The "New Civics" in Action
BY AARON BARLOW In an opinion piece published by The New York Times, Leon Botstein, president of Bard College, writes: American colleges and universities, public and private, are properly seen as nonpartisan elements in civil society, committed to research and teaching in a manner that transcends ordinary politics. But to succeed, these institutions must ensure…
Another Telling Report on the Increase in Contingent Faculty
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH What follows is a news release from the American Institutes for Research. It turns out (1) that hiring more adjunct and full-time non-tenure-eligible faculty has reduced instructional budgets but has not reduced institutional budgets and (2) that the reliance on contingent faculty has an inverse correlation with the compensation of tenure-eligible…
Adjuncts Are Scholars Too
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN Kevin Birmingham has a Ph.D. in English from Harvard, where he is presently an instructor in the university’s writing program. His book, The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce’s Ulysses won both the 2015 PEN New England Award for Nonfiction and the 2015 Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism. …
From Academe to Activism: We Gon' Be Alright
BY TIFFANY KRAFT Guest blogger Tiffany Kraft tells who she is through the following post: It’s eight years and three months since I sat for my viva voce exam to defend my thesis (in the United Kingdom the doctoral manuscript is called a thesis not a dissertation), George Moore: Innovation and Decadence in the Victorian…
Adjuncts and Academic Freedom
BY EVA SWIDLER Guest blogger Eva Swidler is an environmental historian on the undergraduate liberal arts faculty at Goddard College and the Curtis Institute of Music. She also researches and writes in the fields of labor studies and political economy. Academic freedom is all the rage in newspapers these days. Are protests at speaking events on…
The Ugly Administration of Higher Education
BY TIFFANY KRAFT Guest blogger Tiffany Kraft is a former adjunct and present higher education activist and organizer with Faculty Forward Network. For all special snowflakes who aren’t on the front lines with students and contingent faculty fighting for racial and economic justice in our nation’s colleges, universities, and communities, you may want to stop…
N.L.R.B. Expands Adjunct Rights to Organize at Religious Universities
BY PETER N. KIRSTEIN Five years ago my university, Saint Xavier, prevented the counting of adjunct ballots for the purpose of organizing collectively with the Illinois Education Association (I.E.A.). I testified before the regional office of the National Labor Relations Board in Chicago. I was under subpoena and it was very intense. In the room were…
Confronting Precariousness
BY MARTIN KICH Not all stories are big stories, but sometimes the small stories are illustrative in ways that bigger stories cannot be because as the scope of a story becomes narrower, the implications can be seen in a more personalized way. In the Music Department at Pacific Lutheran University, changes have been proposed that,…
Why Overloads Are a Bad Deal for All Faculty
BY JEFF BAKER The word overload can have more than one meaning to higher education faculty. It can mean increasing class size or adding additional course sections to the faculty member’s required minimum teaching load. While many full-time faculty welcome overloads as an opportunity to increase income, they are usually a bad deal. Adjunct…