Koch Bros.'s Puppet Cuts 33 Faculty at Emporia State University

The Koch Evil Empire is based in Wichita, Kansas. Emporia State U is about 80 miles east in a city of the same name.

At the beginning of this school year, a former Koch Bros. executive was hired as President of this traditional teachers’ college (enrollment—about six thousand students) even though he HAD NO GRADUATE DEGREE . . . Not even a master’s degree, let alone a Ph.D. This is absolutely unheard of in the academic world.

Then he summarily shit-cans 33 faculty in a single go, many of them tenured with decades of experience at the institution.

The cuts have been barely explained, but public statements blather on about “positioning the college for the future,” i.e., bullshit to justify whatever the hell they want to do.

It’s clear what’s happening. Neo-liberal capitalists like the Kochs want to . . .

1. Reduce high status college professorships to gig workers. Nobody else has job security, Professor Smarty Pants, and neither do you now.

2. Pervert the traditional university educational goal of instruction in the liberal arts—to teach a free people how to live and lead in a free society—into “workforce development,” i.e., compliant workers who will do what they’re told. . . And like it. This is part of what Noem Chomsky calls “the precariate.”

3. Destroy the traditional notion of education as a common good that benefits everyone in society, and hence should be funded by public tax dollars. The neo-libs are changing the narrative so that college is now only an “individual good,” a place where the graduate can get skills for a career. No social good = no need for public funding, i.e., cut taxes for the rich.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2022/09/21/why-emporia-state-axed-33-employees

https://www.kcur.org/news/2022-09-22/layoffs-at-emporia-state-have-tenured-faculty-across-kansas-wondering-if-theyre-next