doing big public shit

posted on Feb 21, 2025

danny caballero

This post is inspired by conversations with my colleagues and our students at MSU.

The American president and his enablers continue their attacks on higher education. University leaders have been mostly silent, and, at worst, are demonstrating complicity. I won’t go so far as to implicate them, or to say they are feckless and cowardly, but we’re getting right up that line.

Some think we need to make nice with the executive branch. Stanford’s Johnathon Levin indicated we must “renew the social contract between universities and the federal government”. I’m sure Levin is smart person who cares about Stanford, but I think he misses the point. The federal government is not who to convince of the value of higher education; it’s the American public. It’s the people who don’t go to Stanford, people that don’t go to college, and people struggling to keep food on their table.

Also, you don’t make nice with fascism.

University leadership holds a frame where losing power and money is foremost in their thinking; their work focuses on revenue, overhead, grant expenditures, and efficiency.

Mine is a frame grounded in poverty, steeped in the working class values and love of my family, and rooted in the belief that public education is a public good. My grandparents were the strongest advocates for a public education; their love and support (and federal student loans) is why I was able to graduate from a public university and go to graduate school at another public university.

My frame focuses on the struggle of people who are simply trying to scratch out a living. This frame is the one where I am watching my career erode in slow motion. It’s a frame where the progress we’ve made to make physics and computational science at MSU more inclusive, supporting, and welcoming is being attacked daily. Mine is the frame where I tell my students that I will do absolutely everything I can to protect their work and education knowing full well that, individually, I am powerless to do so.

My frame is not unique. It is shared by many of my colleagues.

I’ve argued we need an organizer mentality, and I mean that. Our leaders are stuck in their executive frame; they cannot speak out publicly - I mean they could, but that would show courage that we have not seen. We are having hushed conversations and not putting certain information in emails - it’s an approach to protect the institution from FOIA requests. I get it, but I don’t like it.

If you are too scared to put a program or policy in writing, I find it hard to believe you cared about it in the first place.

Mine is the institution that protected a rapist for years, paid a record amount to our football coach and later dismissed him for sexual harassment. My institution spent 2,000,000 on the McKinsey consulting firm to validate our current president’s plan to cut the budget and build some signature initiatives.

Watch what they do not what they say.

These actions indicate to me that our universities’ priorities to protect the institution are not effective in this moment.

university leadership is not the university

We should remind ourselves that university administrators are not the university. They might be the most visible part of it, but the university is its students, its staff, its faculty, its alumni, and its community.

We are the university.

Mine is a public university, so it exists for every Michigander, every American, and every person around the world who wants to join it. Mine is a land grant university, so it exists to serve the public good for the State of Michigan - to educate our citizens, to conduct research that benefits them, and to contribute significantly to our state’s economy. The Morill Act of 1862 lays out the purpose of Michigan State University and all other land grant universities.

We were intended to be a public good.

I’ve said we must organize to protect higher education. We cannot take the executive approach - it’s reactionary, tactical, defensive, and, frankly, ineffective so far. It’s focused on the short term. It’s focused on the next fiscal year, the next election cycle, the next presidential campaign.

We must take the long view. It took us over than 250 years to get here, it’s gonna take us a bit of time to get out of it.

we’ve been here before

One of the things I was reminded of is that we have been here before.

As an example, Joe McCarthy railed against university professors. He sought to root out Communists among the faculty. His attacks were as relentless as his alcoholism. What McCarthy had was a microphone and a platform. But he did not win the day.

Ultimately, we went after the Army and that shit went poorly. He died from the effects of alcoholism shortly thereafter.

Obligatory: fuck that guy.

Ronald Reagan reorganized the federal government in ways that we continue to suffer from today. As a single example, his administration reduced student aid, likely starting the student debt crisis. His education advisor, Roger Freeman, was quoted just before Reagan’s election as saying,

We are in danger of producing an educated proletariat. That’s dynamite! We have to be selective on who we allow to go to college.

I will never understand why some white men must protect their fragile egos in this way. Go to therapy and work out why your daddy didn’t show you love.

