Platform to Defend Public Education & Democratic Rights
(as ratified by the Feb 22, 2025 United to Defend Public Education Statewide Organizing Conference attendees)
As faculty, staff, students and the community at large, we value public education as the fuel and source to a truly democratic society. Our vision of education is not to train the new workforce, but as DuBois put it, we want an ”education for life and not just for work”, an education for our continued emancipation.
1. Governor Newsom: No State Cuts, Fully Fund the CSU and Public Higher Education
1 in every 20 Americans with a college degree earned it at the CSU; 1 in 10 employees in California is a CSU graduate. Defunding the CSU furthers structural racism that harms predominantly Black and Brown, immigrant, first-generation and working class students. The proposed 7.95% cut to the CSU is the final blow in the state dismantling of the people's university. The governor’s cuts are a choice, not an inevitability; the state of CA has $27.5 bn in reserves. We, the public, demand resources from Sacramento and the CSU administration for the CSU’s unique role and contributions to the state.
2. Chancellor García: Reinvest the People’s Money Back Into the Classroom
The CSU has increasingly become a profit center, diverting public resources from teaching and learning to amass huge and growing investments even as it imposes harsh austerity measures including shuttering programs, firing faculty and merging or potentially closing campuses. Campus budget deficits are artificial, this is why we demand full financial transparency and request an outside audit of the CSU. We further demand the reverse of all the ongoing campus cuts, the divestment from bloated administration, and that the 7 billions in the CSU investments and cash reserves are used to support education, faculty, counselors, librarians, coaches and represented staff, and students. We also demand a reevaluation of the presence of corporations on our campuses.
3. Board of Trustees: Declare Sanctuary Campuses
No ICE on campus, no collaboration with ICE. Create affirmative protections, not reactionary and defensive empty promises. The Board of Trustees must be proactive in their defense of students and workers. We demand the protection of students’ rights to learn without intimidation and surveillance from campus police and state or federal law enforcement agencies, and we demand the development of alternatives to policing.
4. Defend the People’s University: Liberate the CSU
We will take escalating actions to demand the reversal of the structural racism of defunding teaching and learning in the CSU, the near destruction of Sonoma State, the erosion of faculty control of the curriculum, the tuition hike and massive loss of jobs for lecturer faculty and others across the system. We must create organized networks of support for the CSU campuses between local unions, student organizations, community members, politicians, alumni and the general public, and join the national fight back for higher education with CAHE (Coalition for Action in Higher Education), HELU (Higher Education Labor United), AAUP (American Association of University Professors).
5. Protect Our Right To Educate and Organize: Defend Academic Freedom and Our Civil Liberties
We understand our struggle over the CSU budget in the context of labor rights and organizing, academic freedom, and anti-racist social justice. We staunchly oppose attempts to repress and defund DEI, women & gender, Indigenous, Black, Latina/Latino, and other ethnic studies programs and ethos. We know that shifts toward “institutional neutrality”—especially in a time where academic freedom and funded public research are under attack–directly undercuts our rights as faculty and student learning. Ample research demonstrates how these policies undermine our protections as workers (see AAUP). We demand the CSU oppose old and new TPM (time, place, and manner) restrictions to our free speech and right to assembly. We also demand LGBTQ/trans protections and safety.
6. Money for Jobs and Education, Not for War, Incarceration, and Deportation
We understand our struggle over the CSU budget in the context of the MAGA agenda to wage war against universities, silence critical race education, dismantle equity programs, and attack immigrant communities while supporting wars, genocides, and occupations abroad. We understand that the state can close CA prison contracts to refund CA higher education and other social services and demand this be considered for preserving the CSU. We demand the divestment of CSU investment funds from corporations linked to human rights violations.
7. Tenure for All: Abolish the Two-Tier Faculty Labor System
The CSU’s two-tier faculty labor system produces precarity, inequity and marginalization. We reject tiered employment schemes that divide and exploit workers and intersectionally magnify racism, cis-heteropatriarchy and ableism. We seek to dismantle the two-tier faculty labor system piece-by-piece and ultimately abolish it so that all faculty are contractually assured security, equity and inclusion.
8. Worker Control of AI Education To Prioritize Student Learning and Critical Thinking
The CSU Chancellors’ recent $16.9 million public-private AI deal with the “world’s leading tech companies” will negatively impact faculty and staff jobs, academic freedom, intellectual property, student learning, and the future of public education and our environment. We demand that all CSU decisions on AI should be made by students, faculty and staff, not by the administration, faculty control on the use of AI in the classrooms, and consider the divestment from AI corporations.
9. Tax the Rich and Big Corporations, Not Working People
Despite California being promoted as the 5th largest economy, the austerity cuts to public education and social services are accelerating. This is because the current state privileges corporate profits over people’s needs. California corporate profits reached a record-breaking $368 billion in 2021, and they have been steady since… yet they pay just about half of what they did in the early 1980s in state taxes as a share of those profits. Instead of going to finance state services for all, around half of those profits were used to pay dividends. In order to restore quality public education for working people in CA, we must tax the corporate profits of the very few, and allocate those funds to ensure the future of public higher education in California.
10. Free Education for All and Democratic Control of Our Universities
We understand our current struggle for the refunding of the CSU as a step towards the goal of establishing free college and public education for everyone. In a country where corporations made profits of around 3.69 trillion U.S. dollars in 2023 (up from 786 billion in 2000), the promise of free quality education at all levels can be realized. This is why we demand free education for all and for the full democratic control of our universities and schools by faculty, students and staff in collaboration with the working class communities that surround them. In most democratic countries, it is the elected representatives of faculty, staff and students that choose the Presidents and Deans, and oversee the budget and financial decisions of their institution, on top of being in charge of the curriculum.
Faculty, Students, Staff, Alumni, Families & Community Allies: All Out on April 17th!