Divestment or Unemployment: Irvin Reid Resigns

President Irvin Reid has announced his resignation from Wayne State University. Much has been made of his record at the university in the last ten years. He has dramatically increased undergraduate enrollment. He has broken ground on several new buildings. But whatever dubious benefit such changes have brought, the fact remains that Wayne State University under Reid's tenure has unleashed a vicious assault on working people and people of color, especially black folks in the city of Detroit.

To begin, Reid and his partners in crime on the board of governors shut the doors on the College of Lifelong Learning in 2002. CLL was committed to providing educational opportunities to non-traditional students, especially working people with families. More recently, that same board dismantled the College of Urban, Labor and Metropolitan Affairs (CULMA) in 2005. According to Stuart Henry, former head of the Interdisciplinary Studies department at WSU, CULMA was the "only other college explicitly serving adult urban students." By shutting these programs down, WSU has effectively abandoned the urban mission that had been a proud legacy of the rebellious movement for community control of schools during the 1960s.

Just recently, Reid and the Board of Governors voted to dismantle the Interdisciplinary Studies program at the University. This program served non-traditional students from the community, including working people and single parents. Eliminating this program cuts the university off even further from the community it is supposed to serve, as it gets rid of the program's unique open enrollment policy. This policy allowed anyone with a high school diploma access to the university. Although the board of governors hoped to spin this and similar moves as the necessities of budget cuts, others astutely recognized that it was an attack on working people. Ron Aronson, for example, recently noted in the Metrotimes that, "Those who envision a more selective Wayne State University demand the elimination of [Interdisciplinary Studies]."

President Reid's vision for WSU has been demonstrated by his actions. He seeks to transform a largely working class institution into yet another bastion of middle-class professionalism.

As with all career bureaucrats, Reid has no imagination. Thus when it comes to Palestine, he is every bit as reactionary. Last October, in an infamous editorial to the Detroit Free Press, Reid refused to divest from the racist state of Israel. ARA had proposed divestment from apartheid Israel as a unique opportunity for the university to be the first in the nation to take such a step. Doing so would have affirmed the university's commitment to basic human dignity. Reid's refusal to divest, his insistence on supporting apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and the colonial history of Israel, infuriated the surrounding community. The Arab American Forum and Link of October 19 th, 2006, for example, asked the question, "Divestment: It worked in South Africa. Why not in Israel?"

And this was not the first time Reid had made this decision. In 2002, he overturned and ignored the historic resolution by the Student Council to divest from Israel. The students at Wayne State University had the courage to stand against apartheid and white supremacy when they passed their resolution, the first of its kind in the United States. Irvin Reid and the board of governors ignored their decision, demonstrating that all claims to "student representation" or "student power" are rhetorical nonsense. Real power, Reid showed, lies with himself and his board of governors, and they have no interest in commitment of any kind to working people, people of color, or simple principles such as democracy and anti-racism.

To summarize, Irvin Reid has bolstered middle class access to Wayne State University while attacking working people and people of color in the city of Detroit and in the surrounding suburbs. He has also supported white supremacy and imperialism at two different times in his career! ARA says good riddance, and we can only affirm our previous slogan: divestment or unemployment. ARA welcomes the next president of the university with the very same challenge: divest from apartheid, divest from white supremacy and refuse to support imperialism. Otherwise, save yourself time and effort by preparing your goodbyes at the same time that you are preparing your introductory speeches.