SAVE International Petition

SAVE the University invites academics and researchers affiliated with universities OUTSIDE THE UNITED STATES to sign the following petition in support of efforts to save the University of California as a great public university system

[ Updated October 29 ]

Public universities around the world are in crisis. The global economic meltdown of 2008 has reinforced a disinvestment in higher education and research, as programs are eviscerated, enrollments and access limited, and research funding withdrawn. In the name of the public university and international collaboration, we the undersigned, researchers and educators working around the world and across the disciplines of the sciences and the humanities, express our support to efforts devoted to saving the international public good that is the University of California.

We, as signatories of this petition, look to the University of California not only as a model of an international public research university, but also as a source of productive international collaboration. Our institutes, laboratories, and universities have important and vital exchange agreements with the 10 separate campuses, countless divisions and departments, and the dense network of individual ties that link us to the University of California. These exchanges have engendered long-term collaboration and the production of cutting edge knowledge across the disciplines and fields, and the UC system has become a critical node in the international network of innovation and scholarship. It is because UC is a public institution that these achievements were possible.

Facing budgetary shortfalls of our own, we call on our own institutions and governments for remedies and reinvestment. In defense of global research and education, and especially of the public university, we support efforts to maintain the international engagements of University of California as a public research university. Already challenged before the crisis of 2008, public universities throughout the world are in danger of losing their identities and functions – of creating innovative knowledge, giving access to all segments of society, and educating our students for public life. The end of the public university is what is at stake for all of us, including the University of California.

Our own challenges are frequently greater than California’s. But should the public university in California die off, our own worlds and hopes will be diminished. We call on the UC’s university administration, the governors and elected officials of California, and the California electorate to take immediate action to preserve the public identity of the university, including its traditions of faculty self-governance, in the service of international academic and scholarly excellence.

THIS PETITION IS ONLY FOR ACADEMICS AND RESEARCHERS IN UNIVERSITIES OUTSIDE THE U.S.