POSTED BY JOAN W. SCOTT In March, Rachel Ida Buff published an Academe Blog post recounting the attacks by the Canary Mission and others on faculty at Kingsborough Community College. In response to the attack, a group of faculty, staff, and graduate students decided to greet the incoming chancellor, Felix Matos (a “veteran” administrator in…
POSTED BY KELLY HAND The new issue of Academe highlights the power of faculty to build strength on their campuses by organizing through AAUP advocacy and collective bargaining chapters. Articles focus on presidential searches, private donor influence, adjunct faculty activism, risks of gun violence, retirement, and other topics. Follow the links in the table of contents…
BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL The complex challenges facing colleges and universities are well known: changing demographics and consumer preferences, aging facilities, and the need to keep pace with technological advances. College closures and mergers are becoming increasingly common. But what can faculty and other colleges and university leaders — trustees, presidents, alumni and parent boards,…
BY GWENDOLYN BRADLEY Faculty salaries barely budged when adjusted for inflation during the 2018-2019 academic year, according to the AAUP’s 2018-19 Faculty Compensation Survey. Average salaries for full-time faculty members at US colleges and universities are 2 percent higher in 2018-19 than they were in the preceding academic year, but with prices in the economy…
BY HANK REICHMAN In the wake of last year’s exciting wave of teacher strikes that began in West Virginia and quickly spread to Oklahoma, Arizona, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Colorado — states where public employees lack collective bargaining rights, unions are weak, and voters supported Donald Trump — the current strike by teachers in Los…
BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL In our book, How to Run a College: A Practical Guide for Trustees, Faculty, Administrators and Policymakers, Dr. Joey King and I argue that colleges project themselves to fail should they continue to use their current operating models. There is a point where the lines cross for net tuition revenue and…
BY HANK REICHMAN Amidst all the bashing of professors as left-wing ideological thugs (but also sensitive “snowflakes”) who seek only to indoctrinate vulnerable students, the reality that the great majority of faculty members go out of their way to advise, mentor, and assist their students, regardless of politics or personal characteristics, frequently without remuneration for…
BY HANK REICHMAN If you’re an academic on Twitter, especially an historian, there’s a good chance you’ve encountered and perhaps even followed Princeton University historian Kevin Kruse. As the Pacific Standard put it introducing an interview with him, “Over the last few years, Kruse and other experts have been bringing evidence and expertise to well-curated…
BY HANK REICHMAN As a retired faculty member I don’t attend too many scholarly conferences these days, outside of the AAUP of course. But I do still enjoy the annual convention of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) and plan to attend this year’s gathering in Boston, December 6-9. But like…