BY BETHANY LETIECQ When I joined the George Mason University faculty in 2013, I had already had a taste of what could be achieved when faculty, students, community members, and organizations work together in common cause. Earlier in my career, I helped organize a faculty union at Montana State University and, in my community-based work…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH In a post for Talking Union, Paul Garver provides details on the decision of Harvard University to recognize and to bargain with the Harvard Graduate Students Union-United Automobile Workers. Some of the basic details of the vote on unionization are not especially surprising: Of the ca. 5000 eligible Harvard graduate students/research…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH What follows are the opening paragraphs of a news report for the Associated Press written by Matthew Barakat: Virginia’s largest public university granted the conservative Charles Koch Foundation a say in the hiring and firing of professors in exchange for millions of dollars in donations, according to newly released documents. The…
BY THE COLORADO AAUP CONFERENCE Fort Lewis College’s AAUP chapter registered a victory in March when President Dene Thomas announced that no faculty no tenured or tenure-track people will be eliminated as part of proposed FLC budget reductions. Her decision followed an FLC-AAUP analysis of the proposed budget that demonstrated cuts could be achieved without sacrificing…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH In Ohio, the AAUP was historically apolitical. Then, in 2011, Senate Bill 5 was passed, completely eliminating our collective-bargaining rights in the space of just a few weeks at the beginning of John Kasich’s first term as governor. At the state and chapter levels, we mobilized to support the referendum that…
BY RAY HOGLER Teachers from various state school districts rallied in Denver on April 26-27, 2108, to demand increases in pay and benefits. Most affected districts chose to cancel classes on those days rather than attempting to cope with the walkouts. In Fort Collins, Poudre School District Superintendent Sandra Smyser declared that “teachers’ actions are…
BY STEVE MUMME It was a landmark moment when Colorado State’s faculty council voted to endorse the Committee on the Responsibilities and Academic Standing of Faculty’s (CoRSAF’s) proposal establishing “contract” faculty appointments for non-tenure track faculty (NTTF) on campus. The new appointment type effectively brings those faculty out of the shadows and into the mainstream…
BY NADINE STROSSEN WITH JOHN K. WILSON Nadine Strossen, the former ACLU President (1991-2008) and Professor of Constitutional Law at New York Law School, is the author of a new book, HATE: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship (Oxford University Press). She will be speaking May 5 at Politics and Prose…
BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL One of the central themes of the new book – How to Run a College: A Practical Guide for Trustees, Faculty, Administrators, and Policymakers — that my co-author, Dr. W. Joseph King, and I touch upon repeatedly is that American colleges and universities operate with an unsustainable financial model. Colleges’ Comprehensive…
POSTED BY KELLY HAND In a new op-ed* in the Wall Street Journal, Jay Smith, a professor of history at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, comments on reforms to college basketball recently proposed by Condoleeza Rice and her NCAA-appointed Commission on College Basketball. He is skeptical about the commission’s recommendations to address corruption because they…