Chan v UBC (BC Human Rights Tribunal)

by E Wayne Ross on January 27, 2012

Chan v. University of British Columbia and Haverkamp and Farrar and Shapiro and Tierney (No. 2), 2012 BCHRT 12

INTRODUCTION
[1] Jennifer Chan filed a complaint alleging that Beth Haverkamp, David Farrar, Jon Shapiro, Robert Tierney and the University of British Columbia (collectively the “Respondents”) discriminated against her with respect to the appointment of the David Lam Chair in Multicultural Education in the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia (the “Lam Chair”) on the basis of race, colour, ancestry, and place of origin, contrary to s. 13 of the Human Rights Code. The Respondents deny there has been any such discrimination and apply to dismiss the complaint pursuant to ss. 27(1)(b), (c),(d)(ii) and (f), which provide:
(1) A member or panel may, at any time after a complaint is filed and with or without a hearing, dismiss all or part of the complaint if that member or panel determines that any of the  following apply:
(b) the acts or omissions alleged in the complaint…do not contravene this Code;
(c) there is no reasonable prospect that the complaint will succeed;
(d) proceeding with the complaint or that part of the complaint would not:
…
(ii) further the purposes of this Code.
(f) the substance of the complaint … has been appropriately dealt with in another proceeding.
[2] The Respondents, in the alternative, apply to dismiss the complaint against the individual respondents.

Excerpts of the decision:

[50] Further, it strikes me that it would be fundamentally unfair to allow UBC’s application on this ground. A faculty member may rely on the Policy in determining the preferred route for redress. To allow UBC to set out an appeal process in its Policy and then deny it through an application to dismiss, on this basis, essentially pulls the rug out from under that faculty member.

[51] I decline to dismiss Dr. Chan’s complaint as appropriately dealt with under the Policy.

 

[72] The issues raised in this complaint are of significance to the UBC community as a whole. I am alive to the difficulties expressed in Lee in identifying racism and related offensive behaviour. I am also alive to the low hurdle which the complainant needs to overcome on a s. 27(1)(c) application. In the circumstances of this case, I am of the view that, only after a full hearing, is it possible to determine whether the Committee’s process was tainted by prohibited motivations. Ultimately all Tribunal decisions under s. 27(1)(c) of the Code are discretionary decisions. I am not persuaded that there is no reasonable prospect that the individual complaint will succeed.

 

[77] Rather, the complaint appears to cast the Committee’s process and resultant decision as being the product of subtle racial bias and stereotyping, including the failure to apply employment equity principles. Whether or not UBC was bound by its Employment Equity Plan to apply such principles as contended by Dr. Chan will not be dispositive of the issues in this complaint – they are cast far broader than that. While I recognise that s. 27 of the Code contemplates that a part of a complaint may be dismissed on application, I also recognise that a failure to apply employment equity may be rooted in racial bias.

 

[79] If the evidence supports that the Committee was influenced by improper considerations as alleged (but which the Respondents clearly deny) the selection would constitute a violation of the Code. On the material before me, a hearing will be required to ascertain whether discrimination has occurred. I am not prepared to dismiss the complaint on the basis that the acts alleged do not contravene the Code.

 

IX CONCLUSION

[90] As stated above, I decline to dismiss Dr. Chan’s personal complaint against UBC. The systemic complaint is dismissed. I also dismiss the complaints against Dr. Haverkamp, Dr. Farrar, Dr. Shapiro and Dr. Tierney.

{ 0 comments }

Ethnic studies under attack in Arizona

by E Wayne Ross on January 25, 2012

As you may know, Arizona has banned the teaching of ethnic studies, specifically targeting Mexican-American Studies in the Tucson Unified School District. Eleven TUSD teachers, administrators and students are suing the state to bring back Ethnic Studies (www.saveethnicstudies.org<http://www.saveethnicstudies.org/>).

To fight blatant discrimination and the spread of this civil/human rights violation to other states, join us for a fundraiser ($10, but hope you can donate more!) for:

SAVE ETHNIC STUDIES

Saturday, February 25, 2012

2:00 p.m.

Lincoln High School

4777 Imperial Avenue

San Diego, 92113

Here’s the link to the trailer for Precious Knowledge: http://action.nclr.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=4802

Here’s the link to the description of the ethnic studies program: http://www.tusd.k12.az.us/contents/depart/mexicanam/index.asp

Please encourage everyone to register at Eventbrite. com for SAVE ETHNIC STUDIES Fundraiser at Lincoln High School.

Add Your Name to the Save Ethnic Studies Petition:

The Mexican American Studies program in the Tucson Unified School District is facing the real threat of being shut down. The program successfully keeps otherwise-disengaged students motivated to learn and go on to college by using curriculum with which they culturally identify to teach critical thinking skills and empower the students to be strong leaders in their communities.

Despite all of the benefits of the program, in May 2010 Governor Jan Brewer signed a bill (HB 2281) into law that aimed to ban ethnic studies in Arizona schools. This law went into effect at the beginning of 2011 and prohibits schools from offering classes that are designed for students of a certain ethnic group. As a result, the Mexican American Studies program in Tucson, which has contributed to a 97% decrease in the dropout rate, is now facing a serious threat to its existence, while African American, Native American, and Asian American Studies programs are all allowed to continue.

An independent audit commissioned by the state found the program to be fully in compliance with Arizona’s ban, and recommended that the program be maintained as part of the core curriculum for high schools. Despite these findings, State Superintendent of Public Instruction John Huppenthal has threatened to withhold $15 million of state funding from the school district.

Join the 11 teachers and administrators from the Mexican American Studies program and two of its students to defend the program. Sign the Save Ethnic Studies petition below to show your support and we’ll keep you updated on the progress of the lawsuit against the Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction and the State Board of Education.

Learn more! Watch the trailer of Precious Knowledge, which documents the program and the battle to save it. The full program will be shown at the fundraiser.

YouTube Preview Image

We the undersigned support the effort to save ethnic studies in the Tucson Unified School District. The Mexican American Studies program poses no threat to the state of Arizona or its education system. On the contrary, it provides a proven-effective method to educate students and motivate them to stay in school and become productive leaders in their community.

We stand in opposition to State Superintendent of Public Instruction John Huppenthal’s attempt to withhold $15 million of state funding from the school district. This action is completely unwarranted given the results of the independent audit commissioned by the state, which found the program to be fully in compliance with Arizona’s ethnic studies ban. In fact, the audit recommended that the program be maintained as part of the core curriculum for high schools in the district.

The Mexican American Studies program should be applauded and replicated for its success, not destroyed by a pointless ban.

Here’s an interesting interview by Anderson Cooper interviewing Tom Horne and the great sociologist Michael Dyson

YouTube Preview Image

{ 0 comments }

Petition: Ginsberg v North Carolina State University

by E Wayne Ross on January 23, 2012

At North Carolina State University (NCSU), shortly after Dr. Terri Ginsberg made supportive political comments at a screening of a Palestinian film in 2007, she went from being the favored candidate for a tenure-track position to being denied even an interview.  Her efforts at redress were summarily rejected by NCSU and two courts.  A jury should be permitted to decide whether NCSU’s real reason for firing Dr. Ginsberg was its hostility to her political views, but this legal right has been denied.  We urge the Supreme Court of North Carolina to review Dr. Ginsberg’s case and to reverse the lower courts’ decisions to dismiss it.  On this basis, faculty at NCSU and elsewhere may finally exercise their legal right to academic speech on the topic of Palestine/Israel and, as such, to their full human rights as scholars, teachers, and intellectuals in the academic community.

To support this request to the NC Supreme Court, we invite academic faculty and students worldwide to sign our Open Letter as an e-petition at this URL:

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/open-letter-to-nc-supreme-court-ginsberg-vs-ncsu.html

We expect to submit the Open Letter with all signatures received by February 7, though signatures received later would still be helpful.

