A-Infos (en) US, In Support of David Graeber

[a-infos@ainfos.ca]

from chuck@mutualaid.org
In Support of David Graeber by Andrej Grubacic

Recently David Graeber and I wrote an article together attempting 
to explain why anarchist ideas have received almost no attention in 
the academy. When you think of it, academia is full of Marxist 
radicals, but only a handful of professed anarchists. We came to a 
conclusion that it must have something to do with anarchism's 
concern with forms of practice; with its insistence that one's means 
most be consonant with one's ends; with its stubborn rejection of 
the idea that we can create freedom through authoritarian means, 
embracing instead the position that we should embody the society 
we wish to create. All of this does not square very well with 
operating within a university. The university has survived in much 
the same form since the middle ages, waging intellectual battles at 
conferences, re-enforcing class distinctions, making cabalistic 
decisions in secret rooms. As we stated in our article: "At the very 
least, one would imagine being an openly anarchist professor would 
mean challenging the way universities are run and that, of course, 
is going to get one in far more trouble than anything one could ever 
write".

Ironically enough, as if he was testing his own hypothesis, 
internationally respected anarchist anthropologist, David Graeber, 
was fired from Yale University a few days ago. Of course, that 
wasn't the official explanation. The official one reads that "his 
contract wasn't renewed" because of his lack of "collegiality". If you 
would allow me to translate this: the "lack of collegiality" that David 
had showed was when he was trying to defend his graduate 
students who were graduate union organizers. Union organizers are 
regularly targeted at Yale. When one brilliant graduate student 
organizer was almost kicked out for clearly fabricated reasons, 
David Graeber was the only member of her committee with the 
courage to openly stand up for her at that committee meeting, and 
then later at a faculty meeting. On david Graeber's behalf, Yale 
graduate students have initiated a petition which has been signed by 
almost all graduate and good number of undergraduate students of 
anthropology.

So, why has David Graeber been given the boot? To begin with the 
obvious, he is an unrepentant anarchist. David Graeber was one of 
the spokespeople for the Anti Capitalist Convergence during the 
World Economic Forum protests in New York. He was an activist 
with Direct Action Network. He is one of the founding members of 
the Peoples Global Action infopoint in New York. And he had 
authored many essays and articles on anarchism. But he never did 
any organizing or activism on campus.

What perhaps was David Graeber's greatest crime was simply his 
apparently over optimistic belief that he could remain true to his 
anarchist principles within the academy. Graeber believes that 
graduate school should be more than a training camp for becoming 
a commodity on the academic market. Rather it should also be 
about joy and creativity. Anyone who goes through a graduate 
program knows that such institutions are all about socialization as 
an academic, much of which requires the destruction of the sense 
of joy and creativity in learning, thinking and imagining that draws 
people to become scholars in the first place. For certain, some 
universities are worse then others. For various reasons, Yale seems 
to specialize in this kind of soul-crushing sport.

David Graeber offered his students an alternative model. He 
believes that it's possible to be an academic intellectual and not an 
academic prostitute, that it is possible not to sacrifice everything 
that makes life enjoyable, that it is possible to be both intellectually 
productive and politically committed. Given such convictions, is it 
little wonder that David Graeber was given the boot?

As a close friend of David's, I have witnessed a somewhat frantic 
activity on the behalf of a few members of the Yale faculty to have 
him fired. Not incidentally, these faculty members have not been 
speaking to David since his name was mentioned in the papers in 
conjunction with the WEF protests three years ago. But ostracizing 
him was difficult. Not only because of few decent colleagues who 
ardently defended him. Since that time David has published two 
well respected books and articles in dozens of languages. Last year 
the Yale bureaucracy renewed David's contract for only two years, 
citing his behavior as not being in accordance with Yale's 
"academic ethics" and said that his contract might be extended two 
more years if he improved "his behavior".

Last Tuesday a meeting was held to consider David's 
reappointment. Only senior faculty were allowed to attend and 
David was not permitted to respond to his accusations, nor where 
his accusers expected to present evidence. After an extended 
slander fest, participants seem to have concluded that it doesn't 
really matter if the accusations are false and trivial, because his 
presence is clearly divisive thus it would be safer to just kick him 
out.

As someone who has spent many wonderful moments with David, I 
am certainly not neutral here. But neither should you be. This issue 
extends beyond the academic career of David Graeber. And beyond 
the price one may have to pay for advocating anarchism in the 
academy. In this country, at this exciting and surreal point of its 
history, this could happen, as it already has, on so many different 
levels, to anybody who refuses to participate in the Salem-like 
atmosphere that is being systematically promoted in institutions like 
Yale, or Columbia, or Colorado. To support David Graeber is to say 
that we have had enough of this nation-wide persecution of leftist 
professors, accused of 'falsifying' their "Native American identity", 
of supporting anti-Semitism, or of being anarchists. To support 
David Graeber means to support academic freedom and to reject 
the conformist dictate of fear and obedience in the US academy.

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