Dear concerned Pacifica alumna and alumni,
Thank you for your postings. Our previous post informed you that there are serious administrative problems affecting faculty, students, and staff at Pacifica and the future of the Pacifica Graduate Institute. A letter was posted to the PGI Board of Trustees this past Tuesday giving them one week for action.
PGIAA is requesting that the PGI Board of Trustees ask for the immediate resignation of the current president with further action on the part of the board if this is not done.
It was decided not to disclose further information to the PGIAA alumni community in the hopes that this would be a sufficient call to action by the Board of Trustees to act ethically, morally, and responsibly. As of today, this has not happened. As indicated in our email and certified letters to the PGI Board of Trustees, if action is not taken by July 1, 2024, the factual information supporting our request will be sent to over 6000 alumni on July 3, 2024. In the email which you may receive on that date, PGIAA will ask all alumni who care, to join us in a very strong CALL TO ACTION in support of the faculty, students, and staff as well as the future of Pacifica Graduate Institute.
We have been notified by the PGIAA domain provider that since our letter was posted, attempts have been made by unknown parties to breach the security of our domain, to no avail. The provider is investigating the source/s of this attempted breach. We also want to inform you that Pacifica has shut down one of their Instagram accounts to hide the postings by students regarding what is happening at Pacifica Graduate Institute, deliberately limiting their voice and free speech.
WE ask for your patience until July 3, 2024, as we await appropriate action by the PGI Board of Trustees.
Lupe Zuniga, Ph.D
2024 President and Founding Member
Pacifica Graduate Institute Alumni Association
Class of ’94, Clinical Psychology
———————– Posted 6/26/2024 ———————–
To All Pacifica Alumna and Alumni,
The faculty and students at Pacifica are under siege from a new administration intent on destroying the very fabric of the institute. We have heard their lament.
Rest assured that the Pacifica Graduate Institute Alumni Association is taking steps to remedy the situation.
We will keep you informed as all continues to unfold.
Voicing words of our elder, mentor, teacher, and friend, James Hillman (which can be read below), WE, a united consortium of concerned alumni, are notifying you of the “moral insults”, and “aesthetic injuries” taking place at Pacifica and WE “roar in protest.”
Desire, rage, fear and shame are echoes of the world’s soul, presentations of qualities in the world informing our bodies and spirits how to be, what stand to take, what to have and what to hate, which way to turn on the path . . .
Rage in particular is important here. Remember: Zeus and his brothers and sisters overcame the Titans and Giants in battle! Under the sign of Mars/Ares, the God of battle rage, intensity, fury . . . Let us recognize that outrage has a social intention. It leads us into the fray, into community engagement with our sisters and brothers. It notices moral insults and aesthetic injuries. It roars in protest.
FROM: JAMES HILLMAN, “THE YELLOWING OF THE WORK,” ALCHEMICAL PSYCHOLOGY: THE UNIFORM EDITION OF JAMES HILLMAN, V. 5, PUTNAM, CONN: SPRING PUBLICATIONS, 2010.
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Roarrrrrrrr 🦁❤️🔥
Please let us know how we can help! We need to save Pacifica!!
Soul siblings we stand together.
More info would be great! Fourth year student here in the clinical program. Very curious.
Does anyone involved have community organizing training/experience? Movement/resistance building requires strategy and collaboration. The tone of this update is troubling to me. As a current student, I’m certainly feeling under threat by these sudden changes but want to be careful not to misstep when emotions are high. The future depends on a rooted resistance.
How can we help? I am heartsick and beside myself! Ready to resist!
I think we’re ready to shake things up. Please keep us posted. We need to organize swiftly. Walk out, sit in, resist resist resist!
How can we organize?
Could you please share more information? This message is highly alarming, and many of us students feel left in the dark and unsure how to fight or what we are fighting for.
As a student on the dissertation clock and out of the loop on campus politics, I’d love more context… will we get more? I’m no fan of the new leadership and was unaware anyone else felt the same.
As a very recent alum, I am alarmed I have no idea what this refers to. More information please??
