Resisting the Unholy Alliance Between a University and a Prison Company

The Decision Comes Down

On February 19, 2013, members of The University received an email announcing the “gift”: “[The University] has received a $6 million gift from [Prison Company] to name its football stadium.” Touted as a one-time gift that was the “largest in the history of the university,” for which “we are incredibly grateful,” the money would be dispersed over 12 years in return for the stadium being named after the Prison Company. The announcement was approximately six paragraphs in length, but reference to the company came only in the fourth paragraph. Notably, nowhere in the message was the word “prison” used to describe the company:

The [Prison Company] is the first fully integrated equity real estate investment trust specializing in the design, financing, development, and operation of correctional, detention, and community reentry facilities around the globe. The [Prison Company] is the world’s leading provider of diversified correctional, detention, and community reentry services to government agencies worldwide with operations in the United States, Australia, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. The [Prison Company’s] worldwide operations include the ownership and/or management of 101 facilities totaling 73,000 beds with a growing workforce of approximately 18,000 professionals. Through its charitable foundation, The [Prison Company] Foundation, the company supports charitable and educational causes nationwide and fosters national and international amateur sports competition.

The fifth paragraph focused on the CEO of the company, a two-time alumnus of the university, who framed this as a “groundbreaking partnership with [The University].” The paragraph also noted that [Prison Company] donated “approximately $1 million to support local charities and schools and to fund college scholarships for students in the communities we serve across the country.” The tone of the message was clearly celebratory—we had found a donor! The donor was an alumnus, with long and fond ties to The University and was a charitable person.

However, reading about the global financial success of a private correctional and detention facility stopped me in my tracks. The description of the company was curious: the first fully integrated equity real estate investment trust (REIT). I later learned that the REIT designation allowed the Prison Company a break on its taxes. A blogger commented on the irony of this exchange:

As of January 1, the company’s legal status changed, resulting in tax breaks worth more than $6.4 million to [the CEO]. So in effect, the $6 million paid to [The University] for the naming rights was underwritten by the American taxpayer. (Fire Ant, 2013)

The “real estate” orientation of the description of the company framed it more like a hotel, akin to any other globally successful enterprise. In fiscal terms, they were undoubtedly successful. As noted by the New York Times, “[Prison Company] reported revenues in excess of $1.6 billion in 2011, income generated mostly from state and federal prisons and detention centers for illegal immigrants . . . It holds nearly $3 billion in assets” (Bishop, 2013).

More troubling than the linguistic embellishments in the description of the company, however, was the nature of their business. Just over a week before, a local newspaper reported that the school to prison pipeline was alive and well in two school districts that our university served (Postal & Travis, 2013). Thus, instead of interrupting the vicious connection between education and incarceration, my own educational institution had decided to partner with a company that profited from the incarceration and detention of youth, immigrants, and other marginalized groups.

The Collective Recoil

Most responses to the news ranged from puzzlement (Why would we advertise a prison company to football fans?) to outrage at the thought of partnership with a private prison group. Some, especially those in athletics and the colleges/units that would benefit from the money, noted that they were happy to partner with the company and had not given the nature of the Prison Company much thought. Cycles of research and response kicked into high gear in several contexts. Journalists led the initial charge. The New York Times reported, “for this partnership, there is no obvious precedent” and labeled it “a jarring case of the lengths colleges and teams will go to produce revenue, of the way that everything seems to be for sale now in sports—and to anyone with enough cash” (Bishop, 2013). Quoting a professor from a different state, the article got to the crux of the issue: “It does appear we’re prostituting ourselves to the highest bidder regardless of what they represent. Again—the sanctity of higher education matters little when the dollars are needed.”

Local reporting on the Prison Company’s history turned up an ugly array of human rights violations. The company’s questionable record included rape, prisoner deaths, charges of lethal medical care, and riots; millions in lawsuits; and the observation that days after a trip to company headquarters, a House Speaker at the state level inserted language into the legislative budget funding a US$110 million privately run prison, which was awarded to the Prison Company to build and operate a facility in the speaker’s home district (Beall, 2013).

