BY GILLIAN STEINBERG I gave up tenure last summer after an excruciating year of fighting against budget cuts for the writing program I directed. I was told that, to save money, students would have only one semester of writing instead of two and that the program’s full-time professors would, over time, be replaced by adjuncts.…
BY HANK REICHMAN Alarmed by the headline? I was when I encountered it above an article originally published in the online zine Salon, but republished in several other locations (for instance here). Written by Professor of Higher Education at the University of Southern California Adrianna Kezar, co-director of the Delphi Project on the Changing Faculty…
Peter Wood at Minding the Campus complains about the AAUP’s unanimous vote to censure the University of Missouri Board of Curators because “the AAUP has yet to find anyone to censure over abuses of Title IX.” What the hell does that mean? The AAUP censure list is a list of university administrations. The AAUP has…
BY HANK REICHMAN This is the fifth in a series of posts on issues in the University of California (UC) system, the nation’s premier public research institution. Previous posts in the series may be found here, here, here and here. At a time when there is growing concern about governing board overreach, the University of…
The following was posted on the site medium.com by a student at East Carolina University. I am a student at East Carolina University. ECU is an amazing school, and one of 16 in the University of North Carolina (UNC) System. This public higher education system is one that has been a model for many other…
Writing for University Business, Nick Kalm and Courtney Harper advise universities on how “Strong Messages Can Defuse Campus Unionizing Campaigns.” The authors’ bio note indicates that “Nick Kalm is president and Courtney Harper is senior vice president at Reputation Partners, a communications consultancy that specializes in labor communications for universities and other organizations.” The…
This is a letter written by George Mason sophomore Mark Hammond to the George Mason student newspaper, The Fourth Estate. For some reason, that newspaper never published it on its website; so he has given permission to Connor Gibson, a co-founder of the group Un-Koch My Campus, to disseminate it. _________________________ “Last fall, when…
The following letter was sent by Sherrod Brown to Secretary of Education John King. (I have omitted a half-dozen footnotes that cite the sources for the details that Senator Brown highlights.) The letter illustrates why Sherrod Brown is a very effective and widely respected progressive Senator in a “purple” state. _________________________ June 20, 2016…
COCAL is the Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor, a nearly 20 year old network of contingent activists and their organizations that does a conference (now tri-national – USA, CAN (including QBC) , and MEX) every other year, usually in August. It also sponsors a listserv, called ADJ-L, and has an International Advisory Committee and…
BY HANK REICHMAN Yesterday I posted to this blog the text of a letter from UC Berkeley professors Michael Burawoy and Celeste Langan, co-chairs of the UC Berkeley Faculty Association (BFA), a partner organization of the AAUP, calling for a new probe of alleged abuses in the university’s intercollegiate football program. The request came after…