Who Runs Our Universities?

The future of public higher education is being held hostage by financial institutions and actors. How did it get this way? Lend & Rule reveals the “shadow governance” of debt and credit in the United States higher education system. With sharp and hard-hitting insight, the Coalition Against Campus Debt exposes how institutional debt is a primary driver of university austerity, miseducation, and the deepening of societal inequality.Addressing how our lives are entangled in a debt economy, they develop the analysis necessary to transform higher education in today’s neoliberal racial capitalist political economy.Part theoretical analysis, part toolbox for organizers in higher education, Lend & Rule is an invaluable resource for anyone engaged in debt abolition struggles or looking to acquire a critical and transformative vision of higher education today.

Coalition Against Campus Debt is a collective of educators and organizers active in higher education struggles as well as the debt abolition movement more widely for over a decade. Members include Jason Wozniak, Eleni Schirmer, Dana Morrison, Joanna Gonsalves, Richard Levy, Maria del Mar Rosa Rodriguez, Sofya Aptekar, Tracy Berger, and Barbara Madeloni. * * * Sofya Aptekar is an associate professor of urban studies at the City University of New York School of Labor and Urban Studies. She is the author of Green Card Soldier (MIT, 2023) and a delegate of the Professional Staff Congress. Tracy Berger is a mom of two, member of United Campus Workers Colorado, and staff organizer with Higher Education Labor United (HELU). She previously worked as staff at the University of Colorado Boulder and Front Range Community College. María del Mar Rosa-Rodríguez is an associate professor of Hispanic Studies at the University of Puerto Rico at Cayey, and the president of the faculty union of the UPR, Asociación Puertorriqueña de Profesores Universitarios (APPU). She is also the cofounder of the Junte de Mujeres Sindicalistas, bringing together feminism and syndicalism. Joanna Gonsalves is a psychology professor at Salem State University and president of the Massachusetts State College Association faculty union. Rich Levy is a professor of Political Science emeritus at Salem State University and a member of Educators for a Democratic Union. He and Joanna Gonsalves are coordinators of the Massachusetts Campus Debt Reveal and the Massachusetts Anti-Privatization Project, both funded by the Massachusetts Teachers Association. Barbara Madeloni is an organizer and writer for Labor Notes. Dana Morrison is an associate professor in the Educational Foundations and Policy Studies Department at West Chester University of Pennsylvania and chapter secretary of the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties. Eleni Schirmer is a writer living in Montréal. She organizes with the Debt Collective.  Jason Thomas Wozniak is an associate professor in the Educational Foundations and Policy Studies Department, Coordinator of the Transformative Education and Social Change Program, and Co-Director of The Latin American Philosophy of Education Society (LAPES) at West Chester University. He is also a long-term organizer with Debt Collective.