Month: March 2015

Open Democracy, 24/03/2015

An encircled army has few viable options: it can sue for peace and suffer humiliating terms. It can fight with all its strength and suffer heavy casualties. Or it can fight the odd skirmish, force ceasefires, and bide its time, all the while trying to split the opponent and prepare the ground for reinforcements. In November 1917, the newly installed Russian government found itself in just such a predicament. Upon entering into negotiations with the Central Powers at Brest-Litovsk, it was immediately faced with a dilemma: suing for peace meant betrayal of the anti-war revolutionaries in Western Europe who were fighting the chauvinism of their own ruling classes. Opting for war meant an intolerable amount of casualties and possibly a humiliating defeat. The Russian government initially opted for a third strategy: no war – no peace. One explicit condition for the ceasefire negotiated under this strategy was that the Central Powers not shift their troops from the Russian to the Western front. In the meantime, the government continued its pro-communist agitation within the ranks of its opponents, in the hope that it could split their forces.

Europe’s periphery—the so-called PIIGS—is presently under siege by financial markets. Greece is at the forefront of this fight. Indeed, the election of SYRIZA on the 25th of January seems to have pushed the country out of the furnace and into the fire. Short of leaving the euro, the Greek government has only one fire-fighting strategy left, which consists in breaking the unity of the pro-austerity bloc. This is a Herculean task, for it requires sowing disunity within the Eurozone’s pro-austerity governments. But it remains an ever-receding alternative to the mutually exclusive menaces of capitulation or Grexit. Let me explain.

ROARmag, 18/03/2015

The heart of the student movement today beats in Amsterdam. The occupation of the Senate House by staff and students at the University of Amsterdam has rekindled the flame for a free and democratic university. The ensuing fire has spread fast and wide throughout the Netherlands, which now counts at least five geographically distinct campaigns under the banner of the so-called ‘New University’ (apart from Amsterdam: Groningen, Leiden, Maastricht, Nijmegen and Utrecht). The movement has also garnered support from the FNV, the largest Dutch trade union and numerous statements of solidarity from the rest of the world.

Perhaps the best way to understand this movement is as a challenge to rethink the very idea of the university. What follows is one attempt to meet this challenge in light of the movement’s own self-conceptions.

by Nicholas Vrousalis, Robin Celikates, Johan Hartle, Enzo Rossi

Open Democracy, 2/03/2015

It has been two weeks since the first occupation of the Bungehuis, one of the main buildings of the University of Amsterdam (UvA). The more recent occupation of UvA’s Senate House – the Maagdenhuis which was famously occupied back in 1969 – and the breadth of the grassroots movement for a New University exposes the problems of Dutch higher education. Increasing student/staff ratios, chronic underfunding, creeping micromanagement of research and teaching, and growing authoritarianism from university management are all conspiring to turn universities into a bureaucratic version of Walmart. The twin pressures of authoritarianism from above and neoliberalism from below make it necessary to develop the democratic alternative put forward by the movement for a new university.