But, Roger Freeman is dead, and based on this quote, I hope he is in hell sitting on a mature cactus quickly and repeatedly.

Attacks like McCarthy’s and Freeman’s are the same kinds of attacks we see today. And we must remember that we have colleagues, friends, ancestors, and old heads that have fought this shit before. We must draw on their experience, their wisdom, and their strength.

what can we do

As a starting point, we must organize against these attacks.

We must make it uncomfortable to hold the position that education is for the elite, for the privileged, or for the wealthy. We must make it clear that our university, its programs, its work, its people, and its community are important to the future of this state, this country, and the global community. We must communicate the material advantages to folks like my dad, my brother, and the rest of my family and friends who did not go to college and punch a clock every day. We must empower others to do the same.

One thing we cannot do is be silent. My motto is quickly becoming:

We have to do: BIG. PUBLIC. SHIT.

Sitting on our hands and talking in hushed voices is a disservice to the public. Its a cowardly and feckless approach to defending our work, our institution, and frankly, public education. We cannot be scared, we must be bold and we must be vocal.

I’m sure there’s more ways than this, but here’s some ideas we can try (inspired by the rich history of actions by university communities):

1. Rallies - Whether on campus, at the capital, elsewhere, we should be getting people together to show solidarity for our institutions. We can share stories vocally and publicly about the importance of the work that we do to educate our citizenry; we can speak about the impact of our programs on youth, the elderly, veterans, communities of color, and many many others; and we make the clear unyielding argument that a public education is for everyone and higher education benefits everyone in our state. MSU has 52,000 students, nearly 6,000 academic staff, and more than 7,000 administrative staff. That’s 65,000 people! All of us are going to be affected if these attacks continue. If even 2% of us rally, that’s still 1,300 people. If 10% of us rally, that’s 6,500 people. We don’t need everyone to show up; we have a deep bench, y’all.
2. Teach-Ins - Our job is to educate and that is not just within our disciplines. Our work overlaps in many areas of society. Some of us advocate for science, some of us build educational programs, some work on international partnerships, some make their own music or art, and so on. University faculty and staff are experts in their work. We can and should share this with students and the public. Teaching about the impact of federal freezes on research in science, humanities, and health are things many of us can speak on. Helping students to learn their rights, how to advocate for their needs, and how to communicate with public officials are all things we can do. We can teach about the history of the land grant system including its colonial roots and its positive impacts to our state. We can help folks learn about the long term impacts of the choices our elected officials and university leadership are making. We can explain how the arc of the American trajectory towards democracy, equality, and inclusion has been long and hard fought and is now under attack.
3. Letter Writing Campaigns - One of the most effective ways to communicate with our elected officials is to write them. But, most letters don’t make it past the staff. This is because folks need to learn how to communicate to their congressperson. Your congressperson might not share your views (mine sure doesn’t), but they still represent you. You can make it hard for them to dodge your message. You can make it difficult to ignore you. You can get them to say what they mean. Writing these kinds of letters is a skill that we can all learn, and we can teach it to others. More importantly, we can get a lot of people together to write letters. Maybe they are organized by their interests and needs, so their groups can share their stories and experiences. They can get feedback to ensure their letter is personal, effective, and impactful.
4. Door-to-Door Advocacy - Knocking doors is no joke. I did it for the successful campaign for Michigan Proposal 3 to restore reproductive rights to all of those who needed to enjoy those rights. It’s hard to talk to people you don’t know, but it’s important if we want to make change. We can do this in our communities, in our neighborhoods, and elsewhere. It’s great to have an ask: sign this petition, come to this event, or write this letter. But, we can also just talk to people. We can share how these attacks on their public education system will affect them. We can listen to their concerns about higher education. We have to rebuild our relationships with our communities. That’s a long term project, but it’s one we can start now.

As one of my colleagues recently said, “don’t let the fascists get you down.”

I don’t intend to, Michael.

We need to do: BIG. PUBLIC. SHIT.