BY MEREDITH McCOOL When I first heard Stephanie O’Neill’s NPR story “Coronavirus Has Upended Our World. It’s OK to Grieve,” it helped me consider the range of emotions I was experiencing. Stress from the sudden changes. Disappointment from missed opportunities. However, the full weight of grief did not hit me until I began to consider…
BY THE FAIRFIELD UNIVERSITY FACULTY WELFARE COMMITTEE/AAUP Alumni at Fairfield University organized around the hashtag #BlackStagsMatter after two statements from university administration in the wake of the murder of George Floyd and Juneteenth did not directly address the need for concrete changes or the Black Lives Matter movement. Many of the alumni had been involved…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The document below, “Recommendations for UC Policing,” was approved by the Academic Council of the University of California (UC) system on June 24 and forwarded by Academic Council Chair Kum-Kum Bhavnani to UC President Janet Napolitano on June 29. In the UC system each of the ten campuses, known as divisions,…
BY ANNE SISSON RUNYAN The author was one of three 2020 recipients of the AAUP’s Georgina M. Smith award, which is given to those who have provided exceptional leadership in a given year in improving the status of academic women or in academic collective bargaining and, through that work, improved the profession in general. Because award…
BY RACHAEL LEHMAN The most important relationship in education is between student and educator (we’ll use the terms professor, faculty, and teacher interchangeably). From the pre–K to doctoral levels, education today is a vestige of colonialism imbued with white supremacy and patriarchy. BIPOC students experience the negative impacts disproportionately of this colonized education system, but…
BY THE AAUP The AAUP issued the following statement today: As the ongoing demonstrations of the past few weeks have shown, our nation is once again being called on to reckon with systemic racism and its impact on Black, Latinx, indigenous, and other people of color. Black lives matter, and the AAUP stands in solidarity…
BY HANK REICHMAN As we today observe a Juneteenth holiday, celebrating the end of slavery in its final redoubt of Texas on June 19, 1865, a commemoration that has gained extra salience and expanded recognition in the context of the extraordinary and continuing cross-racial upsurge of the Black Lives Matter movement, those in higher education…
BY JOHN STREAMAS I have been better treated by university police than by administrators. But then, as a biracial Asian immigrant, I could pass for white. Several students of color—mostly black students but some Latinx and a few Asian Pacific and indigenous students as well—have reported to me harassment by local police. Some black male…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following statement was issued June 5 by the Labor and Working Class History Association (LAWCHA). The Labor and Working-Class History Association condemns the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and all victims of racist police brutality, and we demand justice. We stand in solidarity with all who are…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following statement was issued on June 3 by the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT). The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) stands in solidarity with communities around the world protesting racism, injustice, and inequality. While the ongoing demonstrations have been triggered by the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis…