By Henry Stevens
Published May 30, 2025
“The university and segments of industry are becoming more alike. As the university becomes tied into the world of work, the professor – at least in the natural and some of the social sciences – takes on the characteristics of an entrepreneur ... The two worlds are merging physically and psychologically.”$^1$ - Clark Kerr, Chancellor of UC Berkeley
“I find that the three major administrative problems on a campus are sex for the students, athletics for the alumni and parking for the faculty.”$^2$ - Clark Kerr
“If its object were scientific and philosophical discovery, I do not see why a University should have students.”$^3$ - John Newmann, The Idea of a University defined and Illustrated
This article attempts to model the structure of Arizona State University under President Michael Crow. It was inspired by “The Mind of Clark Kerr,” written by Hal Draper, a radical librarian at University of California, Berkeley (UCB). Draper’s article influenced the Free Speech Movement (FSM) of 1964. He attacked Chancellor Kerr of UCB for censoring free speech on campus and corporatizing the university into what Kerr called “the multiversity.”
I’m an undergrad studying Computer Science at ASU who is fed up with the system. ASU is a large and growing university, with a rising tuition. But where is this money going? Is our education really getting better? If not, then what’s the point?
Simultaneously, these problems are papered over with bread and circuses. ASU is a party school, and students are told to simply enjoy the college experience rather than complaining.
Things have certainly gotten worse under the second Trump administration, but many problems at ASU predate him. ASU students were arrested and suspended for protesting the genocide in Gaza during the spring semester of 2024 under Biden. As I write, Trump is deporting international students who support Palestine.
Now is not the time for political apathy! Activists need to understand their environment, and even apolitical students and faculty need to understand the problems of ASU because they affect everyone.
Many analogies can be made between our current moment and the 1960s and 70s. Take any recent news headline, and replace the word “Palestine” with “Vietnam,” “ICE” with “HUAC”, and “Trump” with “Nixon” or “Reagan.” ASU President Crow also bears a striking resemblance to Chancellor Kerr.
The Berkeley FSM was incredibly important, affecting both the New Left and the Reagan (counter)revolution. The Uncommitted Campaign for Palestine is comparable to the protest vote against LBJ. However, the Left and antiwar movement was significantly more powerful in the 60s. The reason Trump won was political apathy rather than the presence of a strong Left opposition to the Democrats.
I don’t mean that things are exactly the same, but rather, we should learn from the mistakes of the past student movement, also known as the New Left. More specifically, I focus on the relation of the FSM to the UC system.
President Crow developed a model for ASU called the “New American University,” described in his book Designing the New American University. He takes inspiration from fifteen important universities: Harvard, Yale, Pennsylvania, Princeton, Columbia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, California, MIT, Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Stanford, and Chicago.
“These fifteen universities collectively determined the gold standard in American higher education—a model the potential and limitations of which we assess from various perspectives in the following chapters”$^4$
ASU claims that it’s “#1 in innovation, ahead of MIT and Stanford.”$^5$ Most ASU students don’t take this claim seriously. “Innovation” is more of a brand then anything else.
Let’s get a more objective view of ASU. To compare ASU to other public universities, I’ll cite data from US news.$^6$ UCLA is ranked #1, and ASU is ranked #61. ASU is clearly not the most prestigious public university, and it’s even lower in the rankings when compared to private colleges.