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Jacobin Radio

The Dig: Class Struggle for the University w/ Ian Gavigan

Jacobin Radio

Jacobin

Socialism, History, News, Left, Jacobin, Alternative, Socialist, Politics

4.71.5K Ratings

🗓️ 6 September 2025

⏱️ 111 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Featuring Ian Gavigan on how the bipartisan neoliberalization of higher education laid the groundwork for Trump’s all-out assault. Workers must unite on every campus, articulate an alternative vision for the university, and fight to win it.

Check out HELU higheredlaborunited.org

Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig

Dig 500th Episode Party November 7 in Brooklyn! Emceed by Brace and Liz from TrueAnon. Free for Patreon supporters $10/mo and up. Get your tickets here littlefieldnyc.com/event/?wfea_eb_id=1549778040839

Subscribe to the Palestinian Festival of Literature's book subscription program palfest.org/bookshelf

Buy We Are the Union at UCPress.edu

The Dig goes deep into politics everywhere, from labor struggles and political economy to imperialism and immigration. Hosted by Daniel Denvir.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

This episode of The Dig is brought to you by our listeners who support us at patreon.com

0:04.8

and by the Palestine Festival of Literature, which has brought hundreds of writers and artists from around the world to Palestine.

0:13.9

They're currently launching a curated book subscription program, the Palfest Bookshelf.

0:20.1

Subscribers receive six shipments a year,

0:23.3

containing key books on Palestine, plus special extras. On the bookshelf right now is

0:30.1

48 kilograms from Gazan poet Batul Abu A clean. This astonishing debut collection was written under the bombs of Israel's genocide,

0:40.7

and its power is truly remarkable. A great international poet arrives with this collection,

0:47.9

wrote Max Porter, but it's also a landmark work of resistance. Bookshelf titles have included cutting-edge nonfiction from

0:56.3

Muhammad al-Kurd, a new translation of Gassan Kanafani's analysis of the 1936 Palestinian Revolution.

1:03.4

The landmark anthology of Palestinian poetry, Heaven Looks Like Us, and Resisting Erasure by Robert Knox, Adam Henea, and Rafif Zieda.

1:14.6

Subscribe at palpest.org slash bookshelf.

1:18.7

There's a link in the show notes.

1:24.5

Welcome to The Dig, a podcast from Jacobin magazine. My name is Daniel Denver, and I'm broadcasting

1:34.9

from Providence, Rhode Island. This is my interview with Ian Gavigan, the executive director of

1:41.2

Higher Education Labor United, or HILU.

1:48.6

Over recent years, unions at Rutgers University came together to fight,

1:54.8

demonstrating the power that campus workers can wield when everyone from custodians and dining hall staff to grad students and professors unite.

1:58.9

In 2023, that campus-wide work led to full and part-time professors,

2:03.9

researchers, postdocs, medical faculty, and grad students coming together to wage a successful

2:10.2

strike. Rutgers wasn't alone. Campus workers all over the country, from the University of

2:16.6

California to Boston University,

2:18.5

have come to understand that a workforce fragmented across so many bargaining units

...

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