By AARON BARLOW The lockout of faculty at Long Island University’s Brooklyn campus continues despite almost universal condemnation. From a quirky response to the end of a contract that nobody in the press seemed to even notice, it has become something of a cause celebré. Following a story in The Nation on September 4th (two…
BY DEBORAH MUTNICK Day 7 of the LIU Brooklyn faculty lockout. Those of us in the maelstrom of organizing are exhilarated and very tired. We are caught up in the nitty-gritty of producing fliers, contacting press, and participating in the actions that we call students and supporters to attend. The entire LIU Brooklyn faculty has…
BY HANK REICHMAN Today negotiations resumed between the Long Island University (LIU) administration and the LIU Faculty Federation, representing the 400+ full- and part-time faculty members now locked out by the administration. Well, sorta. At the session the faculty proposed a 30-day extension of the old contract, retroactive to September 1, which would have ended…
BY GAIL STYGALL Guest blogger Gail Stygall is a Professor of English at the University of Washington-Seattle. This is crossposted on Daily Kos. What is a university? What is a college? Fundamentally, a university is its faculty and students. At its heart, a university’s fundamental task is for its faculty to provide an education, as they…
BY AARON BARLOW 10:00 AM. I’ve just returned from the start of the rally and picketing going on (until 1:00 PM this afternoon) at the Long Island University branch in Brooklyn at Flatbush and DeKalb–in front of what once was the Paramount Theater. There are, perhaps, 150 people protesting right now, which isn’t bad, given…
BY GWENDOLYN BRADLEY The AAUP has issued a statement on the Long Island University administration’s lockout of all four hundred members of its Brooklyn campus faculty union. The statement reads, in its entirety: September 6, 2016 Statement on LIU Brooklyn Lockout Over the Labor Day weekend, the administration of Long Island University (LIU) announced an unprecedented…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH These are the lead paragraphs from an article written by Susan Snyder for the Philadelphia Inquirer: “Tweets by the chairman of Ursinus College’s board of trustees have drawn ire from some students and at least one fellow board member, who called them ‘elitist, racist, sexist, body-shaming,’ and ‘generally intolerant,’ and resigned…
By AARON BARLOW Some years ago, the chair of a department, after a college-wide committee had denied promotion to a couple of his faculty, was asked by the chair of that committee (an old friend) how he felt about it. “I guess I’m OK with it,” he joked, “but I suspect there are people in…
BY MARTIN KICH This is how the official Trump campaign site marked Labor Day: Trump did, however, tweet about his meeting with union leaders at an American Legion Post in Youngstown–after he bragged about some very selectively highlighted poll numbers: Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump Heading to Youngstown, Ohio now-some great polls. #AmericaFirst Donald J.…
BY DEBORAH MUTNICK Day 3 of the LIU lockout. Labor Day. I have been locked out of Long Island University’s Brooklyn campus by an administration that makes my colleagues and me feel like poster children for the neoliberal corporatization of higher education. We have lost our health care and other benefits, our pay, and our…