Save WVU (w/ Leslie Wilber, Morgan King, & Jessie Wilkerson)

Working People

The world of higher education has been in shock this past week after West Virginia University President E. Gordon Gee announced plans to dramatically cut academic programs and jobs in the coming year. "West Virginia University, a crucial institution in one of the nation’s most impoverished states, is poised to jettison all of its faculty dedicated to teaching Spanish, French, Chinese and other foreign languages," Nick Anderson reports at The Washington Post. "The state’s largest public university also is moving toward elimination of a master’s degree program in creative writing and a doctoral program in mathematics, among other proposed cuts, in response to declining enrollment and what university officials call a 'structural' budget deficit of $45 million. In all, 32 of the university’s 338 majors on its Morgantown campus would be discontinued and 7 percent of its faculty eliminated under a plan made public last week." If WVU proceeds with the proposed cuts, the impact on campus workers—student employees, grad workers, faculty, staff, facilities workers—and the local economy will be massive. What brought WVU to this crisis point? And what can be done to fight back? In this urgent episode, we talk with: Leslie Wilber, an organizer with West Virginia Campus Workers who graduated with a Master of Fine Arts degree from WVU earlier this year; Morgan King, a recent graduate of WVU, a Fulbright Scholar, and a Marshall Scholar; Dr. Jessie Wilkerson, associate professor and Joyce and Stuart Robbins Chair of History at WVU, a member of the West Virginia Campus Workers union, and the author of To Live Here, You Have to Fight: How Women Led Appalachian Movements for Social Justice.

Additional links/info below…

• Leslie's Twitter page
• Morgan's Twitter page
• Jessie's Twitter page
• West Virginia Campus Workers website and Twitter page
• West Virginia United Student Union Twitter page
• WVCW: "Stop the Cuts at WVU" page
• CALL TO ACTION: Save WVU – An Open Letter from Alumni
• Mya Helm, Slate, "Everyone at West Virginia University Knew Something Was Up. I Hate That We Were Right"
• Nick Anderson, The Washington Post, "WVU’s Plan to Cut Foreign Languages, Other Programs Draws Disbelief"
• Emma Pettit, The Chronicle of Higher Education, "Scholars See Dangerous Precedent in West Virginia U.’s Plan to Cut Foreign Languages"
• Jessie Wilkerson, University of Illinois Press, To Live Here, You Have to Fight: How Women Led Appalachian Movements for Social Justice
• Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, "Big Pharma Leaves 1,400 Workers in the Dust with West Virginia Plant Closure"
• Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, "Duke University's Ploy to Ban Graduate Student Unions at All Private Universities"
• Working People, "**Jessie Wilkerson** (Bonus episode)"

Permanent links below...

• Working People Patreon page
• Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show!
• Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
• In These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
• The Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page

Featured Music (all songs sourced from the Free Music Archive: freemusicarchive.org)

• Jules Taylor, "Working People" Theme Song