To promote more egalitarian relationships of mutual learning between individuals and organizations working within universities and those in other parts of civil society.
:: goals and objectives ::
- Support civil society: Promoting two-way flows of information that are necessary for developing relationships of trust and mutual respect between universities and civil society.
- Seek volunteers to serve as national or regional contacts who can facilitate more intensive interactions within specific countries or regions
- Sponsor public educational events--on and off campus (such as teach-ins or community forums)
- Foster enduring and mutually-respectful ties to community organizations
- Support recognized “global days of action” for peace, and global justice (Mar 19, April 16-20, Sept 10) by supporting student participation in action or organizing teach-ins
- Support, promote and participate in local and regional social forums
- Promote education for global citizenship
- Democratize and Socialize Knowledge: resist the expanding commodification of knowledge, which exacerbates the already gaping inequities in our world
- Support open-source technologies and open methods of knowledge exchange (such as ‘copy left’, GNU, and The Creative Commons)
- Support efforts to expand access to academic journals in poor communities and countries
- Support campaigns to encourage public funding of universities and to limit increases in student tuition and fees
- Participate in “global day of action” for freedom of information (November 16)
- Make one’s own research work freely available—the network can publicize guidelines for doing this (see www.creativecommons.org)
- Oppose neoliberalism on university campuses
- Support labor struggles on campus- for academics and non-academic workers;
- Monitor university relations to private sector and establish code of ethics;
- Promote fair labor policies on campus and by university subcontractors and licensees;
- Promote ethical university investment standards;
- Protect access to public spaces on campus by non-commercial interests;
- Encourage tolerance and respect for differences in developing and expressing knowledge;
- Rethink university performance and evaluation criteria to include social responsibility;
- Promote enhanced job security on campuses to encourage academic freedom;
- Lobby/ educate public officials to promote stronger commitment to public funding for education and greater understanding of academic work and educational environments;
- Promote global perspective on struggles
:: website platform will ::
- Promote integration and solidarity both horizontally and vertically between academic actors and those of civil society
- Provide mechanisms for open exchange of information in order to encourage mutual learning and participatory knowledge creation.
- Support actions to democraztize and socialize knowledge systems—countering the forces of market-based academics
:: potential website sections ::
- Blog or Journal platform to introduce issues, actions, and strategies of concern within the academic and activist communities (accessed from home page with archived files)
- Open to a limited number of mediators, but opened to universal feedback through registering with site (Username and Password, along with optional survey info)
- Content focused on mission of organization, website
- Use Scoop-for free (http://scoop.kuro5hin.org/) or MovableType-$$ (http://www.movabletype.org/) software
- Eventually offer individuals and organizations personal diaries that can be used as blogs (see www.dailykos.com)
- Calendar of events, forums and convergences that promote/resonate with the mission of the organization/site
- Searchable archive of organizations, individuals, universities and institutions of relevance with organization/site mission
- Searchable archive or referenced works, bibliographies, open-source content, narratives, etc. concerning the mission of organization/site
- Provide mechanism for users to submit feedback on the services and functionality of site
- Join listserv (eventually maintain listservs for different working-groups)
- Support site (take donations for paying for hosting, software, server space, backup content, etc.)
