BY MATTHEW BOEDY It’s been a long week here in Georgia. I write at the end of weeklong, statewide protests about our university system’s poor COVID-19 policies. You might have seen media coverage splashed across many platforms and networks. It’s also been a long month here as our hospitals are overrun and our campuses saw…
BY CAROLYN BETENSKY Earlier this month, I wrote of the conditions faculty were facing in COVID-denialist states. Here is an update on recent developments in one of them. At the University of Florida, members of the Faculty Senate are polling campus stakeholders (faculty members, staff, and graduate assistants) regarding a proposed vote of no confidence…
BY CAROLYN BETENSKY If you are lucky enough to be working at a college or university that has introduced any protocols to prevent or at least inhibit the transmission of COVID, spare a moment’s thought for your colleagues in Mississippi. They are living in a state that has been vying daily with Florida for the…
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 JENNIFER RUTH As Carolyn Betensky’s posts made clear (see here, here and here), universities and colleges are not prepared to safely protect faculty and students as classes begin this fall. Individual crises are erupting everywhere (as this Inside Higher Ed article about more professors quitting over face-to-face teaching mandates details) and some organized actions…
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 CAROLYN BETENSKY Could we have a winner in the administrative malfeasance contest, COVID-19 division? I think we may! Of course, it’s too early to say. The entries keep rolling in. But this one is a contender. National University is requiring faculty to attend graduation at the San Diego Padres’ Petco Park in downtown San…
BY CAROLYN BETENSKY On Friday, I posted the first part of this survey of what faculty face this fall at institutions in COVID-denialist states. Part I discussed conditions in Louisiana and Georgia. Here, I report what I heard from colleagues in Florida, Wisconsin, and Texas. * * * At the University of Florida, where no…