Institutional Reform
To inspire people about the possibilities for change, here is a brief timeline of recent projects and reforms we've come across. Any additional suggestions about the historical situation outside Europe and America would be very welcome.
| 2009-10 | An unusual wave of protest against threats to California's public university system is ongoing. |
| 2008-10 | A series of politically oriented conferences in Minnesota aim to rethink the university. |
| 2007-9 | A minor but interesting occurrence in university history: Antioch College, founded in 1852, was closed down by its Board of Trustees in 2008, but quasi-miraculously reopened a year later. Especially worth noting is the unofficial, temporary college concocted as a substitute for the college: essentially a replacement liberal arts college in a loft. |
| 2006-present | An Anthropology Diversity Initiative at the University of Michigan, chronicled here by Anneeth Hundle, examines the ways that racial and other minorities are represented within an anthropology department. |
| 2005 | Foundation of the World Council of Anthropological Associations, aiming to reduce international inequalities within the anthropological profession. |
| 2002 | Founding of the Ethnography of the University Initiative at the University of Illinois, a wide-reaching project that includes student investigations of everything from racial boundaries to campus evangelism. |
| 1999-present | Formation of Anthropology Matters, a collective project of anthropology graduate students and early career anthropologists designed "to stimulate discussion on the production of anthropological knowledge through a focus on training, teaching, research and writing." They have published much courageous work on life and even garb in anthropology. |
| 1999-2010 | The European Bologna Process is put in motion, guiding the subsequent decade through a long series of European university reforms. The tenth anniversary has seen continued protest against the reforms, and also speculation on the possible importation of the Bologna Process to the United States. |
| 1992 | Foundation of the Coalition of Graduate Employee Unions, which brings together dozens of graduate student unions across North America in hopes of collectively improving working conditions. |
Historically, the most significant moment in student activism — of the last century, anyway — must be 1968, when there were global student protests. A few good places to start thinking about this are:
- Kahn, Roger. 1970. The Battle for Morningside Heights: Why Students Rebel. New York: William Morrow.
- Kerr, Clark. 2005 (1963). The Uses of the University. 5th ed. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
- Ross, Kristin. 2002. May '68 and its afterlives. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.