This is not a rhetorical question: what kinds of solidarity can be cultivated between private universities and public institutions?

Because @CUNY just laid off three thousand members of faculty & staff. That number is staggering—an existential threat to public education in NYC.

Why isn't academic Twitter screaming about this?

And what action comes after screaming?

This is what the #NYCBudget decided was more expendable than police funding, btw.

Public education is a major engine of socioeconomic mobility. #CUNY is specifically dedicated to serving Black, brown, and immigrant communities.

The @PSC_CUNY has filed a lawsuit under the CARES Act, alleging that @CUNY has not lived up to its commitment to protect jobs to the greatest extent possible. But the PSC is also endemically resistant to the most progressive contingent of its membership.

I don't know how to explain to you how much my students matter. It is by no means even the most important loss, but research scholars in particular should be made aware how much brilliance we lose to institutional inequality. How much knowledge and how much potential.

So to return to the initial question: what kinds of actions can the Very Ideologically Supportive faculties of well-funded private departments take to stand meaningfully shoulder to shoulder with public institutions, public educators, and the communities we serve?

What can YOUR department vote on at your NEXT faculty meeting? What do you have funding to do? What do you have institutional ownership over? How can you stand in solidarity?

What possibilities of scale and institutional solidarity are available if you are building your courses for a fully online fall semester?

Think about the decisions that your department is having to make right now—the problems of space and numbers. Imagine doing that down 3,000 faculty.

One tactic private universities are using to adapt is expanding the schedule, to maximize classroom availability. Could you do that if your students were also essential workers?

Do you admit graduate students? How many graduate students has your department admitted from public institutions in, say, the past ten years?

I think what I'm trying to emphasize here is that while academics think of ourselves as very powerless, inside our institutions there are kinds of leverage we do still have. Resources that look minor to R1 faculty are the -essence- of institutional difference.