California Appeals Vergara Anti-Tenure Ruling

California Governor Gerry Brown has appealed a state judge’s horrendous ruling that threw out teacher job protection laws on the ground that they deprived students of their constitutional rights.  In a one-page appeal filed yesterday, Brown and California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris argued that a decision of such breadth should  be made by a…

California AB 2705: A Small Step Toward Equity

The following statement was released today by the Steering Committee of AAUP’s California Conference: The California Conference of the American Association of University Professors (CA-AAUP) endorses Assembly Bill 2705. The bill changes terms used by the California Education Code to describe the hard-working professional educators who now teach the majority of our community college students.…

Is Education Like a Cell Phone? A Call to Action

By Dean Murakami, President, Faculty Association of the California Community Colleges (FACCC) The following remarks were delivered at the opening general session of the FACCC Advocacy and Policy Conference in Sacramento, California on March 2, 2014.  California is finally coming out of the horrible recession where our state legislators cut the funding for community colleges…

FACCC: Changing the Narrative

On March 2-3, the Faculty Association of the California Community Colleges (FACCC) held its annual advocacy and policy conference in Sacramento around the theme of “Changing the Narrative on California Community Colleges.”  The conference included a full day and morning of discussions and panels and an afternoon of direct lobbying of legislators.  The opening session…

Participate or Perish – New Issue of Academe available now

The new issue of Academe, which looks at the public policy landscape for higher ed, has just been posted online. The issue is guest-edited by Brian Turner, a professor of political science at Randolph-Macon College in Virginia and chair of the AAUP’s Government Relations Committee. Turner tells a story in his introduction to the issue which is…

Online Education in California Public Higher Education

The Intersegmental Committee of the Academic Senates (ICAS) was established by faculty in 1980 as a voluntary organization consisting of representatives of the Academic Senates of the three segments of public higher education in California. For more information, see: http://icas-ca.org/ _________________________ Executive Summary The Academic Senates of California’s three segments of public higher education support…

Students Pepper-Sprayed for Wanting to Attend a Community College

This is a guest post by Lenore Beaky, a member of the AAUP Committee on Community Colleges. “Santa Monica College—The Shape of Things to Come, or The Future That’s Already Arrived?” What happened at Santa Monica College this spring embodies many of the most urgent threats and challenges facing community colleges in the United States now: vanishing…