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Bhumika Muchhala, a recent graduate who is now working full-time in USAS’s national office, says anti-sweatshop activism can be “cliquish.” She describes a close-knit, white hippie activist culture that is “not welcoming to people of color.” … Dave Thurston, a black USAS activist who attends CUNY’s Hunter College, agrees that the organization can be inhospitably white and middle-class, semi-indignantly citing the all-vegan food at conferences. “Oh my fucking word,” he sighs, “and twinkling!” (Twinkling is a hand gesture that comes from the Quakers, used to signify assent without disrupting the meeting or repeating what they’ve said; while many find it useful, it can feel alienating to outsiders, and is often cited as a symbol of the odd, cultish behavior of white activists.)
–Liza Featherstone, Students Against Sweatshops, 2001.
An Australian friend draws our attention to two stories that appeared in the Australian press last week:
The government of Western Australia is considering placing police officers in that state’s high schools, in response to a recent increase in assaults on teachers there…
…And an officer assigned to an “elite unit designed to be the public face of [the] police in high schools” in the state of New South Wales has been arrested on charges that he sexually assaulted a child.
This is just one incident, of course. But it does serve as a reminder that whatever the benefits to teachers and students of bringing police onto school grounds may be, the practice carries real costs as well.
(Thanks to lauredhel of Hoyden About Town for the tip.)
Here’s the latest communiqué from The New School In Exile:
No, we haven’t forgotten about April 1st, and neither has the administration. But don’t worry, there is plenty in the works, and the day should not disappoint.
Think carnival. Think circus. Think roving flash mobs. Think zombie Kerrey and Murtha armies. Think beanbag circus freaks and superheroes. Think shutting the school down. Think fun 
We’ll see you on the flip side!
I’ll admit it. They’ve got my attention.
Update: NSIE has put up a countdown clock on their website. Zero hour is just after one o’clock tomorrow afternoon — 1:01:59 pm, to be exact. I have no idea what, if anything, this means.
I don’t know if the Education Times site is new, or just new to me, but I’m going to be making it a regular stop from now on.
It’s a straightforward site — links to news articles on K-12 and higher education, with brief summaries — but it’s got a lot of stuff, and it’s easy to navigate. Because they emphasize quantity over depth, they cover a lot more ground than Inside Higher Ed or the Chronicle. If it’s the kind of thing you’re interested in, you’ll be interested.
And they (like us) are on Twitter, too.
A professor at the University of East London has been suspended from his position for predicting that there may “be real bankers hanging from lampposts” at Wednesday’s protests against the G20 economic summit.
Chris Knight, a professor of anthropology, is an organizer of G20 protests in London this week. He told the BBC that if bankers and government ministers don’t “surrender their power, obviously it’s going to get us even more wound up and things could get nasty.”
Knight’s G20 Meltdown is just one of many groups planning actions in London this week, but Knight’s eagerness to make incendiary statements to the media has made him the most quoted figure in the movement right now.
The UEL’s decision to suspend him has confirmed that position.
studentactivism.net 
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