Within 24 hours, the Dream Activists had launched a petition against the decision, followed the next day by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), calling for the university to disassociate itself from the stadium sponsor. Later, the ACLU filed a public records request with The University “to identify what [The University] officials knew about [the Prison Company], when they knew it, and why they insist on repeating [the Prison Company’s] defenses of its horrendous record of abuse and neglect” (Lantigua, 2013). The ACLU also uncovered the Prison Company’s own response to the controversy: an attempt to revise its own Wikipedia page, specifically the section titled, “Controversies” (Takei, 2013).

Within the university, it was students who responded first. A group of students representing organizations and coalitions already used to organizing around human right issues, coalesced to protest the decision. On February 25th, the students organized a protest rally that about 100 students, staff, and faculty members attended. At this rally, I approached a senate leader to explore how the senate could coordinate faculty responses to this decision and was informed that I was the only one who appeared to have a problem with the decision. In turn, I mingled with the attendees taking care to ask all faculty members present how widespread the concern was among their programs/departments. It was clear that I was not alone. The students proceeded to the administration building where they “occupied” the president’s office till agreement was reached to hold an open forum with the students on March 1st.

Coordinated faculty response began with a petition circulated through informal networking. Picking up on a comment made by a university administrator that it was faculty in the social sciences rather than the “hard sciences” that were bothered by this decision, a faculty member circulated a petition in the form of an open letter to the university president from which the following is excerpted. I was 1 of more than 60 faculty members who had signed it within a week:

We are stunned both by the Administration’s decision to form an association with [the Prison Company] and by the process’s lack of transparency and consultation with the wider university community . . . The collaboration between the [University] administration and [the Prison Company] counters the mission of our university . . . For the many of us who define our scholarship in advocacy for social justice and equality, it is hard not to feel indignant and embarrassed by the institution . . . As members of an institution of higher education, our moral compass binds us . . . We demand that the administration immediately retract its connection with [the Prison Company] . . . Accepting a “gift” from [the Prison Company] disregards the diverse and migrant communities that attend our colleges, fund our programs, and participate in our activities.

My own experiences in faculty governance led me to question why the faculty representative on the Board of Trustees (BOT) allowed this decision to receive unanimous support. Were the trustees aware of Prison Company’s record? Had they considered the damage to the university’s reputation? I submitted these questions to the senate leadership for inclusion on the agenda at the next meeting. Although the questions were not included directly on the agenda, the president’s response at the senate meeting indicated that the information presented to the BOT did not include the company’s troubling record. A review of the BOT minutes confirmed this.

The Squelching of Dialogue

The Open Forum on March 1st was anticipated as an opportunity for dialogue with the President to discuss the students’ opposition to the decision. The lead-up entailed some disappointing setbacks for the students who were informed that (a) only students would be allowed to speak (several faculty attended the meeting with tape over their mouth!), (b) it would be held at—ironically—the recruiting room of the stadium, and (c) the students were not allowed to select the moderator, as previously agreed. The students had negotiated that the media would be present. The forum was preceded by a press conference. Students had requested that a faculty member speak at the press conference and I agreed to do so, in part, because I was troubled by the public silence of the faculty. I began my comments with a rationale for my participation:

I am here because it is important that as a faculty member I should not be silent nor be silenced on this issue . . . As an educator, I also know that students learn best by example; what we do, speaks louder than anything that we can say in class. This is especially true as we encourage students to become socially conscious and caring citizens, and to develop the skills needed to live peacefully in a fast-changing world. So, as a faculty member, I am here to teach by example.

The ensuing “Open Forum” however was neither open nor really a forum. Students had to sign up to ask a question, providing their name and affiliation. Although the forum had been requested by students as an opportunity to discuss their opposition to the stadium naming, the first questions were pro-Prison Company and came off as an indication that the forum was a “set up.” No microphones were allowed, so no audio was picked up for media circulation, and the President appeared to make little effort to heed the complaints of the approximately 250 member audience that they could not hear her. Diverse questions received the same response, raising the possibility that some limited “talking points” were being recycled. The President confirmed that the decision was “a done deal.” A large number of the audience walked out pronouncing the event a sham.

