Corporatization and Globalization Committee plans fall conference

It’s about understanding a set of ambiguous forces that are changing the nature of the university and of knowledge. It’s about assessing a transformation of economic, social and political life that is multilevel and profound, though unsettled and unclear.

“It” is the assignment of the union’s recently renamed Corporatization and Globalization Committee. The group is looking to confer this fall with UUPers who are either professionally experienced or intellectually interested in exploring the possibilities presented to university faculty when they are pressured to incorporate managerial models and efficiency standards into their academic pursuits.

Chaired by UUPer Stephen Rosow of SUNY Oswego, the committee is charged with conducting a study on the impact of corporatization and globalization on the university, generally. More specifically, how does this happening affect SUNY within the dynamics and diversity of its campuses? And, finally, how does UUP respond?

The committee will sponsor a conference — slated for Oct. 25-26 in Albany — to begin examining these issues. Only the earnest need apply.

“This is a serious study of the impact of this series of changes that is taking place institutionally in the global economy — one that’s nonideological and also an academically solid study,” said Rosow, an associate professor of political science and director of the interdisciplinary global and international studies program at Oswego.

The two-day conference is planned as informational — with keynote speakers and panel discussions — and organizational, to establish several work groups that will produce white papers on specific topics.

Tentatively, the topics will include:

• trends toward globalization and the SUNY campuses;
• the creation of a “global knowledge industry” and how SUNY should respond;
• post-national university education;
• the university and global capitalism: consumerism and the “entrepreneurial university;”and
• new pressures on, and changing character of, research.

— Lisa Feldman Reich