Newsday: C.W. Post faculty union rallies over cuts
The faculty union president at the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University suggested Tuesday that financial mismanagement has led to cuts in student services and educational offerings – allegations strongly denied by the campus provost – and layoffs among support staff, which the provost called minimal.
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Posted in Budgets & Funding
Tagged Budgets & Funding, C. W. Post, Protests
Labor Notes: Tired of Teacher-Bashing, Union Educators Grow Their Own Schools
Attacked daily as the biggest roadblock to improving public education, union teachers have their work cut out for them, both in the classroom and in the court of public opinion.
Three grades of the Boston Teachers Union School opened up two months ago. The young school, which will expand to K-8 by 2012, is part of the city’s controversial pilot school program dating from 1994.
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Posted in Unions
Tagged K-12 issues, Unions
Peterborough Examiner: FACULTY REACH NEW DEAL
The Trent University board of governors ratified a three-year contract between the university and its faculty association yesterday.
Trent faculty salary increases will continue to be calculated on an annual basis using a formula to ensure parity with comparator universities across Ontario, the university states.
Other significant changes include an increase in employee and employer pension contributions, adjustments to the compensation formula and revisions to language governing faculty personnel decisions.
The Trent University Faculty Association represents more than 300 faculty and professional librarians at the university.
Examiner: Trent University Faculty Association and Trent University Agreement Ratified
Peterbourough – On Friday Trent University’s Board of Governors ratified the three year settlement reached between the University and the Faculty Association on October 23, 2009. The Association previously ratified the tentative settlement on November 9, 2009. The new three year agreement is retroactive to July 1, 2009.
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Posted in Campaigns & Contracts
The Record: College professors want ‘academic freedom’
WATERLOO REGION — Conestoga College isn’t what it used to be.
The college now grants degrees as well as diplomas. The people who teach there call themselves professors. Some of them even take sabbaticals to do research, just as university professors do.
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Posted in Academic freedom
Tagged Academic freedom, Ontario
Flathead Beacon: About 1,200 UM Employees Face 2-year Pay Freeze
BOZEMAN – The Montana Board of Regents has approved union contracts that freeze the wages of about 1,200 University of Montana employees for two years
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Posted in Salary/Economic Benefits
Central Michigan Life: Non-tenured CMU faculty looking to unionize
The Michigan Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers Michigan are seeking to organize with Central Michigan University’s non-tenured faculty.
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Posted in Organizing
Tagged Central Michigan U, Organizing, Unions
The Daily Camera: Humans vs. Zombies on at CU-Boulder, minus Nerf guns
The University of Colorado’s version of the national campus craze, Humans vs. Zombies, is happening in full force, but without a main prop of the game — Nerf guns.
“The use of simulated weapons on campus violates regent policy,” said Molly Bosley, a spokeswoman for the CU Police Department. “Given the climate of what has happened in this country lately, we are taking precautions by banning the use of these simulated weapons on campus.”
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Posted in Campus Life, Violence
The Denver Post: CSU students, staff split as board moves toward concealed weapons ban
Colorado State University’s past refusal to go along with a national trend and ban concealed weapons on campus makes sense to students, but not necessarily to adults on campus.
That split is now front and center. The CSU Board of Governors on Friday voted 9-0 to implement a policy that will likely lead to a ban on concealed weapons on the university’s campuses.
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Posted in Campus Life, Working conditions
Press & Sun-Bulletin: Binghamton University killing: 46-year-old grad student charged in professor’s death
Less than 30 minutes before he allegedly stabbed Binghamton University professor Richard Antoun to death on Friday, Abdulsalam Al-Zahrani approached professor Joshua Price to complain of financial troubles and inquire about transferring into the doctoral program that Price directs.
Al-Zahrani, a 46-year-old post-graduate student in the anthropology department, had met with Price once or twice before, Price said, the first time on the afternoon of Nov. 10.