A Catalyst for Debate

Meanwhile, concerned faculty members turned to the senate as a means for expressing their concern, exploring multiple formats: a petition, a Q&A session with the President, an open discussion as an agenda item, or a resolution. Placing the issue on the senate agenda initially proved more difficult than I had expected. Following the by-laws, and assisted by faculty through overlapping email networks, we identified the requisite number of senators and faculty members to place a resolution on the agenda. The resolution itself, through multiple drafts, was watered down in terms of the strength of its opposition. Nevertheless, all email participants agreed that “something needed to be put forward” and agreed to the final wording:

Whereas, faculty are concerned about the [Prison Company’s] management of its institutions in the U.S and abroad; and

Whereas, faculty oppose important administrative decisions being made without participation or input from faculty, staff, or other [University] stakeholders; and

Whereas, the [Prison Company’s] business practices do not align with the missions of the university; and

Whereas, faculty think that the stadium naming has hurt the reputation of the university;

Be it resolved, that the faculty oppose naming the [University] football stadium the [Prison Company] Stadium.

This turned out to be an unusual senate meeting. There was obvious trepidation in the air further exacerbated by the presence of police officers, uniformed and plain-clothed; faculty members who were not senators, students and media were present (unusual), while many senators were notably absent. The moderator of the meeting recommended that senators speak first, alternating between support for and against the resolution, followed by faculty members (nonsenators) and students. Senators also requested and approved a motion to vote by secret ballot. The presentation of perspectives on both sides was thoughtful, with less of the acerbic contentions I have witnessed in other senate debates. Perspectives of the opposition included the fact that the resolution itself, because it was mostly symbolic, was unlikely to reverse the decision; the partnership with the Prison Company might be an opportunity to change something from within; bills needed to be paid; the charges against the Prison Company were unverified; and faculty might be better served by focusing on salary increases.

Those in support of the resolution noted that this was a way to register the faculty response to the decision; that the decision had been made without a complete review of the data on the Prison Company; that the violations against the Prison Company are documented (a handout with the documentation was circulated) and disturbing; that existing university policy on naming opportunities had not been followed; the decision violated the mission of the university especially as it applied to social justice concerns, tarnished the university’s reputation and—by extension—the credibility of faculty and students; and that the university faculty had a moral obligation to register their opposition to this decision/company. The resolution passed 25-9.

The Alliance Is Annulled

The first installment of the sponsorship was to be paid on April 1st. That morning, students staged a protest on the campus. That evening, the news circulated that the Prison Company had withdrawn from the stadium sponsorship.

Being Visible and Vocal

The contributions of individuals are the basis for collective action. Whether launching a petition, drafting a resolution, networking with like-minded faculty, insisting on being heard by your governance representatives, speaking up or simply showing up, each action contributed to the success of collective action. Many of us saw our engagement as fundamentally connected to our identity as educators and scholars, forging a coalition that ranged across multiple disciplines. It was not just a shared moral vision that informed our response. Many had the skills and experience to mobilize the coalition toward action, and our personal experience in faculty governance had sensitized us to our right to have a voice in the senate agenda and find ways to exercise that right.

We also recognize that being vocal and insisting on having a voice is no guarantee that your input will be heard. As evident in the absence of leadership listening in the open forum or in the complete lack of interaction or dialogue between the President and the students or faculty, there is little indication that current strategies for establishing voice and presence are effective with their intended audience even though they have served to identify opportunities for students and/or faculty to forge networks of support. The challenge to facilitate leadership listening in the context of neoliberalism in the academy could be arduous, but faculty will do well to recognize the power and the role of formal and informal networks of communication (Stohl, 1995) to forge necessary dialogue between faculty and administrators that will lay the groundwork for effective faculty governance and participatory decision making.

Electing the Best Representatives

While the commitment to collaborative decision making should be evident in the policies of the university’s governance structure, the presence of policies alone, while crucial, is inadequate. It is important to elect effective representatives who can and will, in moments of crisis, engage in consensus building and advocate for faculty voice even in the face of authoritarian decision making by administrators.

