New issue launch Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor #35 (2024-2025)
Articles in Workplace #35 address a variety of labour issues on campus and beyond, including the first in a series of articles by graduate student participants in the Global Labour Research Centre Symposium at York University.
Find the Workplace #35 here: https://ices.library.ubc.ca/index.php/workplace/index
Posted in Academic freedom, Academic Labor, Contingent labor, Corporate University, Critical University Studies, Diversity, Employment rights, Equity, Ethics, Faculty, Publications, Research, Solidarity, Strikes, Strikes & Labor Disputes
Tagged global labor supply, Global Labour Research Centre Symposium, migration
Four faculty members at South Asian University (New Delhi, India) have been suspended pending investigation for asking the university not to call police inside the campus while student protests were going on and to resolve matters amicably.
Faculty also asked administration to withdraw punishment meted to students because due process of rules and regulations were not followed. Ravi Kumar, one of the suspended professors said, “This is unprecedented in the academic history where four faculty members have been suspended for suggesting measures in a constructive spirit.”
Brief chronology of incidents at South Asian University (SAU), New Delhi
Action requested
The suspension of the faculty members should be revoked as it is a violation of the university rules, regulations and byelaws. The faculty members have been only requesting that the university to resolve matters within university and amicably.
*****
Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachers Association
New Delhi-110067
JNUTA Statement on arbitrary suspension of four faculty at South Asian University
The JNUTA strongly condemns the arbitrary suspension of four faculty by the South Asian University administration. The JNUTA sees this act as unacceptable, unjust, and an attempt to intimidate and spread fear among the teaching community.
The suspension notice issued to the faculty by the SAU administration on 16.06.2023 came after a spate of humiliation of the four faculty members by the Fact Finding Committee that on May 19, 2023, asked them to provide handwritten answers to over a hundred questions sitting in front of the committee members. The faculty raised objections to this process and wrote to the FFC and the SAU administration, but they received no reply. On the contrary, they were served with suspension orders that justified it by accusing the faculty of ‘inciting and leading students and outsiders’, and ‘anti-social acts’, among other things; without following due process of investigation. This illegal and unacceptable suspension notice has directed them not to leave the station without permission, vacate their offices, return their office computers and identity cards, and register their attendance on all working days in the offices of their respective deans.
The JNUTA strongly condemns this unprecedented harassment, coercion, and intimidation of the SAU faculty by the administration. There are several news reports that the University served notices and expelled/suspended/rusticated several students protesting against the reduction of monthly stipends without following the due process. Several faculty in SAU have also raised their concerns regarding the arbitrary actions of the university administration against the students. These notices of expulsion and rustication have put the students under tremendous stress, both mentally and physically.
The suspension order served to four faculty members by the SAU administration is an attempt to intimidate and silence the faculty and the students who raise their voice against the arbitrary and authoritarian actions of the administration. The JNUTA stands in complete solidarity with the faculty of SAU in defending their rights to speak truth to power. It also stands in support of the students of the SAU who have been protesting against the gross act of injustice of the SAU administration. The JNUTA demands that the suspension orders of SAU faculty and rustication/expulsion order of SAU students be immediately revoked and the administration start a dialogue to discuss the demands for an agreeable resolution at the earliest.
Sd/-
D K Lobiyal Avinash Kumar
President, JNUTA Secretary, JNUTA
*****
Janhastakshep: a campaign against fascist designs
Press release
24 June, 2023
Contact: drvikasbajpai@gmail.com; (M): 9717820427
Subject: Suspension of four faculty members at South Asian University, an extension of the continuing attacks on institutions of higher learning.
Janhastakshep unequivocally condemns the suspension of four faculty members – Dr Snehashish Bhattacharya (Faculty of Economics), Dr Srinivas Burra (Faculty of Legal Studies), Dr Irfanullah Farooqi (Department of Sociology) and Dr Ravi Kumar, also of the department of Sociology, at New Delhi’s South Asian University by the university administration and demands unconditional revocation of the suspension orders of all suspended faculty members with immediate effect.
