POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The document below, “Recommendations for UC Policing,” was approved by the Academic Council of the University of California (UC) system on June 24 and forwarded by Academic Council Chair Kum-Kum Bhavnani to UC President Janet Napolitano on June 29. In the UC system each of the ten campuses, known as divisions,…
BY THE UC BERKELEY FACULTY ASSOCIATION The University of California Office of the President (UCOP) is famed for its tough bargaining tactics in its dealings with its unions. From its ongoing conflict with AFSCME for failing to comply with its own rules around subcontracting, to a belligerent tendency to cancel AFT bargaining sessions at the…
BY CHRISTOPHER NEWFIELD The following is reposted from the Remaking the University blog. While its focus is on the University of California its arguments are as relevant for other public research and teaching universities. Should university officials be fatalistic about Covid-powered cuts to their core educational budgets? Or should they work 24/7 on their state…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following letter from staff, faculty, and student groups, delivered to University of California President Janet Napolitano, the UC Board of Regents, the campus Chancellors, and the Medical Center CEOs, enumerates concerns and suggestions for dealing with the financial consequences of COVID-19. May 13, 2020 Dear University of California President Napolitano…
BY MICHAEL MERANZE The following is reposted from the Remaking the University blog. Michael Meranze is Professor of History at UCLA and a member of AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure. The labor action that began with the grade strike in Santa Cruz and has now spread throughout the [U]niversity [of California] has…
BY HANK REICHMAN The situation at the University of California at Santa Cruz has escalated. On Friday the university administration announced that 54 graduate students who are withholding fall grades were fired from their spring appointments. This number may in fact be as high as 80, as some students did not get dismissal letters but…
BY HANK REICHMAN Two years ago state auditors rebuked the University of California (UC) for not following its own policy for outsourcing jobs. Now the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 3299, which represents some 26,000 university employees, has filed six charges with the California Public Employment Relations Board against UC’s…
BY HANK REICHMAN Today was a big day for University of California librarians. Regular readers of this blog will be aware that the system’s librarians have been negotiating a new contract and that one of the contentious issues was academic freedom, which UC negotiators initially claimed did not apply to librarians. (For previous coverage see…
BY HANK REICHMAN Scholars in the humanities and social sciences are painfully familiar with the widespread and baneful trend of converting teaching positions into contingent non-tenure-track, often part-time, “adjunct” jobs. But some may not realize that a similar trend on the research side, especially in the physical and natural sciences, has emerged through the abuse…
BY HANK REICHMAN This afternoon I had the pleasure of joining a demonstration of University of California librarians and their supporters outside the Berkeley campus’s Doe Library where the latest bargaining session between the UC-AFT Librarians and the UC administration was taking place. As I previously reported, academic freedom is a central topic of negotiation. …