusted level), and stopping at that (and a beer. Wheww, wasn’t that scary?). Something tells me I’m participating in a great mystery (how theological to speak like this, the mystery of presence). For intimations of it, see Hadot’s *The veil of Isis: an essay on the history of the idea of nature* 2006 (translation of *Le voile d’Isis: essai sur l’histoire de l’idée de nature*, 2004).

This sense of having access to a great mystery may come as a flash of revelation in all dimensions of life, because trueing our discourse, technology, social activities and systems of evaluation (ethics)—a constant endeavor—can only be a struggle with a cutting, separating, isolating of what existed before, the remembering and contemplation of this “plain of truth” Plato speaks of after the dismembering. The wood has been cut, not necessarily with the grain, by large machines, transported immediately to distributors, used (water-logged) in a new construction. Fat chance you’ll get anything true even if you bought clear heart. Lucky if you stay close, within 1/4″ of this mythical reverberating point.

Perhaps the same could be said of all institutions which are built regardless of grain. The dismembering which is a given in all human activities makes access to the “plain of truth” impossible. In our unhappiness, or severed state, we content ourselves with “experiencing” the world and treating everything as symbols. In our speaking, making, living together in, and valuation of the world, we accept to live in a forest of symbols but forget it is a forest. We “experience” reality and rush from symbol to symbol. That is, we acquiesce to the (now capitalist) demand that we become instances of something that we forgo (or most of us have forgone) while pretending to hearken back to it: being. Yet the tools are so constituted, and so are we, in a physical continuum with the “plain of truth,” that at times we can glimpse something beyond the horizon and recognize it as grace.

I recommend this article from the Reclaim UC blog. Most illuminating on how UC has seriously turned to serving larger financial and economic interests rather than those of the students and public (especially Californian public) is this paragraph from the bond report by Fitch (be patient when loading the full text):
>UC continues to benefit from one of the most diverse revenue streams in higher education, and Fitch notes positively its low and declining reliance on state aid as a revenue source (12.1% in fiscal 2011). The university’s other significant funding sources include revenue derived from the operation of its five medical centers (27.1%), grants and contracts generated by its substantial sponsored research activities (24.5%), and student-generated revenues, including tuition, fees, and auxiliary receipts (16.6%).