Earlier today the PSC received the decision by Judge Anil Singh on CUNY’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit contesting the original Pathways resolution passed by the Board of Trustees in 2011. Judge Singh decided in favor of CUNY’s motion to dismiss. We are disappointed in the decision, but we are fully prepared to appeal. We maintain that…
Recently, the administration of the City University of New York proposed a series of academic changes to the school, grouping these changes together under the name “Pathways.” The system would make it easier for students to transfer between CUNY schools, and it would have looser graduation requirements. This proposal and the faculty opposition to it…
Barbara Bowen, President of the Professional Staff Congress, the faculty union of the City University of New York (CUNY), sent this message to union members yesterday: Dear Colleague: The results of the referendum of No Confidence in Pathways are in: 92% voted No Confidence in Pathways. The vote is a stunning rebuke to the Pathways…
There is a vote of no confidence coming up at the City University of New York. It involves the Pathways program that is being imposed upon the system by a board of trustees and central administration with very little understanding of how any of its colleges operate “on the ground.” Pathways is being instituted with…
Below is a letter responding to the actions of Diane Call, President of Queensborough Community College (QCC) of the City University of New York (CUNY). We have posted two earlier letters (here and here) dealing with this same situation: Dear Colleagues, Many of you have heard that administrative intimidation of the English Department continues at…
Over the past three weeks, I’ve been thinking a great deal about CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein’s message to the faculty about the Queensborough Community College uproar. That it doesn’t sit well with many faculty members should be obvious from even a cursory reading (Pathways, for those who don’t know, is a top-down CUNY initiative aimed…
If you don’t start building a new organizational program from the ground up but impose it from the top down, you are going to lose control when the program has to be implemented by people with no real commitment to it, no feeling of ownership of it. We’re seeing that right now with implementation of…
BY MICHAEL FERGUSON Following is the editor’s introduction to the fall 2024 issue of Academe, “The Status of Academic Collective Bargaining,” out this week. The full table of contents for the issue can be found here. Recently released data from the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions brought…
BY ANTHONY ALESSANDRINI The AAUP’s new “Statement on Academic Boycotts,” which reverses its prior opposition to academic boycotts, is a major declaration. Stating clearly that boycotts “can be considered legitimate tactical responses to conditions that are fundamentally incompatible with the mission of higher education,” it confirms there are instances in which upholding academic freedom may…