It was difficult to ignore the obvious trepidation of senators, exemplified in the unanimous opposition (unusual) of the senate steering committee the previous week at the thought of having to “go against” the university president in the support of the resolution. It was placed on the senate agenda because we had followed the procedures for procuring the correct number of signatures to support it. This initial opposition was based, in part, on a troubling uncritical acceptance of administrative perspectives that included that there was no concrete or credible evidence against Prison Company (although a basic internet search revealed plenty); that the university would “survive” the bad publicity and the naming decision would become noncontroversial with time (with little regard for the underlying ethics of the decision); that the President and the BOT were unlikely to reverse their decision, so we should move on (a license to allow more of such top-down, ill-advised and under-researched decisions); and that opposing the decision would not improve human rights (although most human rights activism begins with opposition to injustice). While it is unclear whether these perspectives emerged from the fact that steering committee members honestly believed these views, were afraid to voice any opposition, were influenced by the prospect of their own colleges benefitting from this funding, or did not see the role of faculty (or the university) as being involved in social justice advocacy, it does underscore the significance of who it is we elect to represent faculty on decision-making bodies, their ability and willingness to represent their constituents, and our ability to hold them accountable for doing so.

Developing a Critical Consciousness

As Giroux (2002) notes, “neoliberalism wraps itself in what appears to be an unassailable appeal to common sense” (p. 428) and is characterized by the absence of questioning. Consequently, engaging proactively against the influences of neoliberalism in the academy will require faculty (and students) to reclaim their ability to question in order to to subvert “attempts to eliminate an engaged critique” (p. 429) about neoliberalism’s most basic principles and social consequences.

As evident in this case, the failures to be critical were numerous. University decision makers failed to conduct their own independent research into the company; they failed to move beyond corporate profit as a proxy for corporate citizenship to question the (mis)alignment between the mission of the university and that of a private prison company; they failed to anticipate the outrage of faculty and students, and to assess the damage that this breach of trust could cost. Challenging corporatization requires that we develop the critical capacity to see through the charade of corporate rhetoric to ask the basic questions we encourage our students to pose: Whose perspective is being presented? For whose benefit and/or whose loss? What perspectives are excluded? How would their inclusion alter our perspective?

The development of critical consciousness will also facilitate the ability to discern inconsistencies and fallacies in the explanations presented and identify their implications. If this were a gift given in love for one’s alma mater, why was the stadium being named after a Prison Company and not the individual donor? What did the company stand to gain, because it was not selling a product that the football fans in the stadium were likely to buy? If all that was required of a donor was fiscal stability, did it mean that we were for sale to the highest bidder? How should we think about the required qualifications of development officers who would engage in fund raising for the institution?

The development of a critical consciousness entails the ability to challenge the naïve acceptance of the logic of neoliberalism and “connect the dots” to highlight troubling connections within the system. For instance, the argument that Prison Company cannot be blamed for their line of work as “somebody needs to do it” and that it was the justice system that condemned prisoners, not the company itself needed to be counteracted (a colleague suggested “teach-ins”) with the observation that a private prison company (unlike a state-run institution) was concerned with profit, therefore, supported a higher rate of incarceration, actively lobbied for tougher laws and sentencing, particularly around undocumented immigration and recognized that Immigration Reform could negatively affect shareholders. The ability to present these analyses succinctly and clearly to public audiences is central to a faculty’s ability to engage as public intellectuals, especially when countering specific neoliberal assaults on the academy.

A Collective Agenda

If we are to successfully preempt the deleterious impact of neoliberalism within universities, we must extend our skills as teachers, scholars, and researchers into the arena of faculty governance. This, however, calls for a fundamental shift in faculty members’ roles and responsibilities. Faculty members need to become more aware of and engaged in university-wide decision making that significantly affects their working conditions; however, this adds to the responsibilities of a typically overstretched faculty member whose class sizes have increased, who must procure grant funding for research and be responsive to a myriad requests related to accountability and program accreditation. Given the low rate of tenured/tenure–earning faculty (30% nationally; see Mills, 2012; 43% at The University), most faculty do not have the time for this additional responsibility, especially when the university does not reward service. This is a recipe to ensure that faculty work in isolation from one another, compliant with rules in which they have had no part developing or debating, paving the way for further uncritical, unopposed acceptance of the logic of corporatization.