The New York Times: Binghamton Student Says He Warned Officials
VESTAL, N.Y. — In this small upstate college town, there were many who tried to comprehend how a popular 77-year-old professor who championed antiwar philosophies would have come to such a violent end: stabbed to death in his office on Friday, by, the police said, a graduate student whom he knew.
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Posted in Crime
Tagged crime, Faculty, graduate students, stabbing, SUNY Binghamton
The Guardian: Greek riots continue into second day
More clashes during Athens demonstration over fatal police shooting last year of teenager Alexis Grigoropoulos
Protesters smashed store windows and threw rocks and firebombs at riot police who responded with teargas today, the second day of violence during commemorations for a teenager shot dead by police a year ago.
The killing of 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos led to two weeks of rioting in Greece last year, with gangs of youths smashing, looting and burning shops across the country in protest at heavy-handed police tactics.
Today’s clashes broke out during a demonstration by about 3,000 people, mostly secondary school pupils, through the centre of Athens. Several dozen youths towards the back of the march attacked riot police with rocks, firebombs and firecrackers, smashing some of the bus stops, telephone booths and shopfronts not damaged in yesterday’s demonstration.
CNN: Protesters riot in Athens on police shooting anniversary—University dean injured
Athens, Greece (CNN) — The anniversary of a fatal police shooting triggered a new riot in Greece’s capital Sunday, with protesters occupying a university building and throwing rocks and burning garbage at police.
Riot police with gas masks and shields faced off against about 200 demonstrators, some of whom attacked and injured the dean of the University of Athens following a protest march Sunday afternoon, authorities said. The protesters were holed up inside and around the school’s administration building.
Police are barred from entering the downtown campus. Demonstrators broke up masonry from the courtyard of the 19th-century building and hurled chunks of the stone at police, who responded with stun grenades and tear gas and imposed a blockade of the building.
The university’s dean, Christos Kittas, was in intensive care after being attacked, and 16 police officers were injured, Greek authorities said.
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Posted in Uncategorized
The New York Times: Iranian Student Protesters Clash With Police
Thousands of student protesters gathered at universities in Tehran and other cities across Iran on Monday, chanting antigovernment slogans and fighting with security forces in what appeared to be the most violent street protests since the summer.
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Posted in Protests
The New York Times: Court Bars New York’s Takeover Of Land for Columbia Campus
A New York appeals court ruled Thursday that the state could not use eminent domain on behalf of Columbia University to obtain parts of a 17-acre site in Upper Manhattan, dealing a setback to plans for a $6.3 billion satellite campus at a time of intense fighting over government power to acquire property.
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Posted in Legal issues
Tagged Columbia U, eminent domain, Government, Legal issues
Inside Higher Ed: Protecting a Punished Professor
When most of Saint Vincent College’s tenured faculty members voted last year to criticize President James Towey’s management of the Benedictine college, most professors were so nervous about retribution that few were willing to discuss their concerns in public. The Rev. Mark Gruber was an exception, and he may be paying a price for that outspokenness now.
The Benedictine monk and professor of anthropology has been stripped of his teaching duties and barred from the college and from all interaction with students, punished amid accusations of sexual misconduct that were initiated last summer by Towey and the archabbot at the affiliated Saint Vincent Seminary. Towey and Archabbot Douglas R. Nowicki called state police to Saint Vincent last summer to investigate charges that Father Mark had downloaded child pornography onto a campus computer — allegations that the police deemed to be unfounded, because they found no images on the computer of men under the age of 18, and because the computer was in a common area and many people had access to it.
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Posted in Faculty
Tagged administrative retribution, misconduct
Inside Higher Ed: The Uninsured Adjunct
While the national debate on health care continues, some adjuncts are trying to draw attention to their status among the well-educated professionals who get little or no insurance from their employers — and who many times go without any coverage.
Adjuncts at Massachusetts community colleges sued the state last week, charging that they were entitled to coverage through state plans, and that they are unfairly classified as consultants rather than employees. Whether adjuncts in public higher education have coverage depends largely on how states define employees and employee status. As the Massachusetts ruling illustrates, adjuncts who teach multiple courses — semester after semester, at the same institutions — can still be denied coverage by their colleges.
