Secrets, Scams, and Scandals

POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN To restore the profession of teaching in the Colorado Community College System (CCCS), the Colorado Conference of the AAUP has released the first of a series of videos showcasing the mounting, explosive, labor exploitation issue facing the 13-college CCCS.  The video, Secrets, Scams, and Scandals: The Dirty Little Secrets of the…

Some Labor Day Reading

BY HANK REICHMAN Lacking any special insights or ideas that I wish to share in recognition of this first Labor Day since the infamous Janus decision, I thought I would instead call attention to some useful analyses of labor’s state published elsewhere today.  So what follows are excerpts from a number of different pieces from…

CAUT Opposes Ontario’s Campus “Free Speech” Diktat

BY HANK REICHMAN Ontario Conservative Premier Doug Ford has warned the province’s public universities and colleges they will face funding cuts if they fail to adopt free-speech policies that defend controversial speakers on campus. The government announced yesterday that it will give schools four months to design, implement and enforce wide-ranging free-speech policies.  Ford had promised…

Victory at Rutgers

BY HANK REICHMAN On Tuesday of this week the national AAUP delivered a letter to the leaders of the Rutgers University AAUP-AFT chapter expressing concern that any discipline stemming from a report by that university’s Office of Employment Equity, which concluded that history professor James Livingston’s Facebook posts on gentrification “were not protected by the…

Academic Freedom Conference at Berkeley City College, September 28

POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN On Friday, September 28 the AAUP Foundation and the Faculty Association of California Community Colleges Education Institute (FACCC EI) are sponsoring a day-long conference on academic freedom at Berkeley City College in downtown Berkeley, California.  UC Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky will deliver the keynote address on “Free Speech on Campus.”…

A Tale of Two Campuses

BY HANK REICHMAN A well-known feature of American higher education, especially among large privates and public “flagships,” is the regional rivalry, mostly athletics-based.  You know, Ohio State-Michigan, Harvard-Yale, Alabama-Auburn, or UCLA-USC.  Here in the San Francisco Bay Area there’s Cal-Stanford (for anyone who may not be aware, Cal — short for California — is the…

Employers Embrace Liberal Education

BY HANK REICHMAN Yesterday, August 28, the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AACU) released the results of extensive surveys of 501 business executives at private sector and nonprofit organizations and another of 500 hiring managers, which revealed that both groups “express a higher degree of confidence in colleges and universities than does the American…

“Purdue University Global is a For-Profit Masquerading as a Public University”

BY HANK REICHMAN In the wake of the AAUP’s recent disclosure that Purdue University Global — the totally online entity created when Purdue, ignoring protests by faculty and community leaders, acquired for-profit Kaplan University (see my previous post here)— is requiring its instructional faculty to accept a restrictive non-disclosure agreement, the Century Foundation,a progressive, nonpartisan…

The New Union Maid

BY HANK REICHMAN “Union Maid,” written in 1940 by the great folk singer Woody Guthrie, is one of the classic anthems of the American labor movement.  Pete Seeger, who would help make the song famous as a member of the Almanac Singers, wrote of its creation: I’m proud to say I was present when ‘Union…