BY MARY ELLEN JUNDA, JEFFREY OGBAR, AND MICHAEL BAILEY Mandatory Vaccination Policy The global COVID-19 pandemic has affected all facets of our world in a range of ways. Higher education was forced to fundamentally shift over the last year and a half, making many campuses empty of students, staff and faculty, while we pivoted to…
BY MATTHEW BOEDY Fall classes started for me on Monday. Since then I have done several media interviews about the first days amid our scary COVID-19 surge here in Georgia. The reporters have asked me about the COVID-deafness of our state and university system leaders. Faculty and local administrators have pleaded with those in charge…
BY AMIT BAISHYA, MICHAEL GIVEL, AND JULIE ANN WARD Last week, the University of Oklahoma (OU) AAUP chapter wrote an Open Letter to University Decision-Makers, published on our website and promoted on social media with over four hundred signatures from faculty, staff, students, and community members, to address OU decision-makers’ inadequate and deeply disappointing response…
BY AARON ROUSSELL The article below appeared in the most recent Member News of PSU-AAUP (Portland State’s AAUP chapter for faculty and academic professionals). Drawing shamelessly on Anna Kornbluh’s adaptation of Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine, it alerts our members to the weaponization of the covid-19 crisis. We are fortunate to be unionized and able…
BY DMITRY DUBROVSKY On June 21, Hank Reichman posted a piece in response to a decision taken earlier that day by the Russian state prosecutor designating Bard College as an “undesirable organization,” effectively terminating the New York-based school’s quarter-century long partnership with St. Petersburg State University. (See also articles on Inside Higher Ed here and…
BY NICOLE BRAUN A few weeks ago, I participated virtually in the very first Higher Ed Labor Summit: Building a Movement to Transform U.S. Higher Education. It was a fabulous, inspiring, stimulating and visionary experience. During the conference, we were put into small focus groups to explore the question of power, how to obtain power,…
BY MICHAEL THADDEUS A depressingly familiar trend in higher education has been the gradual erosion of ladder faculty positions and their replacement by positions with no prospect of tenure. The former tend to be relatively well-paid and secure; the latter, undervalued and marginal. Though it ranks among the richest American universities, my own institution, Columbia…
BY JULIA SCHLECK The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so…
BY MATT COHEN NB: I write this post as an individual, but our AAUP chapter has issued a statement about the resolution proposed to the University of Nebraska Board of Regents regarding Critical Race Theory. Critical Race Theory, the latest elixir of Rightist fear and rage, has become a political chip in the Republican primary…
BY A LECTURER IN THE SOUTHEAST As my students and I worked on a collaborative document projected overhead, my inbox appeared on the screen. Whoops. Front and center, there was an email from Parking Services: PARKING TICKET NOTIFICATION Startled, I shut down the projection. As I glanced over my shoulder, I witnessed eye rolls and…