Tag Archives: Workplace Journal

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.

CFP: Tensions at Work for Tenured & Tenure Stream Faculty in the Neoliberal Academy (Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor)

Call for Papers:
In/stability, In/security & In/visibility:
Tensions at Work for Tenured & Tenure Stream Faculty in the Neoliberal Academy

Special Issue of Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor 2011
Guest Editors: Kaela Jubas & Colleen Kawalilak

For this special issue of Workplace, we invite submissions from individuals working in tenured or tenure stream positions. The question at the core is how neoliberalism is apparent, experienced, and felt in the context of that work. For senior faculty, how has the scope and practice of work evolved, to what effect, and to what detriment? For junior faculty, how are aspirations and expectations for academic work being (un)met? For faculty at the intermediate stage of their academic careers, how is work being seen and practiced differently? For all faculty members, how are changes at work relating to life and identity more broadly? Empirical research, analysis of policy, programmatic and curricular changes, personal reflections, and critical and exploratory essays on points of tensions within this shifting landscape will be featured.

The social, cultural, and individual repercussions of neoliberal policies and practices have been well explored and documented. In this journal alone, recent volumes have focused on the shift from tenure stream faculty to contingent and part-time faculty, the creep of commercial and philanthropic bodies into so-called public education, and the turn away from individual and social development toward commercial viability to legitimate teaching and scholarship. Less frequently explored is how neoliberalism is affecting members of the academy who, until recently, have had the benefits of stability, security, and voice – faculty members in tenured or tenure stream positions. Although these academics continue to enjoy relative privilege in the neoliberal academy and in society-at-large, they too share in experiencing the drawbacks of neoliberalism in their work and personal lives. Expectations that staff will “do more with less,” forego salary increases that keep pace with inflation, secure outside funding for research, and adopt a hyper-competitive mindset, all while exposing themselves to new forms of surveillance to check compliance, are as present in the academy as they are in any other workplace.

Abstracts can be forwarded by e-mail in Word or similar format to Kaela Jubas (kjubas@ucalgary.ca), and are due by January 15, 2012. Authors will be notified about their submissions by February 15, 2012. Full articles should be 4000-6000 words in length and conform to APA 6^th edition, and will be due by May 15, 2012.

Update to issue 17 of Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor

The current issue of Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor has been updated with two new field reports.

Issue No. 17 of Workplace “Working In, and Against, the Neo-Liberal State: Global Perspectives on K-12 Teacher Unions” is guest edited by Howard Stevenson of Lincoln University (UK).

The new field reports include:

The NEA Representative Assembly of 2010: A Longer View of Crisis and Consciousness
Rich Gibson

Abstract
Following the 2009 National Education Association (NEA) Representative Assembly (RA) in San Diego, new NEA president Dennis Van Roekel was hugging Arne Duncan, fawning over new President Obama, and hustling the slogan, “Hope Starts Here!” At the very close of the 2009 RA, delegates were treated to a video of themselves chanting, “Hope starts Here!” and “Hope Starts with Obama and Duncan!” The NEA poured untold millions of dollars, and hundreds of thousands of volunteer hours, into the Obama campaign. In 2009, Van Roekel promised to tighten NEA-Obama ties, despite the President’s educational policies and investment in war. What happened in the year’s interim? What was the social context of the 2010 RA?

Resisting the Common-nonsense of Neoliberalism: A Report from British Columbia
E. Wayne Ross

Abstract
Faced with a $16 million budget shortfall, the Vancouver school trustees, who have a mandate to meet the needs of their students, have lobbied for more provincial funding to avoid draconian service cuts. The government has refused the request, and its special advisor to the Vancouver School Board criticizes trustees for engaging in “advocacy” rather than making “cost containment” first priority. The clash between Vancouver trustees and the ministry of education is not “just politics.” Rather, education policy in BC reflects the key features of neoliberal globalization, not the least of which is the principle that more and more of our collective wealth is devoted to maximizing private profits rather than serving public needs. British Columbia is home to one of the most politically successful neoliberal governments in the world, but fortunately it is also a place to look for models of mass resistance to the neoliberal agenda. One of the most important examples of resistance to the common-nonsense of neoliberalism in the past decade is the British Columbia teachers’ 2005 strike, which united student, parent, and educator interests in resisting the neoliberal onslaught on education in the public interest.

Rouge Forum Update: Educate Organize Occupy Oct 7th!

Activist Alert on the FBI Raids: The homes of five Twin Cities activists, including three prominent leaders of the Twin Cities antiwar movement, were raided Friday by the FBI in what an agency spokesman described as an “investigation into activities concerning the material support of terrorism.” The office of an antiwar organization also was reportedly raided.