You are also encouraged to send your own letter to:

Supreme Court of North Carolina

Clerk’s Office

P.O. Box 2170

Raleigh, NC 27602-2170  USA

 

British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (BRICUP) http://www.bricup.org.uk/

U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI) http://www.usacbi.org

Center for Constitutional Rights http://ccrjustice.org

Jewish Voice for Peace-Westchester http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jewish-Voice-for-Peace-Westchester-Chapter/201574026528540?v=info

WESPAC Foundation http://wespac.org/

Committee for Open Discussion of Zionism (CODZ) http://www.codz.org

{ 0 comments }

Special issue of Cultural Logic: “Culture and Crisis”

by E Wayne Ross on January 1, 2012

Cultural Logic

2010
SPECIAL ISSUE:
CULTURE AND CRISIS

EDITED BY JOSEPH G. RAMSEY

 Introduction

Joseph G. Ramsey
“Culture and Crisis”

The Current Conjucture:
Capitalist Crises and the Crisis of the Left

Michael Joseph Roberto, Gregory Meyerson, Jamey Essex, and Jeff Noonan
“Moment of Transition:
Structural Crisis and the Case for a Democratic Socialist Party”

Jeffrey Perry
“The Developing Conjuncture and Some Insights from
Hubert Harrison and Theodore W. Allen
on the Centrality of the Fight against White Supremacy”

Julie P. Torrant
“Class and the New Family in the Wake of the Housing Collapse”

Dan DiMaggio
“Road Maps, Dead Ends, and the Search for Fresh Ground:
How Can We Build the Socialist Movement in the 21st Century?”

Crisis, Imagination, and the Return to Marx’s Capital

Max Haiven
“The Financial Crisis as a Crisis of the Imagination”

Vesa Oittinen and Andre Maidansky
“A Marx for the Left Today:
Interview with Marcello Musto”

Amedeo Policante
“Vampires of Capital:
Gothic Reflections between Horror and Hope”

Robert T. Tally Jr.
“Meta-Capital:
Culture and Financial Derivatives”

Rethinking Crises in
Twntieth-Century Socialism and Communism

Joseph Ball
“The Need for Planning:
The Restoration of Capitalism in the Soviet Union
in the 1950s and the Decline of the Soviet Economy”

Grover Furr
“Stephen Cohen’s Biography of Bukharin:
A Study in the Falsehood of Khrushchev-Era ‘Revelations’”

Remembering the Depression Era:
Recovering Left Culture in a Time of Crisis

Benjamin Balthaser
“Re-Staging the Great Depression:
Genre as Social Memory in Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler“

Barbara Foley
Forward to Wrestling with the Left:
The Making of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man

Joseph G. Ramsey
“Invisible Tragedies, Invisible Possibilities:
Or, Re-Reading What’s Left of a Great American
(Anti-Communist) Novel”
(Review of Barbara Foley’s Wrestling with the Left)

Tristan Sipley
“Proletarian Pastoral Reconsidered:
Reading Mike Gold in an Age of Ecological Crisis”

Chris Vials
“Fight Against War and Fascism and
the Origins of Antifascism in US Culture”


Theoretical Practice in a Time of Crisis:
Adorno, Benjamin, and Brecht

Rich Daniels
“Non-Pious Discourse:
Adorno, Ethics, and the Politics of Suffering”

Kevin Floyd
“The Importance of Being Childish:
Queer Utopians and Historical Contradiction”

Carl Grey Martin
Review of
Walter Benjamin and Bertold Brecht –
The Story of a Friendship


Reading Crisis as Ruling-Class Strategy

Kanishka Chowdhury
“Deflecting Crisis:
Critiquing Capitalism’s Emancipation Narrative”

Kim Emery
“‘Crisis Management’ in Higher Education:
RCM and the Politics of Crisis at the University of Florida”