I am ready and willing to help take on responsibilities to help organise, communicate, spearhead any part of this. I have been taken to my very limit with this school and the cost is great and I don’t mean just financially. This is overdue for a genuine class action suit, on top of the numerous on going personal cases.
These recent developments have sparked curiosity and uncertainty among current students, staff and alumni. It is during times like these that coming together as a community is crucial in addressing challenges and upholding the values that make Pacifica special.
Change can indeed be daunting, especially when details are unclear, leading to feelings of unease and partial understanding. It is important for us to engage in open discussions and collaborate to support the administration as well as the students, alumni, and future generations who call Pacifica home.
I appreciate the efforts being made to address the situation, even though the details may not be fully disclosed at this moment. It is natural to feel unsettled by the unknowns, but maintaining a flow of communication is essential. While sharing updates may be complex during times of change, transparency and open dialogue are key to navigating these challenges together.
I suggest the possibility of establishing a student, alumni, staff team dedicated to reviewing communication strategies and ensuring that the community stays informed. By working together, we can identify more effective ways to keep everyone informed and address concerns as they arise.
Let us continue to support one another and work towards safeguarding the values that make Pacifica a special place for all of us. Together, we can navigate uncertainty and emerge stronger as a community.
Warm regards,
CG
Who exactly wrote this? Names please. Who is currently on the PGIAA board? I have not seen this information on the webpage for some time.
I am a graduate from the MA Counseling Program in 2019, and I’m concerned about Pacifica and this message. This message is alarming, and yet I’m not sure what the alarm is for — what does it mean that folks are “under siege” and the administration wants to “destroy the fabric” of the institute? When sounding an alarm, it’s important to at least share some information about what the threat or danger is. Can someone please offer clarity about what has transpired?
What is the meaning of this? Please spell it out explicitly. Most of us came to Pacifica to study Jungian theoretical frames, their current psychological, relational and neuro-bio supported outgrowths in dialogue and related to individuals and the community. What exactly is destroying this fabric and how? Vagaries are not helpful. Please unpack specifically the concerns that are alluded to.
This is beyond bizarre. There is nothing here that explicitly states what is being referenced. Please, I implore everyone to use critical thought and not to blindly jump on bandwagons.
I’m a current student in MA of counseling psychology. Our cohort has strong reason to believe that the recent termination of our program co-chairs is part of the change that PGI is experiencing under the new religious leadership—away from depth psychology. We heard that PGI will be terminating the cohort model, rejecting out-of-state applicants, and focusing on behavioral therapy. We also heard that the Opus Archive has been defunded. The bits of information are alarming, more so without transparency. We are hoping to gather momentum and help from PGIAA to demand clarification from upper management.
Yes to all this. I don’t think anyone can lead an organization like Pacifica into the future if they don’t fundamentally understand and cherish the principles and philosophies upon which it stands. I think the president needs to GO, and we need to see depth psychology represented at the highest levels of leadership.
It’s hard to know if this is a legitimate complaint or a personality conflict. As an alumni from 2007 I’d appreciate a little more info. Is this a petty squabble or a serious situation that needs my action?
Very concerning that so many alumni have no idea what’s going on, and that this cryptic message from the alumni association hasn’t been any more informative.
As a current student, I am extremely concerned by what is unfolding and we know next to nothing concrete. These updates by the PGIAA are certainly alarming, but I understand there is a utility to the vagueness of their posts. We can certainly be patient for a few days while they negotiate with the administration.
Pacifica is now deleting comments off of their instagram page, on the post announcing the new Provost. I had commented there and so had a few other students. Each of the comments was constructive and curious. I’m so extremely disappointed we are being silenced and our voices removed from public discussion.
Seeing a lot of alums here who aren’t in the loop:
There isn’t a lot of concrete information because for some people to reveal the specifics of what’s happening under Dr. Lee could cost them their job. The faculty are the ones who are so far feeling the most significant impact of these foreboding changes—— but based on the 2030 Leadership Plan, all programs will begin to feel those changes unless action is taken.
