Trevor Griffey
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trevorgriffey.bsky.social
Trevor Griffey
@trevorgriffey.bsky.social
1.5K followers 1.6K following 500 posts
Lecturer in US History & Labor Studies at UC Irvine & UCLA. VP of Leg, UC-AFT, AFT Local 1474. LAWCHA Board. FOIA user. Co-Founder, Seattle Civil Rights & Labor History Project. Gen X in Long Beach, CA. Higher Ed blog: https://campuslabor.blogspot.com/
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trevorgriffey.bsky.social
Holzer installation at Tate Modern
September 16, 2025 at 5:22 PM
trevorgriffey.bsky.social
Jenny Holzer: Fear is the Most Elegant Weapon...
September 16, 2025 at 5:18 PM
trevorgriffey.bsky.social
. @cnewf.bsky.social on the December 2024 @uofcalifornia.bsky.social deal with the lame duck Biden admin to obligate the UC to coordinate its enforcement of civil rights law on UC campuses with the incoming Trump administration.

utotherescue.blogspot.com/2025/09/line...
I was shocked to be reading this for the first time. UCOP officials knew when they signed it that it would be applied by Trump’s Office of Civil Rights, not Biden’s. Biden would be gone in a month so what was the point? The Agreement may have served as a template for Trump’s demands of Columbia University and other universities. In my non-expert opinion, it breaches the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) that protects the privacy of student educational data—one could at least make a case. As UC strategy, it seems deeply inept. And, again to the theme, UCOP doesn’t protect its own community but exposes it to danger. It does this without the due process or the basic decency of openly explaining what they did or how they will minimize the damage.
September 16, 2025 at 5:00 PM
trevorgriffey.bsky.social
. @ucirvine.bsky.social tooling up for its repression of demonstrations in 2025-26.

The only reason to get an LRAD for UCI Health is to put down labor actions.

regents.universityofcalifornia.edu/regmeet/sept25
Request by UCI for 2nd LRAD and various munitions.
September 16, 2025 at 10:54 AM
trevorgriffey.bsky.social
By 1966 the New Left already felt old and cliched to people who were part of it. The conclusion of much longer critique of the limits of immediacy and moralism.
The great refusal has become a cliche.
August 27, 2025 at 10:58 PM
trevorgriffey.bsky.social
What standing up for higher ed looks like. Our corporate admin won't do it so we have to. from @cnewf.bsky.social

utotherescue.blogspot.com/2025/07/line...
When you are the weaker party as a long-term cultural cold war becomes a hot institutional war, you must create a public understanding of who you really are. It should include something like the following elements: 1. Your opponent is very unfair, has become a tormenter and a bully, and is doing serious damage to you that you don’t deserve. 2. When it comes to what you believe in, you stand and fight. You never give up. This is because you are weak but right. 3. You and you alone define your values and practices. You say what they are, constantly, concretely, and inclusively. 4. Your institutional community supports you. Persecution makes you collectively stronger. 5. When you do win, the majority of everyday people win too. You are working with them on this mutual benefit. Universities need to get through this whole list, including the last item. Trumpism casts all knowledge institutions as the enemies of the people, especially news media and universities. Universities already needed to be redesigned to serve non-college people more obviously and directly, which will include massive reductions in student costs and student debt.
July 29, 2025 at 6:14 PM
trevorgriffey.bsky.social
When a scholar and advocate of research universities can't seem to manage even a lukewarm defense of shared governance, we're really in trouble.

The contrast between labor's demand for budget democracy and this faculty deference to corporate management is stark.

www.chronicle.com/article/why-...
Call for "limited deliberation" of higher ed admin response to budget cuts from Trump administration.
July 18, 2025 at 3:37 PM
trevorgriffey.bsky.social
Tomorrow, Tues Jul1y 15 @ucaft.bsky.social will testify before the @uofcalifornia.bsky.social Regents at 12:30pm and rally at 1pm at UCLA against UC's manufactured austerity and devastating layoffs. See testimony below. Petitions are in the comments. @cftunion.bsky.social @uc-faculty.bsky.social
07/11/25 letter to regents page 1 07/11/25 letter to regents page 2 07/11/25 letter to regents page 3
July 14, 2025 at 8:30 PM
trevorgriffey.bsky.social
Important 2-part series by @cnewf.bsky.social on @ucirvine.bsky.social's budget: a case study in using a financial shortfall to not just reduce spending, but to reallocate it.

