E Wayne Ross – Page 31 – Critical Theories in Education

WAKE UP, NLRB! CHICAGO GRAD STUDENT EMPLOYEES RALLY

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.

Contacts:

Maddy Elfenbein (madeleine.elfenbein@gmail.com)
646-206-5154
Samuel Brody (sam.brody@gmail.com)
917-748-4146

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

Critical Education: Federal Initiatives and Sex Education: The Impact on Rural United States

Critical Education has just published its latest issue at http://www.criticaleducation.org. We invite you to
examine the Table of Contents here and then visit our web site to read articles and items of interest.

Critical Education
Vol 2, No 13 (2011)
Table of Contents

Articles
——–
Federal Initiatives and Sex Education: The Impact on Rural United States
Jennifer Michelle de Coste

Abstract
Overall, there is much that is yet unknown in rural sex education initiatives. Federal programs connected with NCLB attempt to measure AYP in numerous areas, but sex education is not among them. However, sex education is defined quite narrowly within existing legislation, including AFLA, Title V, and CBAE, as “abstinence-only-until-marriage” and fiscal incentives are given to school districts for following these guidelines. In rural areas, where issues of size, poverty, financial distress, geography, local control, enrollment decline, and rapid ethnic diversification are at the forefront, it should come as no surprise that rural districts often require this money for survival. From there, however, the path becomes less clear in relation to sex education. It is unclear what is being taught and who is doing the teaching. In addition, the narrow definition of abstinence-only-until-marriage ignores sexual agency in students and involves a heteronormative metanarrative that often associates queer with disease. Due to the lack of research in this area, it begs further questions of the field of rural sex education, such as: Who is teaching? What is being taught? Is there a curriculum? How are queer issues handled? How do students and teachers make sense of abstinence-only-until-marriage in a way that is inclusive (or not)?

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Critical Education

Historians Against the War: Links to Recent Articles of Interest

“Is a Nuclear War with China Possible?”
By Lawrence S. Wittner, History News Network, posted November 28
The author is a professor of history emeritus at SUNY Albany

“The Militarization of American Police Has Long Historical Roots”
By Jeremy Kuzmarov, History News Network, posted November 28
The author teaches history at the University of Tulsa

“Wes Clark and the Neocon Dream”
By Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com, posted November 26

“NYPD Raid on Occupy’s Zuccotti Park Destroyed Thousands of Books”
By Gianna Palmer, McClatchy Newspapers, posted November 23

“Violence Goes to College”
By Vijay Prashad, CounterPunch.org, posted November 22
The author teaches history at Trinity College

“Seymour Hersh: Propaganda Used Ahead of the Iraq War Is Now Being Reused over Iran’s Nuke Program”
Interview with Seymour Hersh on Democracy Now, posted on Alternet.org November 22

“Occupy Wall Street”
By Jeffrey Kerr-Ritchie, Strategic Culture Foundation, posted November 17
The author teaches history at Howard University

“Who Said Gaddafi Had to Go?”
By Hugh Roberts, London Review of Books, November 17 issue

“Big Change Whether We Like It or Not: Only Washington Is Clueless”
By Andrew Bacevich, TomDispatch.com, posted November 13
The author teaches history and international relations at Boston University

“Protest Planet: How a Neoliberal Shell Game Created an Age of Activism”
By Juan Cole, TomDispatch.com, posted November 10
The author teaches history at the University of Michigan

“Why the US Recognized Israel” (full version of article previously cited)
By Irene Gendzier, Israeli Occupation Archive, posted November 9
The author teaches history at Boston University

“China and the US: The Roadmaps”
By Pepe Escobar, Aljazeera, posted October 31

Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor: CFP—Academic Mobbing

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.