Institutional Reform
To remind people that institutional change in academia is not only possible but ongoing around the world, here is a brief timeline of recent projects and reforms we've come across. Any additional suggestions, especially about the historical situation outside Europe and North America, would be very welcome.
| 2009-10 | An unusual wave of protest against threats to California's public university system is ongoing. |
| 2008-10 | A series of politically oriented conferences in Minneapolis aim to rethink the university. |
| 2007-9 | A minor but interesting occurrence in university history: Antioch College, founded in 1852, was closed down by its Board of Trustees in 2008, but quasi-miraculously reopened a year later. Especially worth noting is the unofficial, temporary college concocted as a substitute for the college: essentially a replacement liberal arts college in a loft. |
| 2006-present | An Anthropology Diversity Initiative at the University of Michigan, chronicled here by Anneeth Hundle, examines the ways that racial and other minorities are represented within an anthropology department. |
| 2005 | Foundation of the World Council of Anthropological Associations, aiming to reduce international inequalities within the anthropological profession. |
| 2002 | Founding of the Ethnography of the University Initiative at the University of Illinois, a wide-reaching project that includes student investigations of everything from racial boundaries to campus evangelism. |
| 1999-present | Formation of Anthropology Matters, a collective project of anthropology graduate students and early career anthropologists designed "to stimulate discussion on the production of anthropological knowledge through a focus on training, teaching, research and writing." They have published much courageous work on life and even garb in anthropology. |
| 1999-2010 | The European Bologna Process is put in motion, guiding the subsequent decade through a long series of European university reforms. The tenth anniversary has seen continued protest against the reforms, whose market-oriented neoliberal influences have attracted criticism, and also speculation on the possible importation of the Bologna Process to the United States. |
| 1992 | Foundation of the Coalition of Graduate Employee Unions, which brings together dozens of graduate student unions across North America in hopes of collectively improving working conditions. |