Part 2: UCI makes deep cuts to some programs, while boosting others.
utotherescue.blogspot.com/2025/07/line...
figure 3 from article. https://utotherescue.blogspot.com/2025/07/liner-note-33-trouble-at-irvine-core-uc.html
July 14, 2025 at 6:20 PM
trevorgriffey.bsky.social
On the need for the professoriate to "become fully engaged with their own institutions":

utotherescue.blogspot.com/2025/07/line...
Christopher Newfield: "Budgets are formed in isolation from the academic world of the campus, and then imposed upon it. The rule of academic finance has been TINA, Thatcher’s framework of There Is No Alternative. Sure, this doesn’t work as advertised, TINA says, and it’s hurting you and what you do, but There Is No Alternative. End of discussion. This keeps happening even though, for decades now, complex and top-down budget architectures regularly generate austerity, poverty, shortfalls, layoffs, closures, or at a minimum a general stagnation in quality of service in particular units on campus. There’s tragic irony here. The university is the place where professionals seemed to have won some (limited) self-determination in society, but then they lost it."
July 14, 2025 at 6:20 PM
trevorgriffey.bsky.social
On August 20, 2025 at 7 PM EST, @higheredlabor.bsky.social is bringing together higher ed library workers across the country to strategize against threats to their livelihoods and profession. See this message for more info.
On August 20, 2025 at 7 PM EST, Higher Ed Labor United is bringing together higher ed library workers across the country to strategize against threats to their livelihoods and profession.
July 13, 2025 at 5:30 PM
trevorgriffey.bsky.social
Lesson on successful @uaw4811.bsky.social organizing against DOGE layoffs at @ucirvine.bsky.social.
What to do when DOGE terminates your PI's NSF grant?
July 10, 2025 at 7:54 PM
trevorgriffey.bsky.social
🤮

www.theguardian.com/world/live/2...
Donald Trump regime change Iran
June 23, 2025 at 12:11 PM
trevorgriffey.bsky.social
A clear framing for a revitalized K12 and higher ed labor movement. wagingnonviolence.org/2025/06/amer...
No golden age to return t6
June 15, 2025 at 1:22 PM
trevorgriffey.bsky.social
There's a related action tomorrow at @ucirvine.bsky.social to protest a $3 million budget cut to the School of Humanities when UCI will get $21 million from the state for 2025-26 that it didn't anticipate.
UCI Fund the Humanities Rally June 4 12:30pm in Humanities Quad
June 3, 2025 at 7:14 PM
trevorgriffey.bsky.social
Everything I don't like under capitalism is communism
May 23, 2025 at 3:30 PM
trevorgriffey.bsky.social
$30 million/ year subsidy for UCLA athletics while other units are forced to cut teachers, increase class sizes.
May 14, 2025 at 8:22 AM
trevorgriffey.bsky.social
Should have also added this one.
Trump killing student loan forgiveness.
March 26, 2025 at 7:39 PM
trevorgriffey.bsky.social
Step 1: destroy regulation of student loans.

Step 2: lend students money to attend failing schools, allowing schools to fleece students and leave them with unpayable debt.

Step 3: blame government, not deregulation, for student debt crisis and school closures.

Step 4: kill student loans.
Trump gutted School Eligibility and Oversight Service Group in Dept of Education "misuse of federal [loan] dollars could go unchecked" as a result of Trump gutting the Dept of Education.
March 26, 2025 at 7:37 PM
trevorgriffey.bsky.social
"collective bargaining=fundamental right." California Federation of Labor Unions (CFL)
March 11, 2025 at 2:07 AM
trevorgriffey.bsky.social
I think I've often held out more hope for reform than was warranted.
Robin Kelley Fighting Back Boston Review first page.
March 3, 2025 at 4:54 PM
trevorgriffey.bsky.social
Power/ Knowledge in the corporate university March 7 2025 conference at northwestern
March 1, 2025 at 6:07 PM
trevorgriffey.bsky.social
New bill introduced in CA to ban picketing within 300ft of a person's house, likely inspired by the recent experience of the UCLA Chancellor. leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNa...
SB 830, as introduced, Arreguín. Picketing at an individual residence. Existing law makes it a misdemeanor for a person to picket or parade in or near a building that houses a court of this state with the intent to interfere with, obstruct, or impede the administration of justice or with the intent to influence any judge, juror, witness, or officer of the court in the discharge of their duty. This bill would make it a misdemeanor, punishable by a fine not exceeding $1,000 for each violation, for a person to engage in picketing activity that is targeted, as defined, at and is within 300 feet of a targeted residential dwelling, as defined, and if enforcement of that law is suspended, would make it a misdemeanor, punishable by a fine not exceeding $1,000, for a person to engage in picketing before or about a residential dwelling of an individual if the picketing proceeds on a definite course or route in front of, and is directed at, that residential dwelling. By creating a new crime, the bill would impose a state-mandated local program. The bill would create a private right of action for a person who is aggrieved by the activities described above, and would authorize the court to award specified relief and damages to the aggrieved person. The California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the state. Statutory provisions establish procedures for making that reimbursement. This bill would provide that no reimbursement is required by this act for a specified reason.
February 28, 2025 at 1:26 AM
trevorgriffey.bsky.social
Today! @lawcha.bsky.social @vtfeminist.bsky.social @nancymaclean.bsky.social @josephamccartin.bsky.social
Event flier for working people organizing against authoritarianism
February 27, 2025 at 4:46 PM
trevorgriffey.bsky.social
Today is that unfortunate time of the school year when I have to explain to my students that my union (along with every other UC union) bargained away a right to engage in sympathy strikes-- making employees liable to dismissal and unions liable for damages if they honor picket lines.
no strikes clause of uc aft contract
February 25, 2025 at 6:19 PM