The events leading up to the suspension, the manner of suspension and the subsequent conduct of the ‘Fact Finding Committee’ constituted by the university to conduct a sort of inquiry against the suspended faculty members reek of utterly cavalier attitude calculated to please the powers that be in the political circumstances obtaining in the country as of date.
The present suspension of faculty members is rooted in the events related to the agitation by the university’s students in November last on their legitimate democratic demands impacting on their immediate wellbeing. That agitation was handled with a heavy hand by the university authorities resulting in rustication and expulsion of the students. It led to serious consequences to the health of one student Ammar Ahmad and later to another Phd scholar Apoorva in the Faculty of Legal Studies.
The suspended faculty members were first handed notices on 30 December 2022 on charges such as – writing letters to university community questioning certain administrative decisions in relation to the student protests; instigating students to protest and association with a “Marxist” study circle among other allegations. In levelling these charges against the faculty, those sitting in top administrative positions at the University have exhibited regrettable lack of comprehension of a university’s function, the nature of the learning / teaching process and the responsibilities of the students, teachers and administration at institutions of higher learning towards each other.
No education, let alone new knowledge generation can be transacted if the students are not supported by their teachers and the administration in availing of amenities, including financial support, that facilitate their endeavors in this direction. A teacher and more so the administration shall be failing in their duty if such support and understanding were to be substituted with a ‘coercive disciplinary’ approach which unfortunately has been the dominant trend forced upon all manner of publicly funded institutions of higher learning in the country in last 9 years. It is nothing but a poor parody that the suspended faculty members have been accused of associating / encouraging a ‘Marxist Study Circle’ in a university space that is supposed to lend itself to a free contestation of ideas. This certainly sits at odds with the eulogy of ‘Indian Democracy’ proffered by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Washington D C.
Even as Janhastakshep calls upon the different bodies of academicians and intellectuals at large to support the faculty and students of SAU in this hour of need, we also appeal that this suspension of faculty members should be seen as part of the larger thrust by the Modi led government to further curb the space for ideas which militate for Democratization of society, challenge authoritarianism, uphold economic and social justice. These suspensions are part of the efforts to terrorize and stultify the intelligentsia into submission.
Apart from revoking the suspension of the faculty members and continuing rustication of the students, the bunch of ‘Actors’ (Acting President, Acting Vice-President and Acting Registrar) complicit in ‘over-acting’, who are presently ruling the roost at SAU should be replaced with academics of repute and integrity capable of steering the university towards achieving its cherished goals.
– sd –
(Dr Vikas Bajpai) (Anil Dubey)
Convener Co-convener
Prof JNU Senior journalist
*****
Anger over suspension of faculty following student protests
SAU: Teachers Suspended Allegdly for Demanding Resolution of Student-Admin Deadlock
Suspended SAU professors say order ‘illegal’; ponder moving court
4 SAARC university professors suspended for ‘misconduct’, accused of ‘inciting student protest’
South Asian University Suspends Four Faculty Members for ‘Supporting’ Students’ Agitation
Revoke action on SAU professors: Central Universities Teachers Association
South Asian University suspends four teachers for ‘inciting’ students’ stir
Four SAU faculty members suspended; interceded on students’ behalf, they say
Teacher associations urge South Asian University to revoke suspension of four teachers
4 South Asian University professors suspended, accused of ‘inciting student protest’
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Posted in Academic freedom, Academic Labor, Corporate University, Employment rights, Equity, Ethics, Governance, Protests, Shared governance, Strikes & Labor Disputes, Working conditions
You are invited to submit proposals for a special issue of Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor focusing on Third Space labor in higher education. Despite most colleges and universities’ equity and inclusion commitments, labor in higher education is organized, valued, and supported along a false and exclusionary dichotomy. On one side, the “academic” domain — occupied by faculty — is the site of expertise, critical nuance, and knowledge production. On the other, the “non-academic” domain — occupied by staff — is the site of non-intellectual and largely replaceable managerial activity. This labor binary underpins most aspects of university life, radiating into a culture of exclusion regarding professional support systems, agency in governance structures, labor contracts, and policy environments.