The stadium naming decision has awakened members of the university community to the intrusion of neoliberal ideology into academic life and has engendered discussion hitherto absent in public forums. Within my college, I have requested that the dean and our representatives in governance develop decision-making guidelines for similar naming opportunities related to the college. The established structures for communication and agenda setting will ensure that this will be addressed. At the university senate, this decision kindled discussion of the role of faculty in the context of social injustice. Faculty who framed their support of the resolution as a moral obligation mentioned the historic context of voting for divestment from South Africa in opposition to Apartheid and the role of faculty in German universities during the attacks on academic freedom in the 1920s and 1930s as central to their identity as engaged scholars for the public good.

A key implication also related to the misalignment of this decision with our mission. Was this true only for those in the “social sciences”–oriented fields, or did social justice concerns touch all fields? The need for faculty in all fields to explore more seriously their educational, social, and civic responsibility not only to teach the specifics of subject matter content but also to groom students who are socially responsible professionals and citizens, emerged in the discussion of the donor: The president noted the “ideal” nature of the partnership with the Prison Company because the CEO was a 2-time alumnus; critics, on the other hand, asked what it was we had taught him, given the company’s dubious record of human rights violations.

Countering neoliberalism also requires addressing the fiscal exigencies created by diminished public funding and its consequences in the form of fewer tenure track faculty lines, the push toward distance learning, larger class sizes, and research framed as the amount of grant money procured (Ginsberg, 2011). While the stadium naming decision revealed the peril of fund raising without appropriate socially focused guidelines, it also demonstrated that social consciousness alone will not address the economic needs of the institution. Faculty governance must prove its adeptness in this new reality.

Although this case reveals the relationship between the president and the faculty/students in dichotomous terms, it is crucial that successful governance be framed in terms of effective dialogue when leaders are able to forge consensus across differences or identify ways in which to compromise (Del Favero, 2003). This is best achieved through the investment in long-term relationships and trust building that will allow for the use of formal and informal networks of communication when a crisis occurs.

Being proactive in difficult times for public educators also requires us to educate the public on what we do. We must respond clearly and persuasively to supporters and critics alike on why academic freedom or tenure (the next likely targets of neoliberal forces) is necessary. More coordinated efforts from the level of individual programs to interuniversity collaborations are needed to spell out to boards of trustees, legislators, and the general public who we are, what we do, and why we matter to the public good; the failure to do so lays the groundwork for further assaults on the academy by those fundamentally opposed to its democratizing potentiality.

A Personal Agenda

This analysis yielded several imperatives for my own practice. The absence and trepidation of senators surrounding this discussion revealed the need for a cultural shift in the approach to engagement in faculty governance; yet, the thoughtful discussion among those present signaled a willingness to engage meaningfully on thorny matters. As a senator, I will work to support and strengthen our decision-making systems, to lead by listening to all constituencies and support consensus building through respectful dialogue.

The students’ response to this decision highlighted the importance of effective teaching for social justice. Why wasn’t student (or faculty) opposition more widespread? Had too many of us (faculty) fallen prey to an instrumentalist notion of education and abandoned teaching for civic responsibility and social consciousness? The opportunity to network across disciplines has laid the groundwork for potential ongoing collaboration in social justice and human rights education.

Getting involved in the opposition to this decision allowed me to clarify my own values as a social justice educator. As a professor on sabbatical, there were times when I felt torn between my own scholarly agenda and the task of responding to and coordinating the multiple networks of communication that emerged as the opposition to this decision coalesced. Fortunately, I recognized that this is what social justice educators do (we cannot wait for a convenient time to act) and that, as a tenured professor, I had an obligation to lead.

I have also learned that our university leaders have been particularly inept in navigating the complex issues surrounding diversity. The inherent contradictions between university rhetoric celebrating difference and the inability to engage with it reveal the need for greater sophistication in the institutional conceptualization of diversity that moves beyond the celebration of demographics to an ingrained comfort with difference (Schoorman & Bogotch, 2010). I have already offered to support efforts in this regard, with the caveat that all participants, including university administrators, recognize our roles as teachers and learners in these settings.

My focus through these events was to forge a collective consciousness of the university as a whole (including the president) as a single—if diverse—body engaged in collaborative problem solving. The failure to forge dialogue has been disturbing. This will remain the ongoing challenge for those of us who believe in the emancipatory potential of dialogue.