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Posted in Contingent labor
Tagged adjuncts, benefits, Contingent labor, health care
The New York Times: Iranian-American Faces New Spying Charge
TORONTO — An Iranian-American scholar, Kian Tajbakhsh, already serving a 15-year prison sentence for spying, is facing a new charge of spying, a family member said Wednesday.
Mr. Tajbakhsh told his wife during a visit at Evin prison in Tehran that he was taken before the Revolutionary Court on Monday, where a judge read new charges against him of “spying for the George Soros foundation,” a reference to the Open Society Institute, a pro-democracy group founded by Mr. Soros, a prominent financier and philanthropist. The accusation was brought by the intelligence section of the Revolutionary Guards, said the family member, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of complicating the case.
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Posted in Faculty
Tagged espionage, Iran, Legal issues
Comments Off on As UC Berkeley Investigates Police Brutality Against Students Protesting Fee Hikes, a Report From Inside the Takeover of Wheeler Hall
Posted in Protests
Tagged building occupations, Protests, Solidarity, Strikes & Labor Disputes, U of California, UC Berkeley
The Chronicle: The Rise of the No-Show
At a conference I recently attended, a sizeable wave of paper presenters failed to attend. The papers were submitted back in February, but travel funds had since vanished and, in some cases, wages had been cut and the presenters could not afford to pay for the airfare/hotel out of their pockets. In the past, a no-show was the kiss of death toward future presentations, but I had the definite sense that most of the attendees felt genuine empathy toward the folks who were unable to attend.
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Posted in Budgets & Funding
Tagged Academics, Budgets & Funding, Conferences, hiring, Research
The Chronicle: After Media Success, U. of California Protesters Look Ahead
Even in this deficit-riddled state, the sheer size of the University of California’s tuition increase last week was enough to spark a collective wave of anger and disbelief among many students, escalating protests that have been simmering throughout the system for months.
Protesters occupied buildings on four campuses to protest the higher tuition, drawing large crowds and causing hundreds of classes to be canceled. At Berkeley, a group of 40 students and their supporters barricaded themselves inside a major academic building for 11 hours, and top university officials were sent into the building as crack negotiators to end the standoff.
The Chronicle: Canada Needs National Standard for Its Universities and Colleges, Says Report
Canada needs to develop national standards to measure the quality of its higher-education system, according to the Canadian Council on Learning. In a report released today, the nonprofit organization points out that Canadians appreciate their public system but find it almost impossible to judge the quality of various institutions, partly because of jurisdictional differences. Education is a provincial responsibility in Canada, and colleges and universities can have different purposes, customs, and operations, depending on the province. The report says Canada would be likely to attract more foreign students if it had a set of national standards that indicated quality assurance. Noting that other countries have developed such standards, Paul Cappon, the council’s president and chief executive, said, “We have to do the same.”
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Posted in Accountability
Tagged Accountability, Canada, national standards
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The AAUP: A View From the Top
The Chronicle: The AAUP: A View From the Top
By Cary Nelson
In 2006 the U.S. Supreme Court decided in Garcetti et al. v. Ceballos that public employees’ statements about official responsibilities and administrative policy are not shielded from disciplinary action by employers. District courts have since begun applying that decision to faculty members, hence putting faculty participation in college and university governance at great risk. In November the American Association of University Professors launched its campaign to alert faculty members and administrators to the growing danger that those federal-court decisions are undermining First Amendment protections for public-university faculty members speaking out about campus governance. Our staff members designed a striking campaign logo, set up talking points on our Web site, and added video interviews with AAUP personnel and leaders. The organization had never done anything comparable before. Of course we also distributed the detailed scholarly report by the AAUP’s Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure (Committee A). But translating that report into an agenda for local campuses required rethinking how we present ourselves.
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Posted in Commentary, Unions