The Collective Bargaining Congress has created a Subcommittee on Racial Justice, which has recommended the following list of suggested topics for presentations at the AAUP’s annual meeting in June. The list is consistent with the broader Call for Proposals but offers more specific suggestions.

All proposals need to be submitted by December 7 and should be submitted digitally through the AAUP website; the link is provided in the information about the conference provided in this post below the list of topics.

_________________________

1. The Role of the AAUP in Promoting Racial and Social Justice Strategies:

(a) Linkages with Other Academic Associations; Linkages with Student Groups; Linkages with Other Labor, Formally Political, and Progressive Activist Groups; The Models Available in Other Professional Associations That Promote Social and Racial Justice;

(b) Strategies for Addressing Racial and Social Justice Issues on the Conference and Chapter Levels;

(c) Strategies for Attracting More Faculty of Color as AAUP Members; Strategies for More Fully Engaging Members Who Are Faculty of Color and Encouraging Them to Assume leadership Positions;

(d) The Broader Function of Colleges and Universities in Promoting Racial and Social Justice: Possibilities and Limits.

2. The Corporate University and Racial and Social Justice:

(a) Opposition to the Corporate University and Faculty and Student Activism for Racial and Social Justice;

(b) The Mentoring of Faculty of Color and/or Bias in the Evaluation of Faculty of Color—by Students, Peers, and Supervisors;

(c) The Devaluing of Interdisciplinary Programs, Including African-American and Latino/-a Studies, as Part of the Broader Devaluing of the Humanities and the Social Sciences;

(d) The Issues of Access for All Economically Disadvantaged Students, Which Include Disproportionate Percentages of Student of Color; the Economic Exploitation of Economically Disadvantaged Students—Declining Pell Grant Awards, Increasing Student-Loan Debt, Targeting by Predatory For-Profit Institutions, and the Disjunction between Average Debt and Completion Rates.

3. Pedagogy, Research, and Scholarship Related to Racial and Social Justice:

(a) Surveys of Canonical and Cutting-Edge Literature on Social Justice, with a Special Emphasis on Racial Justice;

(b) The Arts, Especially Film, as Means for Promoting Social Justice and Especially Racial Justice;

(c) Syllabi for Courses across the Disciplines with Social-Justice and Especially Racial-Justice Emphases;

(d) The Integral Role of Social Media in Contemporary Racial and Social Justice Movements.

4. The Politicization of Racial and Social Justice:

(a) The Issue of Whether Racial and Social Justice Movements Can Be Non-Partisan or Even Apolitical, or Whether They Are Necessarily Politically Progressive;

(b) The Attacks on Affirmative Action and the Myths of Reverse Discrimination and of a Post-Racial America;

(c) National Politics—in Particular, the 2016 Presidential Election—and the Racial and Social Justice Movements;

(d) Campus Activism in the Civil Rights Era and at Present;

(e) The Connections between Broader Concerns over Income Inequality and the Racial and Social Justice Movements;

(f) The Connections between the Racial and Social Justice Movements in the United States and Parallel Movements in Other Nations, with a Special Focus on Campus Activism (Especially in Latin America and Africa).

5. Racial and Social Justice and Communities of Color:

(a) The School-to-Prison Pipeline; Incarceration for an Inability to Pay Fines—the Revival of “Debtors’ Prisons for Public Debt”; Incarceration for Non-Violent Drug-Related Crimes; Abuses of People of Color by Police and the Stereotypes underlying Policing Tactics and Strategies;

(b) The Political and Socio-Economic Scapegoating of Undocumented Immigrants; the Linkages between Corporate-Operated Prisons and Corporate-Operated Detention Centers;

(c) The Attacks on Public Employees and on Teachers as Attacks on the African-American Urban Middle-Class.

_________________________

2016 AAUP Annual Conference

The AAUP’s Annual Conference on the State of Higher Education includes panel presentations, plenary speakers, lobbying, and the annual business meetings of the AAUP.

Date & Time: 

Wednesday, June 15, 2016 to Sunday, June 19, 2016

Address: 

Mayflower Hotel
1127 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Washington, District Of Columbia 20036

Preliminary Schedule

Higher Education Conference: Thursday, June 16, and Friday, June 17
AAUP Executive Committee meeting: Thursday, June 16
AAUP-CBC Executive Committee and Business Meeting: Thursday, June 16
AAUP Council meeting: Friday, June 17, and Sunday, June 19
Assembly of State Conferences Executive Committee and  Business Meeting: Friday, June 17
102nd Annual Meeting: Saturday, June 18

Call for Proposals: 2016 Annual Conference on the State of Higher Education: http://www.aaup.org/get-involved/upcoming-events/2016-aaup-annual-conference/call-proposals