And where are AUC students but at the heart of the matter, so that Ayman Nour’s lecture attracted more students than our protest on Monday, and we are the future that will go on to rape this country. The anti-ideological is always susceptible to absorption by liberal representation, and is too easily subsumed as the non-political: the problem with Monday’s protest was not poor organization, and neither is the wider student body awaiting individually tailored motives. The problem begins with the assumption that “authorities” need only be investigated, penalized or resisted on account of their practice. That they (and others) symbolize everything that is wrong with this university and the education it pretends to offer us, is not an intelligible possibility, because the political imaginary that the university has shoved down our throats all semester (and long before) precludes the notion that the wider student body has any particular vested interest in the current climate.
Their consciousness only reveals itself when they are threatened. Since its move to the New Campus, this historical asylum for the elite has asked us to participate in a bizarre performance of “liberal arts education” in an increasingly violent ideological prison and a monument to the security-corporate complex that is New Cairo. Those that previously campaigned for a suspension of classes in reaction to the rumored attacks on students, are not merely worried about their physical safety but rather, the security of their very lifestyle. Like those that lambasted us on Monday, these reactions are a poetic testament: so numbing and reassuring is the AUC New Resort that any symptom of contact with “Old” Cairo necessitates a militant, defensive backlash.
What is at stake here is not only campus freedoms, but the wider implications of a dark and repressive privatization for the integrity and meaning of our education, of the university. No mathematical proof will market “resistance” to the enemy. The object, then, of a protest on this walled-in ghetto of a campus, must not only be the removal of administrators who cement the complex we are resisting, but must also be to do battle with the far more sinister web of pro-regime elements both inside and outside the classroom.
Class War and AUC – Sarah Hawass
Filed under: Political | Tags: auc, education sucks, why do i want to go into academia again?
“Students are prohibited from engaging in non-academic religious and political activities, as well as any unauthorized group formation within the university, nor should university facilities be used for those purposes. AUC encourages open study and examination of all intellectual subjects in its academic work. Both its curricula and extracurricular activities are dedicated to helping produce informed and independent minded human beings. However, as a matter of basic policy, AUC carefully refrains from involving itself in political or religious issues, as well as any group formation that may inflict psychological or physical harm on its members or any member of the AUC community. Therefore, the university does not permit its campus or facilities to be used by outsiders or by AUC personnel or students for such involvement.”
The fact that this very same administration intends to supervise any kind of transitional restructuring speaks volumes about the kind of infrastructure within which AUC students, including student government bodies, are asked to exist in. The false and imposed separatism that has constituted the identity of AUC students, their respective government bodies, the administration and the University at large is the direct result of efforts to further atomize and segregate Egyptians. The University attempts to naturalize, indeed, neuter its position in the wider public sphere of Egypt. AUC identifies itself as above and beyond all things Egyptian, insists that it is apolitical when its behavior indicates that it is precisely the product of the outgoing regime and its institutions. Separatism, paternalism and zero transparency are at the core of the charade of apoliticism.
– AUC Tahrir Communique #2
Typical bullshit from the administration. Revolution-themed classes, the campus on the square etc. All essentially bullshit if this policy isn’t substantially changed. This institution has done everything it can to disengage its students from the wider community. You wouldn’t think it was possible after everything that’s happened, but AUC remains a political vacuum. I have nothing but contempt for this entire community. I’ve learned a lot since I’ve been here, but it’s been in spite of the administration and not because of it. I can guarantee that only very few students care that they essentially don’t have the right to express their opinions publicly on campus.