Heather Steffen
“Student Internships and the Privilege to Work”

Poetry

Mary Kennan Herbert
“Been There, Done That” and
“Nothing to Say”

George Snedeker
“Progress” and Other Poems

Joseph G. Ramsey
“Fault Lines: Haiti, Two Years On”

{ 0 comments }

New issue of Critical Education: Ecologically and Culturally Informed Educational Reforms in Teacher Education and Curriculum Studies

by E Wayne Ross on December 24, 2011

Critical Education has just published its latest issue at. We invite you to review the Table of Contents here and then visit our web site to review
articles and items of interest.

Critical Education
Vol 2, No 14 (2011)
Table of Contents
http://m1.cust.educ.ubc.ca/journal/index.php/criticaled/issue/view/40

Articles
——–
Ecologically and Culturally Informed Educational Reforms in Teacher Education and Curriculum Studies
C. A. Bowers

{ 0 comments }

Will Non-Tenure-Track Faculty Occupy the MLA Convention?

by E Wayne Ross on December 19, 2011

The Chronicle: Will Non-Tenure-Track Faculty Occupy the MLA Convention?

Feeling downsized, disrespected, and exploited, disgruntled members of the Modern Language Association—seeking to capitalize on the Occupy Wall Street movement’s messages about income disparity—have called for action in advance of the group’s annual meeting next month.

Those members, mostly faculty who are off the tenure track, have turned to blogs and a Twitter feed called OccupyMLA to air grievances about deteriorating labor conditions on their campuses for part-time instructors. Among their list of complaints: low wages; no health insurance; lack of access to office space, phones, and computers; abrupt decisions by administrators to cut programs and courses; criticisms of unions; little or no openness about spending; job insecurity; and fear of retribution if they speak out.

{ 0 comments }

WAKE UP, NLRB! CHICAGO GRAD STUDENT EMPLOYEES RALLY

by E Wayne Ross on December 13, 2011

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

WAKE UP, NLRB! CHICAGO GRAD STUDENT EMPLOYEES RALLY
TO WAKE THE NLRB FROM ITS COMA,
HELP IT RECOGNIZE THAT GRAD LABOR COUNTS!

Chicago, IL, December 13, 2011 — Today at noon, Chicago-area graduate students and their supporters will demonstrate outside the Chicago branch office of the National Labor Relations Board (209 S. LaSalle St.) and present a petition calling on the NLRB to wake from its coma of inaction and recognize private university graduate student teaching and research assistants as employees with a legal right to unionize and collectively bargain.

The rally, organized by Graduate Students United, the graduate employee union at the University of Chicago, and the national Grad Labor Counts! campaign, will feature a dramatic skit in which the NLRB is presented as a comatose hospital patient to reflect its record of inaction and danger of imminent demise. The Grad Labor Counts! campaign has been endorsed by the 1.4 million-strong American Federation of Teachers and the 70,000-member American Association of University Professors.

“We’re calling for for urgent medical attention to the ailing patient from President Obama and Congress, who have the power to restore the NLRB by appointing a new member in 2012,” explained Dasha Polzik, a member of Graduate Students United and an organizer of the Grad Labor Counts! campaign.

“We’re also calling on the NLRB to wake from its coma and issue a ruling on a case that has sat before it since April 2010 concerning the employee status of graduate students at private universities,” added Greg Goodman, another GSU member. Graduate student teaching and research assistants were first recognized as employees by a unanimous NLRB ruling in 2000, and then stripped of their employee status by a later Bush-era ruling in 2004.

Representatives from Grad Labor Counts! will deliver a petition with over 2,700 signatures from across the country calling on the NLRB to rule on the case and recognize graduate student teaching and research assistants at private universities as employees. Details on the Grad Labor Counts! campaign and petition are available at http://gradlaborcounts.org.

