At Berkeley
In “At Berkeley: Documenting the University in an Age of Austerity,” Michael Mark Cohen and Leigh Raiford address documentary’s evolving capacity for political mobilization by focusing on the role of documentary photography and film in the struggle around austerity at the University of California, Berkeley. While the university administration used documentary’s graphic appeal to enlist alumni in a fund-raising campaign that effectively naturalized the privatization of public higher education, students took up documentary forms to challenge the logic of neoliberalism. Working with Cohen and Raiford, who teach at UC Berkeley, student activists produced their own counterdocuments, repurposing documentary images that the university uses to sell education in an era of skyrocketing tuition fees, and rendering themselves as active participants in the struggle to reshape the university and the broader society.