CBC: Dalhousie faculty vote 83% in favour of strikehttp://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/story/2012/02/17/ns-dalhousie-faculty-strike-vote.html
The Dalhousie Faculty Association has voted 83 per cent in favor of a strike.
Anthony Stewart, president of the association said the vote will send a message to Dalhousie University that the faculty is serious about getting a fair deal.
The biggest issue for the faculty association members is protecting their pensions.
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Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes
Protesters swarm streets of Spain against labour law reforms
Hundreds of thousands of people, many waving red and white union flags, protested across Spain on Sunday against sweeping labour market reforms that make it easier to slash pay and lay off workers.
Spain’s two biggest unions, the CCOO and UGT, organised protests in 57 cities against the reforms which Spain’s new conservative government argues are needed to revive the economy and slash a jobless rate of 22.85 percent, the highest in the developed world.
Union officials said 500,000 people hit the streets in Madrid and 400,000 in Barcelona.
In the Spanish capital, protesters marched under sunny skies behind a large banner that read “No to the unfair, inefficient and useless reform”.
Occupy McGill The occupiers explain the circumstances for this action in a communiqué:
“In the summer of 2010, Dr. Morton Mendelson (Deputy Provost, Student Life & Learning who is mandated to represent the interests of students to the administration) shut down the beloved Architecture Cafe, taking away our biggest student-run cafe and giving Aramark – a company that provides food to most US prisons and the US military – a monopoly on food services on campus. Last year, he and the administration forced all clubs and services to remove “McGill” from their name,as if we, the students of this university, have no right to associate with the brand they wish to put forward. Then, this winter, Mendelson announced the administration would ignore and seek to invalidate the overwhelmingly clear results of the CKUT and QPIRG fall referendum question. […]
There is no doubt in our mind that this administration – and Dr. Mendelson in particular – need to understand the consequences of their actions towards students. We are here to hold them accountable. We have undertaken this action in full knowledge of its potential consequences, yet maintain that, given the current context of administrative disregard for student autonomy by the administration and the radical imbalance of power between students and administrators, this action is justified.”
Vancouver Sun: Rights tribunal to hear UBC prof’s racial discrimination complaint
The B.C. Human Rights Tribunal has agreed to hear the case of a University of B.C. professor who claims she was passed over for a research chair position because of her race.
Jennifer Chan, an associate professor in the faculty of education at UBC, filed a complaint alleging that the university and four administrators discriminated against her with respect to the appointment of the David Lam Chair in Multicultural Education in 2009. UBC denies any such discrimination took place and applied to have the complaint dismissed.
In her submission, Chan argues that she was better qualified for the position than the successful applicant and points out that only one member of the selection committee was a visible minority. She also alleges systemic discrimination which she claims is evidenced by being “forgotten” in her tenure and promotion schedule and the fact that visible minorities are almost entirely absent from leadership positions. Chan, who is of Chinese descent and immigrated to Canada from Hong Kong in 2001, was the only visible minority candidate to be shortlisted for the position.
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Posted in Chan Case, Equity, Human Rights
Tagged BC Human Rights Tribunal, Equity, Legal issues, racial discrimination, U of British Columbia, UBC
NUT teaching union unanimously backs a March walkout
The NUT teachers’ union is pushing for a coordinated, national public sector strike in March over pensions. The union’s national executive committee passed a resolution committing the general secretary and deputy general secretary to …
See all stories on this topic »
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Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes
Tagged NUT, Strikes & Labor Disputes, UK
Inside Higher Ed: Faculty Labor Divorce
United University Professions, the union that represents faculty members and other academic employees at 29 campuses of the State University of New York, is dropping its affiliation with the American Association of University Professors.
The Delegate Assembly of the UUP — which has for several years been debating the wisdom of maintaining AAUP ties — voted 100 to 98 on Saturday to disaffiliate from the AAUP. The UUP retains its affiliations with the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association. (The AAUP, best known for its work as a professional association, also acts as a union for collective bargaining at some campuses, and it was in that context that UUP has been affiliated with the AAUP.)
Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/02/06/suny-faculty-union-drops-aaup-affiliation#ixzz1ld6M6BM8
Inside Higher Ed
OCCUPY EDUCATION! Class Conscious Pedagogies and Social Change
The Rouge Forum 2012 will be held at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. The University’s picturesque campus is located 50 minutes northwest of Cincinnati. The conference will be held June 22-24, 2012.
Proposals for papers, panels, performances, workshops, and other multimedia presentations should include title(s) and names and contact information for presenter(s). The deadline for sending proposals is April 15. The Steering Committee will email acceptance notices by May 1.
Read the Call for Proposals.
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Posted in CFPs, Conferences
Tagged #OCCUPY, CFPs, Conferences, Rouge Forum
The Chronicle: Faculty Union Calls on U. at Buffalo to Cut Ties to Chambers of Commerce
Opening a new front in the conflict between college labor unions and conservative advocacy groups, the University at Buffalo’s faculty union has resolved to pressure the institution to sever its ties with state and local chambers of commerce.
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Posted in Unions
Tagged U of Buffalo, Unions
The Cost of Knowledge: Researchers taking a stand against Elsevier
Academics have protested against Elsevier’s business practices for years with little effect. The main objections are these:
Sign the petition here.
New Politics: Teacher Unionism Reborn
By Lois Weiner
In the past five years, we have witnessed a demonization of teachers unions that is close to achieving its goal: destruction of the most stable and potentially powerful defender of mass public education. Teacher unionism’s continued existence is imperiled — if what we define as “existence” is organizations having the legal capacity to bargain over any meaningful economic benefits and defend teachers’ rights to exercise professional judgment about what to teach and how to do it.
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.
Posted in Chan Case, Human Rights, Legal issues
Tagged BC Human Rights Tribunal, Chan v UBC, UBC
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.
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
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Posted in Academic freedom
Tagged Arizona, censorship, curriculum, ethnic studies, K-12 issues
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
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Posted in Academic freedom, Legal issues
Tagged Academic freedom, Legal issues, Palestine, petition
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”
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
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
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”
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”
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Posted in Politics, Publications
Tagged anti-capitalism, capitalism, Cultural Logic, Journals, Publications
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
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Posted in Publications
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.
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Posted in Conferences, Contingent labor, Protests
Tagged #OCCUPY, Contingent labor, MLA, Protests
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
# # #
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Tagged Chicago, Graduate student labor, NLRB, Students, U of Chicago, Unions
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.
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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.
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Posted in Corporate University
Tagged Corporate University, For-profit colleges, Obama
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.
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Posted in Organizing, Students, Unions
Tagged Organizing, Students, U of Michigan, Unions
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.
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Posted in Contingent labor, Unions, Working conditions
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