Graduate Students United (AFT-AAUP) at the University of Chicago
http://uchicagogsu.org
# # #

{ 0 comments }

With Lobbying Blitz, For-Profit Colleges Diluted New Rules

by E Wayne Ross on December 10, 2011

The New York Times: With Lobbying Blitz, For-Profit Colleges Diluted New Rules

Last year, the Obama administration vowed to stop for-profit colleges from luring students with false promises. In an opening volley that shook the $30 billion industry, officials proposed new restrictions to cut off the huge flow of federal aid to unfit programs.
Enlarge This Image

But after a ferocious response that administration officials called one of the most intense they had seen, the Education Department produced a much-weakened final plan that almost certainly will have far less impact as it goes into effect next year.

{ 0 comments }

State Attorney General Seeks to Thwart Union for U. of Michigan Graduate Researchers

by E Wayne Ross on December 1, 2011

The Chronicle: State Attorney General Seeks to Thwart Union for U. of Michigan Graduate Researchers

Michigan’s attorney general, Bill Schuette, is seeking to intervene in proceedings before that state’s Employment Relations Commission to try to get it to block graduate-student research assistants at the University of Michigan from unionizing. In a motion submitted to the commission on Wednesday, Mr. Schuette argues that the case “involves matters of significant public interest” because the unionization of the university’s graduate research assistants “has the potential to significantly damage” its reputation as a research institution. Leaders of the union drive responded by issuing a statement arguing that graduate researchers have a right to decide whether to unionize without outside interference. When the commission meets on December 13, it is expected to vote on asking an administrative-law judge to conduct a faculty inquiry into whether the university’s graduate-student research assistants should be thought of as employees eligible for unionization, or simply considered as students.

{ 0 comments }

Unions Confront the Fault Lines Between Adjuncts and Full-Timers

by E Wayne Ross on December 1, 2011

The Chronicle: Unions Confront the Fault Lines Between Adjuncts and Full-Timers
Some look beyond the big unions for real improvement in working conditions

The largest organizers of college faculty unions—the American Association of University Professors, the American Federation of Teachers, and the National Education Association—have made big strides in recruiting adjunct instructors and helping them gain representation through collective bargaining.

But the three groups have a long way to go before their membership and their leadership reflect the dominant role that adjunct instructors play in the higher-education work force, a Chronicle survey of the organizations reveals. Such instructors now account for about two-thirds of all faculty members employed by public and private colleges.

{ 0 comments }

UK: 2 million public sector workers strike

by E Wayne Ross on November 30, 2011

The Guardian: Day of strikes as millions heed unions’ call to fight pension cuts
• Disruption across UK as many services come to virtual halt
• Airports, schools, rail services and hospitals affected
• Reform of public sector pensions is at heart of dispute

The UK is experiencing the worst disruption to services in decades as more than 2 million public sector workers stage a nationwide strike, closing schools and bringing councils and hospitals to a virtual standstill.

The strike by more than 30 unions over cuts to public sector pensions started at midnight, leading to the closure of most state schools; cancellation of refuse collections; rail service and tunnel closures; the postponement of thousands of non-emergency hospital operations; and possible delays at airports and ferry terminals.

{ 0 comments }

Anonymous – UC Davis Police Brutality – Strike on Nov. 28, 2011

by E Wayne Ross on November 28, 2011

YouTube Preview Image

{ 0 comments }

Two Scandals, One Connection: The FBI link between Penn State and UC Davis

by E Wayne Ross on November 24, 2011

Two Scandals, One Connection: The FBI link between Penn State and UC Davis
Dave Zirin

Two shocking scandals. Two esteemed universities. Two disgraced university leaders. One stunning connection. Over the last month, we’ve seen Penn State University President Graham Spanier dismissed from his duties and we’ve seen UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi pushed to the brink of resignation. Spanier was jettisoned because of what appears to be a systematic cover-up of assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky’s serial child rape. Katehi has faced calls to resign after the she sent campus police to blast pepper spray in the faces of her peaceably assembled students, an act for which she claims “full responsibility.” The university’s Faculty Association has since voted for her ouster citing a “gross failure of leadership.” The names Spanier and Katehi are now synonymous with the worst abuses of institutional power. But their connection didn’t begin there. In 2010, Spanier chose Katehi to join an elite team of twenty college presidents on what’s called the National Security Higher Education Advisory Board, which “promotes discussion and outreach between research universities and the FBI.”

