Students’ nearly three-month-long University of California, Berkeley, anthropology library occupation ended in some concessions from the university, despite dwindling protester numbers and a lack of faculty support...
On July 15, the Anthropology Library Occupation announced on Instagram it had “won an open public UC Berkeley Anthropology Library.”
“The strength of our occupation forced the university to negotiate directly with us, rather than leaving the library as an issue for the department to resolve,” the group’s statement said. “Our occupation has shown that we do not need to accept administrative ‘final decisions’ or ‘budget cuts’—we know that these are choices, and that these choices can be made to represent the will of the people.”
But the surviving library, which people won’t be able to check out books from, won’t be quite the same. The university and department are calling it a “reading room,” not a library. According to a document provided by occupier Aidan Kelley, on June 20, Raka Ray, dean of the Division of Social Sciences, wrote that the Anthropology Department would be allowed “to retain duplicate and non-library materials, estimated at about 20,000 books at present or approximately 40 percent of the current collection.”
Ray also wrote that the department would receive, and match, “$45,000 in one-time transitional funds” and would have “creative and intellectual control of the future of the library and space.” Ray’s letter referenced “implementing the plan proposed by the Anthropology Department.” ...
Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/research/2023/07/25/berkeley-student-protest-keeps-anthro-library-open-kind.
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