Image of four fists of different skin tones raised in solidarity against a yellow background

FAMCO’s Fight for Fair Healthcare

BY MEGAN DELANEY, GABRIELLE HACKENBERG, AND AMANDA STOJANOV The Faculty Association of Monmouth University (FAMCO) recently finished an extensive reopener with university administration regarding our healthcare costs and plans. We were aware that our members had been overpaying for healthcare for several years and that the administration was diverting costs onto members through the cover…

A tear in a green paper folder reveals the words "final thoughts" typed in black on white paper

Put Democracy in the Lecture

BY MATTHEW BOEDY You may remember several years ago a phenomenon called “the last lecture.”  It began with the heartbreaking story of Randy Pausch, who was a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University. He was diagnosed with cancer and literally gave his last lecture in September 2007. That became a book in 2008…

Crowded school hallway

Put Democracy in The Community

By MATTHEW BOEDY Last month I encouraged faculty to put democracy on the syllabus.  In that post, I wrote: “No one is coming to save us. We all have to do this together.” To further that call, I urge faculty now to put democracy in the community.  AAUP unions and advocacy conferences do a lot…

Your Pension, Your Future, and Your Students’ Future

BY DON NONINI, SHELDON POLLOCK, AND DAN SEGAL Over the past decade, faculty have most often encountered the problem of financial investments and the climate crisis when their students mobilized to divest their school’s endowments from fossil fuels. That mobilization, across some 1600 educational, religious, and other institutions world-wide, has been stunningly successful: to date,…

map of Florida with red pushpin stuck into the center of the state

AAUP Florida Investigation Report Released, Press Conference Held at Florida Capitol

BY JENNIFER RUTH Yesterday, the AAUP announced the release of Political Interference and Academic Freedom in Florida’s Public Higher Education System. The fifty-three page report represents almost a year’s worth of work by dedicated staff and volunteer leaders and incisively lays out the ramifications of political interference for the survival of basic AAUP principles of…

A Tale of Two Surveys

BY MATTHEW BOEDY Two recent major surveys on public opinion about higher education offer differing details but the same dark picture of public opinion about higher education.  They also offer the same roadmap for faculty advocacy to reverse that dangerous trend.  First, there was a Chronicle of Higher Education survey in early September. The Chronicle…

Morehouse and the Academic Labor Movement

BY ANDREW J. DOUGLAS Reposted from the Morehouse Newsroom with permission from the author. Once upon a time a Morehouse professor tried to unionize the faculty. Walter Chivers, the current namesake of the school’s cafeteria, was a professor of sociology at Morehouse College from 1925 until his retirement in 1968. He was also a labor…

Word map of frequent keywords

Neo-Nationalism and Universities

BY HANK REICHMAN At the AAUP’s biennial meeting last month I had occasion to pick up a copy of Neo-Nationalism and Universities: Populists, Autocrats, and the Future of Higher Education, by UC Berkeley education professor John Aubrey Douglass and a group of other contributors.  The book is a collection of essays treating the impact on…