{ 0 comments }

Prominent Advocate for Adjunct Faculty Clashes Again With Union Leaders

by E Wayne Ross on November 22, 2011

The Chronicle: Prominent Advocate for Adjunct Faculty Clashes Again With Union Leaders

Jack Longmate, a part-time English instructor who drew national attention this year by clashing with the National Education Association and its Olympic College affiliate over their representation of adjunct faculty, is once again at odds with union leaders.

{ 0 comments }

Op-Ed: ‘Sympathy’ For Pepper-Spraying Policeman

by E Wayne Ross on November 21, 2011

NPR’s Talk of the Nation

A video showing an officer methodically spraying pepper spray in the faces of seated protesters has created an uproar. While some say the incident represents a wider problem with the way police confront protesters, Santa Clara University professor (and founding editor of Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor) Marc Bousquet argues that misses the point.

{ 0 comments }

Workplace CFP: Academic Mobbing

by E Wayne Ross on November 21, 2011

Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor

www.workplace-gsc.com

CFP: Academic Mobbing

Special Issue of Workplace 2012
Editors: Stephen Petrina & Wayne Ross

Editors of Workplace are accepting manuscripts for a theme issue on Academic Mobbing. Academic mobbing is defined by the Chronicle of Higher Education (11 June 2009) as: “a form of bullying in which members of a department gang up to isolate or humiliate a colleague.” The Chronicle continues:

If rumors are circulating about the target’s supposed misdeeds, if the target is excluded from meetings or not named to committees, or if people are saying the target needs to be punished formally “to be taught a lesson,” it’s likely that mobbing is under way.

As Joan Friedenberg eloquently notes in The Anatomy of an Academic Mobbing, the toll taken is excessive. Building on a long history of both analysis and neglect in academia, Workplace is interested in a range of scholarship on this practice, including theoretical frameworks, legal analyses, resistance narratives, reports from the trenches, and labor policy reviews. We invite manuscripts that address, among other foci:

  • Effects of academic mobbing
  • History of academic mobbing
  • Sociology and ethnography of the practices of an academic mob
  • Social psychology of the academic mob leader or boss
  • Academic mobbing factions (fact + fiction) or short stories
  • Legal defense for academic mob victims and threats (e.g., Protectable
  • political affiliation, race, religion)
  • Gender norms of an academic mob
  • Neo-McCarthyism and academic mobbing
  • Your story…

Contributions for Workplace should be 4000-6000 words in length and should conform to APA or MLA style.

If interested in co-editing or authoring, please contact Stephen Petrina (Stephen.petrina@ubc.ca) or Wayne Ross (wayne.ross@ubc.ca). This issue will ideally launch in September 2012.

{ 0 comments }

Police club and pepper spray students and professors at the University of California #OccupyCal

by E Wayne Ross on November 20, 2011

Police club and pepper spray students and professors at the University
of California

Nov. 18, 2011: letter from English professor Nathan Brown to Chancellor Katehi:

http://bicyclebarricade.wordpress.com/2011/11/19/open-letter-to-chancellor-linda-p-b-katehi/

Nov. 18, 2011: UC Davis students pepper sprayed:

YouTube Preview Image

Nov. 9, 2011: police club UC Berkeley professors and students:

YouTube Preview Image YouTube Preview Image

Nov. 9, 2011: UC Berkeley students drive out police:

YouTube Preview Image

UC Berkeley professor on her arrest:

http://utotherescue.blogspot.com/2011/11/why-i-got-arrested-with-occupy-cal-and.html