What to Do if a Cop Knocks (don’t talk, demand a lawyer). Details here:

What is Fascism?

Little Red Schoolhouse

Merit Pay Surge in DC (Rhee or No Rhee): Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee announced earlier this year that she had lined up $31.5 million in private foundation support to help pay for the performance bonuses and base pay increases. Officials said Friday that they expected to spend $6 million on the bonuses in the first year. By fiscal year 2013, D.C.’s government will shoulder the burden….Then there’s teaching in grades four through eight: Students in those grades take the standardized exams in math and reading, and improved scores can earn teachers as much as $10,000 more.

School systems across the country have adopted performance-based bonuses in the past few years, but Washington’s bonuses are among the biggest. Teachers in Prince George’s County can receive as much as $10,000 in annual performance bonuses. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has encouraged school systems and states to adopt performance pay, and he made them a factor in decisions for Race to the Top, a $4 billion competitive grant program.

Will Reason Alone Overcome Merit Pay? Offering teachers incentives of up to $15,000 to improve student test scores produced no discernible difference in academic performance, according to a study released Tuesday, a result likely to reshape the debate about merit pay programs sprouting in D.C. schools and many others nationwide.

PBS On Merit Pay (and BankofAmericaisYourFriendfriendbankfriend):

The Rich Get Richer: The Cranbrook Kingswood class of 2010 has reported awards totaling nearly $6,800,000 in academic scholarships from colleges and universities – one of the largest amounts in Cranbrook Schools’ history. Based on previous years’ trends, additional scholarships are expected to be reported throughout the month of June. Over the past three years, graduating classes have averaged nearly $6.4 million in scholarships.

New Issue of Workplace on Academic Labor Around the World: “Global Perspectives on k12 Unions”:

Plus an Important Review by Steve Strauss: “Dave Hill’s foreword sets the tone, and there is no let-up in the chapters that follow. He initiates the book’s relentless attack on neoliberal education policy. One cannot be any blunter than to charge the criminal with mass murder. “Neoliberal globalizing capital condemns millions … to death” (xv), writes Hill. For the masses still alive, the outlook remains grim since neoliberalism “can cope with, co-exist with, extreme poverty and the existence of billions of humans at the margins of existence” (xv). Neoliberalism, as Hill notes, is “unfettered capitalism.”

Read the full RF Update here.

Workplace No 17 (2010): Working In, and Against, the Neo-Liberal State: Global Perspectives on K-12 Teacher Unions

Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor No 17 (2010):
Working In, and Against, the Neo-Liberal State: Global Perspectives on K-12 Teacher Unions

Table of Contents
http://m1.cust.educ.ubc.ca/journal/index.php/workplace/issue/view/8

Articles
——–
Working In, and Against, the Neo-Liberal State: Global Perspectives on K-12 Teacher Unions: Special Issue Introduction
Howard Stevenson

Terminating the Teaching Profession: Neoliberal Reform, Resistance and the Assault on Teachers in Chile
Jill Pinkney Pastrana

Social Justice Teacher Unionism in a Canadian Context: Linking Local and Global efforts
Cindy Rottmann

Australian Education Unionism in the Age of Neoliberalism: Education as a Public Good, Not a Private Benefit
Jeff Garsed, John Williamson

“What’s Best for Kids” vs. Teacher Unions: How Teach For America Blames Teacher Unions for the Problems of Urban Schools
Heidi Katherine Pitzer

Gramsci, Embryonic Organic Intellectuals, and Scottish Teacher Learning Representatives: Alternatives to Neoliberal Approaches to Professional Development in the K-12 Sector
Alex Alexandrou

Pedagogy of Liminality? The Case of Turkish Teachers’ Union Egitim-Sen
Duygun Gokturk

Book Reviews
——–
Review of Industrial Relations in Education: Transforming the School Workforce
Merryn Hutchings

A Portrait of Authenticity: A Review of Carl Mirra’s (2010) The AdmirableRadical: Staughton Lynd and Cold War Dissent, 1945-1970. Kent, OH: Kent University Press
Adam Renner

Review of Union Learning Representatives: Challenges and Opportunities
Becky Wright

Review of How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low-Wage Nation
Marisa Huerta

Review of Academic Repression: Reflections from the Academic-Industrial Complex
Leah Schweitzer

The Sociopathology of Everyday Business: A Review of The University Against Itself: The NYU Strike and the Future of the Academic Workplace
Jim Rovira

Review of The Rich World and the Impoverishment of Education: Diminishing Democracy, Equity and Workers’ Rights
Paul Orlowski

Technology and (Human) Rights: A Review of Human Rights in the Global Information Society
Stephen Petrina

Review of The Developing World and State Education: Neoliberal Depredation and Egalitarian Alternatives
Steven L. Strauss

Miscellany
——–
Connecting Teacher Unions and Teacher Union Research
AERA Teachers’ Work/Teacher Unions SIG

Workplace #16 Academic Knowledge, Labor, and Neoliberalism

The Editors of Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor are pleased to announce the release of Workplace #16—”Academic Knowledge, Labor, and Neoliberalism.”

