MAU is the Madison Autonomous University
The Madison Autonomous University seeks to create a free and independent educational space where the people of Wisconsin can teach and learn from each other and produce critical knowledge, perspectives, and forms of political and cultural resistance. Today’s universities are institutions where the dominant modes of thinking and ways of viewing the world are reproduced and disseminated. They serve the existing order. The capacity for self-organization and learning on display during Wisconsin Upsurge of 2011 suggested an alternative. The time has come to establish an autonomous, self-organized learning environment—radical and anti-corporate in form and content—to nurture, inform, and develop movements for democratic and progressive social change.
1. We are free. Knowledge is a resource that belongs to all of us. When knowledge is bought and sold, it becomes the property of the few who own it. We believe education should be accessible, and we are committed to make the courses we teach and the knowledge we produce available to all.
2. We are independent. Our university will not establish any kind of economic, political, cultural, or ideological ties with corporations or the state. MAU is owned and controlled by the students, teachers, and researchers who belong to it. Members will govern MAU cooperatively and democratically. Each member will get one vote. Together we will design an administrative form of self-rule that aims at balancing a necessary degree of coordination with the principle of collective self-management.
3. We are part of a larger movement. This project takes its inspiration from a long tradition of radical education, which has been part of populist, anarchist, and socialist movements for centuries. Like our predecessors, we believe that education and research must be linked to progressive social change.
4. We are committed to advancing individual and collective emancipation. In conventional universities, students become passive consumers of knowledge. We envision a university in which all participants actively shape the educational process. We believe that having the confidence to self-educate is the first step toward achieving the confidence to self-govern, both individually and collectively.
