CIIS

The San Francisco Bay Guardian interviews Andrej Grubacic at California Institute for Integral Studies about their new graduate degree program Anthropology and Social Change. Inspired by the New College of California graduate program Activism and Social Change, Grubacic is excited to be offering the Bay Area a place where theory and practice can come together. As one of the key contributors to the development of the New College course he found inspiring, I am pleased to see this academic continuity.

For readers unfamiliar with San Francisco history, New College of California was closed in 2008 when the U.S. Department of Education caught the New College trustees money-laundering student loan advance funds. As I noted in the July 24, 2007 issue of the Guardian,

It may not be the education they were expecting to get, but Activism and Social Change students at New College of California are indeed getting an education this summer--as are faculty and students from other programs on the verge of collapse. Whether or not the school survives the public turmoil from the financial and academic frauds perpetrated for decades by the board of trustees, the young people enrolled there in 2007 will always remember the lessons learned in the political struggle to bring down the thoroughly disgraced autocracy of Peter Gabel. With luck, these young people will carry these vital lessons with them as they seek a just, sacred, and sustainable world elsewhere.