Check it out at: http://www.workplace-gsc.com

Table of Contents

Articles
Knowledge Production and the Superexploitation of Contingent Academic Labor
Bruno Gulli

The Education Agenda is a War Agenda: Connecting Reason to Power and Power to Resistance
Rich Gibson, E. Wayne Ross

The Rise of Venture Philanthropy and the Ongoing Neoliberal Assault on Public Education: The Eli and Edith Broad Foundation
Kenneth Saltman

Feature Articles
Theses on College and University Administration: A Critical Perspective
John F. Welsh

The Status Degradation Ceremony: The Phenomenology of Social Control in Higher Education
John F. Welsh

Book Reviews
Review of The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities
Desi Bradley

Authentic Bona fide Democrats Must Go Beyond Liberalism, Capitalism, and Imperialism: A Review of Dewey’s Dream: Universities and Democracies in an Age of Education Reform
Richard A. Brosio

Review of Capitalizing on Disaster: Taking and Breaking Public Schools
Prentice Chandler

Review of Pedagogy and Praxis in the Age of Empire: Towards a New Humanism
Abraham P. Deleon

Review of Cary Nelson and the Struggle for the University: Poetry, Politics, and the Profession
Leah Schweitzer

Review of Rhetoric and Resistance in the Corporate Academy
Lisa Tremain

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New home, new outlook, new publishing system for Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor

Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor

The Editorial Team of Workplace is proud to announce the journal’s new home, new outlook, and new publishing system!

We encourage you to browse the Workplace open journal system, submit a manuscript, or volunteer to review http://m1.cust.educ.ubc.ca/journal/index.php/workplace/index. We also welcome proposals for Special Issues; if you have an idea or have assembled a group of scholars writing on higher education workplace activism and issues of academic labor, send us a proposal.

Current preprints include:

John Welsh‘s “Theses on College and University Administration” and “The Status Degradation Ceremony.” As a whole, both feature articles challenge scholars to rethink the administration of higher education and how we frame research into this process http://m1.cust.educ.ubc.ca/journal/index.php/workplace/issue/current.

“The Education Agenda is a War Agenda: Connecting Reason to Power and Power to Resistance” by Rich Gibson & E. Wayne Ross

Reviews by Richard Brosio and Prentice Chandler

Thank you and please forward this invitation to colleagues and networks.
—
Stephen Petrina & E. Wayne Ross, Co-Editors

Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor
Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy
University of British Columbia
http://m1.cust.educ.ubc.ca/journal/index.php/workplace/index

Call for Papers: Working In, and Against, the Neo-Liberal State: Global Perspectives on K-12 Teacher Unions

Call for Papers
Special Issue for Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor

Working In, and Against, the Neo-Liberal State: Global Perspectives on K-12 Teacher Unions

The neo-liberal restructuring of national education systems is a global phenomenon and represents a major threat to the possibility of a democratic, public education committed to meeting the needs of working class and oppressed groups. Teacher unions, across the world, despite all the attacks on them, represent perhaps the most formidable obstacle to neo-liberal restructuring. Teachers remain highly unionized and although they have suffered many setbacks in recent years, their collective organizations generally remain robust.

Despite the significance and importance of teacher unions they remain largely under-researched. Mainstream academic literature on school sector education policy often ignores teacher unions, even in cases where scholars are critical of the market orientation of neo-liberal reforms. Two recent exceptions to this tradition are the contributions of Compton and Weiner (2008) and Stevenson et al (2007). The strength of Compton and Weiner’s excellent volume is the breadth of international perspectives. However, individual chapters are largely short ‘vignettes’, and the aim is to offer fairly brief and readable accounts, rather than detailed and scholarly analysis. Stevenson et al offer a series of traditional scholarly articles, although the emphasis is largely on the Anglophone nations (UK, North America, Australasia), and the collection fails to capture the full breadth required of an international perspective. In both cases, and quite understandably, these contributions were not able to take account of the seismic developments in the world capitalist economy since Autumn 08 in particular. These developments have significant implications for the future of neo-liberalism, for the development of education policy in nation states and for the policies and practices of teacher unions. There is now a strong case for an analysis of teacher unionism that is detailed, scholarly, international and able to take account of current developments.

