Academia and the Ethics of Crowdsourced Research
BY HANNAH JOHNSTON, M. SIX SILBERMAN, AND JAMIE WOODCOCK Dana Barr put the kids to bed, opened the computer, and logged in to Amazon Mechanical Turk to look for work. After about a minute, Dana saw a task from Albaventura University Cogsci. “Ten minute survey about political beliefs, $1.00.” Six dollars an hour—not the best…
Providing Member Support at UConn AAUP
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…
As COVID Surges in Georgia, Persuasion is Not Guaranteed
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…
OU-AAUP Demands Safe Working Conditions to Avert Crisis
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…
“Voluntary” Program Reduction During a Pandemic
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…
“Cooperation Is Undesirable”
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…
Notes from the Adjunct Underground, Part One: The Power of Reply All
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,…
A Smoking Gun at Columbia University
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…
One More Thing In Nebraska
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…