A Review of Campus, Inc.

by Diane Calabrese

Campus, Inc.: Corporate Power in the Ivory Tower Edited
by Geoffrey D. White, Ph.D. with Flannery C. Hauck 2001–Prometheus
Books, Amherst, New York

IN SHORT, THE authors of the 30 chapters in this book have
this to say: corporations hold the power at institutions of
higher education (and in other sectors of society). Faculty,
and their natural allies-students, support staff, parents,
and alumni-should wrest the power away from corporations.
In the struggle to gain control, or exercise genuine (non-illusory)
self-governance, faculty et. al. can expect to use frequent
teach-ins, consensus-building sessions and rallies, conduct
occasional sessions of guerilla theater, and give a nod now
and then to Thorstein Veblen, Upton Sinclair, John Dewey,
and perhaps, Frederick Winslow Taylor.

White wants the volume “to be a source of inspiration” (15),
a formal and informal (almost all contributors provide e-mail
addresses) communication tool for individuals who would challenge
the influence corporations and their emissaries (on the board
of trustees, for example) exert on higher education. Most
of the authors are tenured faculty members or doctoral students;
a few are undergraduates with a track record of activism.

The majority of the chapters are thoroughly annotated. There
is no index.

Ralph Nader authored a chapter titled “Greed in the Groves,”
which at less than two full pages, or about 500 words, provides
a good example of the compilations of platitudes that substitute
for analysis throughout the text.

For example, on page 374, Nader writes, “Again and again,
on major issues from civil rights to the arms race, from Agent
Orange to auto safety, from soil erosion to acid rain, from
corporate monopoly to government violations of the law, from
automation dislocation to the corporate looting of America,
precious time passes with painful results to many people before
knowledge is brought to bear on the misfortunes that afflict
our nation.”

It’s difficult to distill a cogent viewpoint from diffuse
statements like the one Nader makes. It’s even more difficult
to reconcile how Nader can simultaneously fret in print about
“painful results” and then, in action, make a conscious choice
that constitutes a colossal contribution to just such outcomes.
By failing to form a coalition prior to a national election
in a representative democracy, Nader guaranteed the results
he ostensibly opposes.

And so, with the inclusion of Nader, one begins to wonder.
What did the other authors do? Did they write about forming
coalitions, and then abandon the existing political party
with which they had the greatest alliance. Did they even vote?

In fact, one would expect to read a great deal about the
importance of enfranchising eligible voters. After all, voters
can put pressure on state legislative bodies that regulate
institutions of higher education. Instead, the content stands
as a sincere, often thorough, but in most cases, numbing compendium
of what is wrong with higher education.

According to the authors, the corporate presence on campuses
looms large. It dictates the content and perspective of business
courses, and knows no real boundaries across the curriculum.
It is also implicated in the creation of gentrified neighborhoods,
the outsourcing of support positions, a move away from tenure
and the research faculty members do, particularly in the sciences.

Michael Parenti reminds the reader, “Napalm was invented
at Harvard” (86), as though the production of a compound with
a grim history encapsulates the entire story of research at
Harvard. And Kevin Kniffin cites “David Ehrenfeld’s observation
that people studying fields such as earthworm taxonomy can
no longer find jobs in advanced research” (166), to illustrate
the commercialization of scientific endeavors.

At least Kniffin acknowledges the importance of legislation
in reform, and he seems to mean directives coming from statehouses.
On the other hand, he worries about whether elected university
board members can buy elections, and implies appointed members
might be better. What is his opinion, recommendation, or just
best guess? Kniffin doesn’t say. He suggests the current situation
in higher education parallels the one of exhausted farmers
facing foreclosure in The Grapes of Wrath. No one takes
immediate responsibility for the evictions, and the farmers
are muted by weariness. So it is with tired faculty who would
otherwise decry pervasive corporate interests on campus.

Yet faculty in the most demanding institutions of higher
education are not so exhausted as their counterparts in other
sectors. Talk to a staff nurse at a hospital or a low-wage
earner who works one full-time job and another job on weekends.
Talk to a long-haul trucker who runs his rig as many hours
a day as the law permits to carve out an income.

With the entire society of wage earners working harder and
longer than they have in recent decades, few people have the
energy to fight corporate interests. They do not even have
“a little bit of energy” (270), the reserve Bert Levy, Adam
Martin, and Joshua Wolfson want them to use to form watchdog
groups.

Levy et. al. were students when they wrote their essay.
But White would have served them better as a mentor and editor
if he had rejected their ad hominem attack. Moreover, the
tribute they pay a backer who threw a pie in the face of Milton
Friedman is misplaced. The essay feeds the suspicions of tired
workers outside higher education that inside higher education
there are privileged students with a luxuriant amount of time
on their hands, and too little respect for the opinions of
others.

The problem with any catalogue, whether it lists artworks,
postage stamps or the transgressions of institutions of higher
education linked to corporations, is that it invites questions
it does not answer. Yes, young women work in sweatshops “even
right across the U.S.-Mexico border” (238), as Medea Benjamin
recounts. But the reader naturally asks, what would the employees
do if they did not work in the shops? Is their quality of
life better or worse with the job, and if it is better, how
ethical is it for Benjamin to interfere in ways that ultimately
close the shops (companies rarely improve; they simply move)
without providing an equivalent alternative in terms of opportunity?

The reader craves answers and especially analysis. Yet the
authors keep compiling. It’s an odd approach to fostering
inspiration. Chapter after chapter stands as evidence the
vilified corporate interests in colleges and universities
are already getting what they want, and that is, literate
non-thinkers. Certainly, the outcome is not what White envisioned.

Forget Harvard and MIT. Most colleges and universities do
not have huge endowments. They meet their payroll as small
businesses do, just in time. A slight decline in enrollment
(tuition) and they must cut spending. Business partnerships
help enlarge the pool of equipment and experiences institutions
offer students. If the authors are going to advocate pushing
corporate interests off campus, they must propose a viable
substitute for the dollars such interests bring. Whether higher
taxes, lower faculty salaries, higher tuition, or some combination
of factors, alternatives must be discussed.

So, too, must the contradictions. Early on, Richard Daniels,
with Lisa Blasch and Peter Caster, write, “We would have to
dig back into the nineteenth century to find anything much
resembling a period of innocence for American higher education,
and then any such innocence would still be utterly class bound”
(69). They are correct, but most of their fellow authors blithely
assume something new and different has taken hold on campuses.
The book concludes with editor White interviewing Noam Chomsky,
who explains that corporate interests aside, faculty make
choices about how they spend their time, right down to the
content of the research they do.

“It’s a choice,” he says on page 454. Now that’s a good starting
point for analysis.