BY HANK REICHMAN

Two webinars in which I had the pleasure and privilege of participating are now available to view as video recordings on the web.

Here is the first, originally scheduled as a live presentation at the annual conference of the National Center for for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions that was to have happened in April but was held via Zoom on June 9:

The Gig Academy and COVID-19: Implications for the Future with Adrianna Kezar, Endowed Professor and Dean’s Professor of Leadership, USC, Director of the Pullias Center, and Director Delphi Project, Daniel Greenstein, Chancellor, Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, Henry Reichman, Chair, Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure, AAUP, Maria Maisto, New Faculty Majority, and William A. Herbert, National Center, Hunter College, CUNY, Moderator.

Description: In a recently published book, The Gig Academy: Mapping Labor in the Neoliberal University, Adrianna Kezar and her co-authors describe and critique the restructuring of labor relations in higher education over the past few decades that included a massive increase in precarious employment in the form of contingent faculty positions, post-doctoral appointments, and the use of graduate assistants for teaching and research. Today, non-tenure track faculty make up 70% of college instructors nationwide. During this webinar, the panel will be discussing the book’s insights and recommendations as well as their relevance for post-pandemic colleges and universities. This panel has been organized in conjunction with the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College, CUNY.

It was a terrific discussion that I highly recommend.  The book is also definitely worth reading.

Click here to view or download the GIg Academy and COVID-19 webinar video

The second webinar, held on August 5, was sponsored by the African-American Intellectual History Society, in cooperation with the AAUP.  Participating in The Uncertainties of Higher Ed in the Age of COVID19 were Whitney Battle-Baptiste, Professor of Anthropology and Director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Center at University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Stefan M. Bradley, Coordinator for Diversity and Inclusion Initiatives in the Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts and Professor of African American Studies at Loyola Marymount University; Kevin Gannon, Professor of History and Director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa, and co-organizer of this week’s Scholar Strike; and me.  The panel was moderated by Grace D. Gipson, Assistant Professor in African American Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, and introduced by Keisha Blain, President of the AAIHS and Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh. The panel video, accessible through the AAIHS site, is accompanied by an extensive list of AAIHS and AAUP resources

Click here to view the video of The Uncertainties of Higher Ed in the Age of COVID-19 and find the list of resources

And while we’re at it, here’s an alert to what looks like a great upcoming program on Campus Free Speech Battles sponsored by the Andrea Mitchell Center for Democracy at the University of Pennsylvania and featuring among others, AAUP Committee A’s Joan Wallach Scott:

FREE SPEECH BATTLES – Campus Speech Battles: A (Virtual) Conference