Although this dichotomy pervades almost all college campuses, the nature of academic labor is far more complex (Stoller, 2021). Since the late 1960s and early 1970s, colleges and universities have increasingly depended upon what Whitchurch terms Third Space academic labor (Whitchurch, 2013).
Working through problems of division and exploitation between so-called First and Third Worlds, Bhabha (1990; 2004) introduced the concept of Third Space as a creative, disruptive space of cultural production. Following Bhabha, in social theory Third Space has been used to resolve a range of binaries through the conceptualization of identities that trouble conventional ways of being and behaving. Scholars have used Third Space to examine disability, race, gender, and sexuality, where fluid identities disrupt rigid social categorizations and the cultural hierarchies that inevitably follow. Third Space identities are risky and dangerous because they span and complicate defined cultural categories. They are also spaces of creativity and innovation that open new cultural possibilities (Soja and Hooper, 1993).
Whitchurch uses Third Space to identify a non-binary social class within higher education: emerging groups of professionals who disrupt the false distinction between “academic” and “non-academic.” Third Space professionals work in diverse areas of the institution, such as academic advising, writing programs and centers, quantitative reasoning centers, honors programs, first-year experience and transitions programs, women’s and LGBTQ centers, accessibility resources, and teaching and learning centers among others.
By spanning, interweaving, and disrupting traditional notions of academic labor, Third Space professionals bring tremendous value to their institutions and students. They hold deep academic expertise in teaching and learning, increasing the university’s capacity for immersive and engaged pedagogies (Ho, 2000; Gibbs and Coffey, 2004). They also support the DEI missions of colleges and universities. Almost all Third Space professions developed in response to traditional faculty being unable or unwilling to serve students from marginalized, minoritized, and under-resourced backgrounds (Astin, 1971; Boquet, 1999; Carino, 1996; Groark and McCall, 2018). Because of their organizational positionality and academic expertise, they uniquely understand the student learning experience, and they are positioned to advocate for policy, structural, or curricular changes needed to create more equitable learning environments. Third Space professionals work across departmental lines and can identify and develop opportunities for cross-campus partnerships and interdisciplinary collaborations (Bickford & Whisnant, 2010). They create new forms of scholarship (Eatman, 2012, 2014) and have pluralistic forms of scholarly impact (Arguinis, Shapiro, Antonacopoulou, & Cummings, 2014). They advance multiple university goals, often using scholarly approaches to improve a campus’s understanding of an issue and use their knowledge to develop praxis-based scholarship that shapes national and international change movements (Janke, 2019). Because they have advanced degrees and often teach and conduct research, they also enhance the college’s portfolio and can enrich its curriculum.
Like other non-binary identities, Third Space professionals fall outside normative social categories and therefore face interpersonal, cultural, and structural challenges specific to their work and professional identities. Their work is consistently miscategorized within the academy’s false labor binary, resulting in it being reduced to a “mere” administrative activity (Stefani & Matthew, 2002; Green & Little, 2017), or an “illegitimate” form of scholarship (Rowland et al., 1998; Harland & Staniforth, 2003). Faculty often frame Third Space professional contributions in oppositional (rather than complementary) terms (Handal, 2008). Because they are coded as “non-academic” and not tied to “home” departments, their expertise is rendered invisible in the epistemic economy of the university (Solomon et al., 2006). They rarely have access to institutional support structures for their academic work (e.g., teaching, research, grants, and fellowships), although their contracts often include these activities as part of their professional duties (Bickford and Whisnant, 2010). Third Space professionals are often barred from receiving institutional recognition, such as institutional designations, named professorships, and teaching and research awards, simply because of their class category (Post, Ward, Longo, & Saltmarsh, 2016). Despite their academic expertise and connection to the teaching and research mission of the university, they are systematically excluded from university governance structures (Bessette, 2020a). They also have no clear pathways for professional growth (Kim, 2020; Bessette, 2020b) and yet are often criticized for “abandoning” their institutions for professional gain. Because their labor often performs a “helping” function, it is often coded as “feminine” and devalued as a result (Tipper, 1999; Leit et al., 2007; Bernhagen & Gravett, 2017). Conversely, because traditional academic labor is culturally assumed to be more desired and desirable, Third Space professionals are often coded as “failed” academics (Whitchurch, 2015, p. 86).
