Public universities around the world are in crisis, as the global economic meltdown of 2008 has reinforced a disinvestment in higher education and research. Yet everywhere, public universities are more crucial than ever before to the recovery and reconstruction of societies and economies after the crisis. The public university creates innovative knowledge, provides access and training to all segments of society, and educates students for public life. 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 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. The UC system has become a critical node in the international network of innovation and scholarship and the important teaching mission of the UC, with its historic commitment to equality of access, exists alongside these achievements because of the public identity of 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 governor 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 excellence, accessibility, and public service.