{ 0 comments }

New issue of Critical Education: La Batalla Continua: Latina/o Educators Democratizing Educational Practices

by E Wayne Ross on November 18, 2011

New issue of Critical Education: La Batalla Continua: Latina/o Educators Democratizing Educational Practices

Vol 2, No 12 (2011)
Table of Contents
Articles
La Batalla Continua: Latina/o Educators Democratizing Educational Practices
Marisol O. Ruiz, Luis-Vicente Reyes, Maribel Trujillo, Elizabeth Chavez, Nereida Antunez, Veronica Lugo, Ericka Martinez, Ben Rivera, Gaby Sulzer, Ana Granados, Veronica Lerma

Abstract
This journey analysis shares the counterstories of practicing bilingual Latina/o educators teaching predominately Latino youth. The study is situated in a bi-national (US/Mexico) tri-city (El Paso, Las Cruces, Juarez), and tri-state (Texas, New Mexico, Chihuahua,) context. When teachers of color voice their concerns about oppressive institutional polices and practices, a counter-story is produced. One way to bring Latina/o students’ and their teachers’ counterstories to the center of schooling polices and practices is to create intentional spaces to examine the realities of how these policies and practices are oppressive in nature. These intentional spaces offer self-reliance and solidarity. Solidarity can lead to mobilization, an important aspect of the inherit praxis of this critical intentional space.

Critical Education is an international peer-reviewed journal, which seeks manuscripts that critically examine contemporary education contexts and practices. Critical Education is interested in theoretical and empirical research as well as articles that advance educational practices that challenge the existing state of affairs in society, schools, and informal education.

{ 0 comments }

To Know is Not Enough: Activist Scholarship, Social Change & The Corporate University

by E Wayne Ross on November 10, 2011

The Rouge Forum @ AERA 2012

Free Interactive Conference Open to All

To Know is Not Enough:

Activist Scholarship, Social Change & The Corporate University

 www.RougeForumConference.org

Friday April 13, 2012

University of British Columbia,

Robson Square Campus

HSBC Hall

Vancouver, BC

 

The theme for the 2012 annual meeting of the American Education Research Association is “Non Satis Scire: To Know Is Not Enough.” It is laudable that AERA is promoting “the use of research to improve education and serve the public good” rather than the mere accumulation of research knowledge, but The Rouge Forum is interested in exploring what it means for scholars, and educators in general, to move beyond “knowing” to the pursuit of activist agendas for social change.

  • What happens when teachers and other academics connect reason to power and power to resistance?
  • How can academic work (in universities and other learning environments) support local and global resistance to global neoliberal capitalism?
  • How do we respond to the obstacles and threats faced as activist scholars?

The Rouge Forum @ AERA will bring together world-renowned scholars, teachers, community organizers, and other activists to discuss these questions and others related to activist scholarship, social change, academic freedom, and work in the corporate university as part of a one-day interactive conference at the Robson Square Campus of University of British Columbia in downtown Vancouver.

What is the Rouge Forum?

The Rouge Forum is a group of educators, students, and parents seeking a democratic society. We are both research and action oriented. We want to learn about equality, democracy and social justice as we simultaneously struggle to bring into practice our present understanding of what that is. We seek to build a caring inclusive community that understands that an injury to one is an injury to all. At the same time, our caring community is going to need to deal decisively with an opposition that is sometimes ruthless. RougeForum.com

 

{ 0 comments }

Ohio Voters Reject Law to Curtail Public-College Faculty Bargaining Rights

by E Wayne Ross on November 9, 2011

The Chronicle: Ohio Voters Reject Law to Curtail Public-College Faculty Bargaining Rights

Ohio voters rejected a controversial anti-union measure Tuesday, with a strong majority voting no in a referendum on whether to approve a new state law that would have limited collective-bargaining rights for public employees and severed many public-college professors from the bargaining process.

{ 0 comments }

← Previous Entries