What is known is that the co-chairs, Matthew and Jemma, stepped down by their own volition—- as a protest to what leadership is doing, and because they were unable to function in their role as a result of how leadership is pressuring, manipulating, and hiding information from faculty/staff.
It’s unfortunate that PGIAA can’t offer more specifics at this time, but the distress of the professors is palpable on campus—- and it’s spread across more than anyone ideology or personality.
Yes, it’s important not to jump to conclusions, and to trust but verify—— but there is also a window for appropriate steps to be taken, and I am extremely grateful PGIAA has taken those steps.
It is encouraging to see alumni supporting Pacifica Graduate Institute in this troubling time. I am uncertain, though unsurprised, of what terrible accusations might be levied against the new regime. This is an administration bent on significantly changing longstanding depth traditions which inspired my decision to attend Pacifica several years ago.
The newly selected administration offered the new agenda at their “100-Day Tour and Town Hall” on April 11, 2023. This address provides insight to what the resisting faculty and administration might be facing (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xc9GVp6FVE). The video garnered 6 likes (at the time of this post) in more than a year, a fact that may seem unimportant but remains germane as a warning to PGI’s problematic direction. The speaker’s comment, “We live in a time when ‘uncertinity’ is all we can be certain of” remains prima facie evidence of greater challenges facing PGI.
A subtle yet exponentially more troubling leitmotif conveyed in the town hall bears a greater theme, the theft of education by ideologies. The flagrant evidence of such, if one can make it through a gamut of indiscernible graphs, was the numerous references to “learners.” Remarks such as, “Learners First” and “all of us are learners” are two persuasive indications of the new agenda at PGI. The use of the term “learner” is an uncited reference to Paulo Freire and his approach to educational pedagogy promoting a “democratic classroom” that operates on a “dialogical model.” All of this may sound good but is diabolically engineered to enable a scam of education.
After the outright bludgeoning by the word “learner,” I was inspired to research its origin. Following an abbreviated lit review, I discovered Paulo Freire’s work, more specifically James Lindsey’s book on the subject, “The Marxification of Education.” The persistent use of “learners” in important school addresses, including most recently a graduation ceremony where the head of the administration publicly mocked Dr. Stephen Aizenstat with a sloppy impersonation, should not be dismissed.
To those concerned (borrowing the administration’s own word) with the ‘uncertinity’ of the direction of PGI, I also join to oppose the notions of education offered by the new administration with stern optimism and great resolve. They reveal what was reimagined as a soulless vision for PGI and momentous contradiction to longstanding depth traditions provided by humanity and the numerous scholarly contributors of the Pacifica community.
In parting, please refuse the temptation to accept the categorical re-designation as a “learner,” that expression belongs to someone else, and a vision divorced from the depth psychological perspective.
This statement was issued from the Alumni Association without consent or knowledge of the board. I’m a current PGIAA Board member. This gesture and call to action is not only unsettling, it is unethical. It is urgently necessary that the sitting president, Dr. Lupe Zuniga, correct this misstep. It is also necessary that the grievances which prompted this call-to-action be shared with clarity and transparency. To date, none of these have been offered.
Very appreciative of the comment posted by SA. Jungian studies is the antithesis of ideological education. Sadly, an ideological approach has crept in to American culture through smiling duplicitous promises of social justice. Converse to a crushing ideological approach, the theory of individuation is centered in an individual’s response to moral choices which are continuously presented by and through psyche. According to Jungian theory, authentic curiosity and response to material emerging from psyche paradoxically benefits the “collective” (which has now become a very unfortunate word choice in light of the press to bow to ideology). Jung felt an obligation to devote his life to render to the world a synthesis of western origins of psychological theories represented in alchemy, and also of the Western tradition in conversation with other cultures and traditions. To smear Jung’s exhaustive tour de force with ideological approach is not only grossly ignorant, but will eventually remove Pacifica as a destination to learn and apply Jungian theories.
Strange turn these comments are taking – Not sure what this has to do with Friere or Jung?? A clinical alum posted this in support of the counseling department and its students…