This special section of Workplace will focus on the ways in which teacher unions in the K-12 sector are challenging the neo-liberal restructuring of school education systems in a range of global contexts. Neo-liberalism’s reach is global. Its impact on the restructuring of public education systems shares many common characteristics wherever it manifests itself. That said, it also plays out differently in different national and local contexts. This collection of papers will seek to assess how teacher unions are challenging the trajectory of neo-liberal reform in a number of different national contexts. By drawing on contributors from all the major world continents it will seek to highlight the points of contact and departure in the apparently different ways in which teacher unions interface with the neo-liberal agenda. It will also ensure that analyses seek to reflect recent developments in the global capitalist economy, and the extent to which this represents threat or opportunity for organized teacher movements.

Compton, M. and Weiner, L. (2008) The Global Assault on Teachers, Teaching and their Unions, London: Palgrave.

Stevenson, H. et al (2007) Changes in Teachers’ Work and the Challengs Facing Teacher Unions. International Electronic Journal of Leadership for Learning. Volume 11.

Submissions
Contributions to Workplace should be 4000-6000 words in length and should conform to MLA style. If you are interested, please submit an abstract via Word attachment to Howard Stevenson (hstevenson@lincoln.ac.uk) by 31st July 2009. Completed articles will be due via email on 28th December 2009. All papers will be blind peer-reviewed.

CFP: Academic Labor and Law

CFP: Academic Labor and Law
Special Section of Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor

Guest Editor: Jennifer Wingard, University of Houston

The historical connections between legislation, the courts, and the academy have been complex and multi-layered. This has been evident from early federal economic policies, such as the Morell Act and the GI Bill, through national and state legislation that protected student and faculty rights, such as the First Amendment and affirmative action clauses. These connections continue into our current moment of state and national efforts to define the work of the university, such as The Academic Bill of Rights and court cases regarding distance learning. The question, then, becomes whether and to what extent the impact of legislation and litigation reveals or masks the shifting mission of the academy. Have these shifts been primarily economic, with scarcities of funding leading many to want to legislate what is considered a university education, how it should be financed, and who should benefit from it? Are the shifts primarily ideological, with political interests working to change access, funding, and the intellectual project of higher education? Or are the shifts a combination of both political and economic influences? One thing does become clear from these discussions: at their core, the legal battles surrounding higher education are about the changing nature of the university –the use of managerial/corporate language; the desire to professionalize students rather than liberally educate them; the need to create transparent structures of evaluation for both students and faculty; and the attempt to define the types of knowledge produced and disseminated in the classroom. These are changes for which faculty, students, administrators, as well as citizens who feel they have a stake in higher education, seek legal redress. This special section of Workplace aims to explore the ways in which legislation and court cases impact the work of students, professors, contingent faculty, and graduate students in the university. Potential topics include but are not limited to:

Academic Freedom for students and/or faculty
- Horowitz’s Academic Bill of Rights
- Missouri’s Emily Booker Intellectual Diversity Act
- First Amendment court cases concerning faculty and student’s rights to freely express themselves in the classroom and on campuses
- Facebook/Myspace/Blog court cases
- Current legislative and budgetary “attacks” on area studies (i.e. Queer Studies in Georgia, Women’s Studies in Florida)
Affirmative Action
- The implementation of state and university diversity initiatives in the 1970s
- The current repeal of affirmative action law across the country
Benefits, including Health Benefits, Domestic Partner Benefits
- How universities in states with same-sex marriage bans deal with domestic partner benefits
Collective Bargaining
- The recent rulings at NYU and Brown about the status of graduate students as employees
- State anti-unionization measures and how they impact contingent faculty
Copyright/Intellectual Property
- In Distance Learning
- In corporate sponsored science research
- In government sponsored research
Disability Rights and Higher Education
- How the ADA impacts the university
Sexual Harassment and Consensual Relationships
- How diversity laws and sexual harassment policies impact the university
Tenure
- The Bennington Case
- Post 9/11 court cases

Contributions for Workplace should be 4000-6000 words in length and should conform to MLA style. If interested, please send an abstract via word attachment to Jennifer Wingard (jwingard@central.uh.edu) by Friday, May 22, 2009. Completed essays will be due via email by Monday, August 24, 2009.