The national attack on labor studies

["Lee, Frederic" <leefs@xxxxxxxx>]

Dear Colleague,

I am not sure that this has been sent around.  If so I apologize.  I should note that the Department of Economics at UMKC houses a labor studies institute.

Fred Lee

>From Nelson N. Lichtenstein

Colleagues:

As many of you already know, the Schwarzenegger
Administration has
eliminated funding for the UC Institute for Labor and Employment.
The ILE, founded just three years ago by an act of the California
legislature - and with the full support of the California labor
movement - quickly established itself as a national leader in labor
education, strategic research, and scholarly investigation of topics
of interest to active unionists and concerned academics.

Right-wing "think tanks," including the Manhattan Institute
and the Pacific Research Institute, began a campaign against the ILE and
other labor studies programs last summer. When Schwarzenegger
became governor his Bushite transition team immediately targeted the ILE
for elimination, using the state fiscal crisis as the occasion and excuse
for their action. An excellent article on this subject, "Class
Warfare" by David Bacon, can be found in the January 12, 2004
issue of The Nation. Go to
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhml?i=20040112&s=bacon

We know that this right wing attack on labor studies and the
new working-class studies movement is hardly limited to California.
Right-wing journalists have also targeted programs or individual
researchers at the University of Massachusetts - Amherst, at
Cornell, and at the University of North Carolina. We would very much like to
catalogue information about other such attacks, successful or not,
that have taken place during the last few years. We are forming a
national "Committee to Defend Labor Studies Scholarship" and will
shortly be asking for your support and participation.

So, if you have knowledge of such instances please send
particulars to Nelson Lichtenstein at nelson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

        In solidarity,

        Nelson Lichtenstein, History
        Richard Flacks, Sociology
        University of California, Santa Barbara

Nelson Lichtenstein
Professor of History
UC Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106
nelson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
(0) 805-893-4822
(h) 805-966-5745
(fax) 805-893-8795