Consultants (BCG) will study UNC prior to Spellings start, thanks to anonymous $1.1 M donation

[zazen]

5. I suspect they've splendidly over-reached, because you can't fire student protestors

I'm around here too and have been very involved with GA and the research universities for awhile. Maybe it's better that academic capitalism is becoming, finally, so inescapably overt.

I think she's grossly underestimating the depth of power of a university system. Unless they disband it and/or actively arrest students (and I don't put fascism beyond the maniacs here), she will face protests day after day after day from people she cannot coerce with vindictive compensation structures and constantly threatened program cuts.

Professors aren't going to "grade down" the undergrads. Grad students may face some pressure from funding cuts to their faculty advisers. I can even imagine grad student tuition and fellowships being contingent on not participating in something "political." But they can't directly harm, any more than they already are with tuition and fee hikes and program cuts, the tens of thousands of UNC students who will protest her every where she goes.

And they don't have a lot better to do . . they might have jobs, but they aren't grad students. The entire system is set up such that it enables ongoing protest by students who are living together and are better organized than any other interest group.

From a better organized student protest movement in North Carolina, aligned with Moral Mondays, may come much deeper grass roots changes.

The faculty are in for hell, of course, as are many valuable research agendas and outreach programs. That's a different matter.