I wrote a commentary on behalf of Rutgers’ three faculty unions calling out President Jonathan Holloway for his commitment to austerity politics, which do little to help students and a lot to enrich investors.
Holloway's stakeholder address is problematically performative
Leave it to University President Jonathan Holloway to speak for 45 minutes and say virtually nothing important. Holloway's stakeholder address on Tuesday offered a checklist of successes targeted at donors: increased interest in Rutgers from high school students, growing donations from alumni and research successes.
His goal, he said to his audience, was to show that through the University, "we are doing the work to make New Jersey, the country and the world, a better place."
What he didn't say was that much of this is happening despite Holloway and the Board of Governors's austerity agenda and their use of a contrived budget crisis to impose cuts on faculty and students, which includes slashing classes to possibly force larger class sizes so that the administration can protect the University's financial reserves built up during the pandemic.
Holloway has spent much of his three years as the University's leader offering dueling narratives: One in which Rutgers is building on success after success and a second in which we are in perpetual crisis.