Faculty Call on UCSC to Halt Disciplinary Procedures
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN Before the COVID-19 pandemic absorbed everyone’s attention, brought much of the country to a halt, and pushed higher education, what continues of it, online, the higher ed community was focused on the remarkable wildcat strike of graduate student employees that began at the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC) and…
Week of Action for UC Strikers and Public Education Everywhere
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following call to action is being distributed by an ad hoc national faculty group, Ad Hoc Committee of Scholars 4 COLA. The Ad Hoc Committee of Scholars 4 COLA Presents: WEEK OF ACTION FOR UC STRIKERS AND PUBLIC EDUCATION EVERYWHERE! March 9-13, 2020 SUPPORT THE STRIKERS, FROM UC TO UCU!…
UCSC, The Fate of Graduate Education, and the Future of the University
BY MICHAEL MERANZE The following is reposted from the Remaking the University blog. Michael Meranze is Professor of History at UCLA and a member of AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure. The labor action that began with the grade strike in Santa Cruz and has now spread throughout the [U]niversity [of California] has…
Solidarity With Striking UCSC Graduate Student Employees
BY HANK REICHMAN The situation at the University of California at Santa Cruz has escalated. On Friday the university administration announced that 54 graduate students who are withholding fall grades were fired from their spring appointments. This number may in fact be as high as 80, as some students did not get dismissal letters but…
Over 200 UC Santa Cruz Faculty Respond to Administration Efforts to Surveil Graduate Student Employees
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN In December graduate student employees at the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC) began a wildcat grading strike, refusing to submit fall quarter grades until they get a salary increase. The university administration said that as many as 12,000 students had their grades withheld. Today the strike expanded as student…
A Simple Proposal for Ending the Jobs Crisis
BY PATRICK FESSENBECKER It is the time of year again when too many brilliant literature scholars find out that they will not be receiving a tenure-track job, and, as in Jacquelyn Ardam’s eloquent lamentation, that their possibilities for staying in the profession are over. The statistics on the situation are stark. Humanities doctorates are taking…
In Defense of Steven Thrasher
BY JOHN K. WILSON Steven Thrasher, a student graduation speaker who received his Ph.D. from New York University last week, sparked enormous controversy with his speech. Thrasher expressed support for “the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against the Apartheid State Government in Israel” and declared, “We must stand together to vanquish racism and Islamophobia…
Letter from a Graduate Instructor: Why We Need a Union @ Marquette University
BY STEVEN VICKERS Twenty visits to a doctor, thirty-two tests or screenings, six doctors, and countless pills: this is my new reality. In the summer of 2018, I began feeling flushed and nauseated. I would wake at 3am and run to the toilet to empty the contents of my stomach. I would go purchase diapers…
Are Immigration Policies Hampering US Role in Training Global Workforce?
BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL Last month, the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) reported that international graduate enrollment and applications at U.S. institutions have declined for the second year in a row. As Lily Jackson reported in the Chronicle of Higher Education, “In the fall of 2018, the final application count for prospective international graduate students…