Student activism and protest. (News of Educational Workers).

Students from both high schools and universities are joining faculty to walk off campus to protest proposed budget cuts. On April 30, 2002 thousands of students from New York City high schools walked out to join The City of New York (CUNY) college students to stop the proposed budget cuts at their institutions. On September 5, 2002, thousands of professors and other employees at University of Massachusetts at Amherst walked off their jobs for a half hour break to protest state cuts to higher education and freezes on their salaries. (The Associated Press, September 6, 2002)

Americans for Victory Over Terrorism, a conservative group led by William Bennett, sponsored a poll of 634 students from 96 four-year colleges. The responses revealed that 37 percent of U.S. college students would try to evade a draft if one were enacted. An impressive 60 percent of students "agreed that developing an understanding of the values of history of other cultures and nations is a better way to prevent terrorism than investing in strong military and defense capabilities." (The Miami Herald, June 21, 2002, www.miami.com)

In his review of Liza Featherstone's Students Against Sweatshops (London and New York: Verso, 2002), Michael Yates reviews several factors helping to explain the origins and development of the anti-sweatshop movement: the exposure of working conditions in the subcontracted plants of high profile companies like Nike; the organization of sweatshop workers themselves; significant changes in U.S. labor; and as Featherstone stresses, the colleges and universities of future activists had become thoroughly corporatized. The first four chapters focus on the background of the formation of the United Students Against Sweatshops, its initial successes, its growing understanding of and struggle against the corporate university; and the backlash as soon as the groups began to have a real impact on the way corporate America does business. The book also discusses important problems of race and gender in USAS. While racial tensions have existed, gender has been a less divisive issue. (www.monthlyreview.org/0902yates.htm)

United Students Against Sweatshops consciously encourages women leaders and challenges gender issues as part of its work. Women leaders are actively recruited and trained and make up a majority of the group's leadership. (In These Times, July 22, 2002)

President Bush spoke at Ohio State University's commencement ceremony on June 14, 2002. The graduates planned a protest where they would turn their backs on Bush while he was speaking. At the start of the ceremony, potential protesters were warned that they would be denied their diploma and would be arrested if they turned their backs. Everybody was encouraged to applaud Bush and give him a standing ovation.

In scores of interviews at 10 universities around the country during the week of September 29, 2002, anti-war sentiment made up the plurality of student opinions. The largest number of students interviewed "were skeptical, overtly cynical or downright hostile to the administration's determination to oust Hussein." (Washington Post, September 29, 2002, www.washingtonpost.com). Stay tuned to News for Educational Workers as the student protests build.

Educators for Social Responsibility (ESR), a Cambridge, Massachusetts group whose mission is to help young people "develop the convictions and skills to shape a safe, sustainable, democratic and just world," continues to spread its idea that social and emotional learning is as important as subject mastery. ESR's peacemaking lesson plans and readings have proven popular. Within weeks after 9/11, ESR's website (www.esrnational.org) posted numerous progressive teaching aids for teachers and a discussion guide for parents. ESR's hallmark is its day-to-day presence in schools, focusing on conflict resolution, violence in the schools, and discussions of race, class, and sexual orientation. (In These Times, June 24, 2000)