This cultural denigration of their labor means they are frequently the subject of bullying and micro- aggressions by traditional faculty, but because faculty enjoy the protections of tenure there is no possibility of accountability for workplace abuses suffered by Third Space professionals (Henderson, 2005; Perry, 2020).
This issue seeks articles that identify and conceptualize problems cutting across the diverse forms of Third Space labor, and articles that propose pathways forward. Questions addressed by articles might include but are not limited to:
For inquiries or to submit proposals, contact Aaron Stoller at astoller@coloradocollege.edu. Prospective contributors should submit a proposal of 1-2 pages plus bibliography and a 1-paragraph author bio to Aaron Stoller astoller@coloradocollege.edu. Final contributions should be between 5,000 – 8,000 words and follow APA style.
Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor is a refereed, open access journal published by the Institute for Critical Education Studies (ICES) and a collective of scholars in critical university studies, or critical higher education, promoting dignity and integrity in academic work. Contributions are aimed at higher education workplace scholar-activism and dialogue on all issues of academic labor.
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Posted in Academic Labor, CFPs, Contingent labor, Corporate University, Critical University Studies, Research, Staff
Tagged CFPs, Third space academic labor, Workplace, Workplace Journal
Responding to a Petition and attached Letter (below) questioning the decision to exclude an extremely competitive African Canadian applicant from the shortlist in the search for a new Dean of Education at UBC, President Ono shut down the search and dissolved the Advisory Committee. The UBC President also indicated that Provost and Committee co-Chair Ananya Mukherjee Reed resigned from the Committee, seemingly in support of the conclusions and questions raised by the Petition and its 150 signatories.
On 9 December 2020, the UBC President wrote to faculty, staff, and students:
Yesterday, I received Prof. Ananya Mukherjee Reed’s resignation as co-chair from the President’s Advisory Committee for the Recruitment of a Dean for the Faculty of Education. This is effective immediately. I met with the PAC Committee yesterday and heard from members regarding the viability of the search moving forward, and they felt that the search could not proceed. After careful consideration and consultation with the Committee, I have decided to end the current search for a new Dean at this time.
Of course, it is extremely rare for a Dean search to be cancelled in response to grass roots efforts. It is certainly a step in the right direction of accountability. A next step is answering the various questions raised about this Advisory Committee: Why did they do what they did? In the midst of Black Lives Matter, why did they exclude a competitive African Canadian applicant?
November 26, 2020
Dear President Ono,
This Letter and attached Petition are in response to the President’s Advisory Committee for the Selection of the next Dean of the Faculty of Education’s decision to exclude Dr. Samson Nashon from its shortlist. I write on behalf of the 150 faculty, students, staff, alumni, emeriti, and community members who signed this Petition to add Dr. Nashon to the shortlist. The Petition identifies flawed procedures underwriting the President’s Advisory Committee’s decision. For example, the Committee excluded African Canadian faculty, staff, and students
The University of British Columbia’s Strategic Plan, Shaping UBC’s Next Century, emphasizes “our intention to be a leader in diversity and equity” (Strategy 1: Great People, p. 41). Leadership in diversity and equity entails fighting against racism at all levels of administration, research, service, and teaching.
The 150 signatories to this Petition expect action to back up the commitments. We hope that you will address our collective concerns, convey them to the President’s Advisory Committee, and consider what can be done to redress the problem and rectify the injustice. This raises a serious procedural question of how a Committee that excluded Dr. Nashon from the shortlist can now fairly include and consider his candidacy?
The Petition with signatories is attached. On behalf of this groundswell of support for Dr. Nashon’s candidacy, thank you very much for addressing our concerns and request.
Respectfully, the [150] signatories of the Petition.
cc. Dr. Andrew Szeri, Provost and Vice-President Academic, UBC Vancouver (Co-chair)
Dr. Ananya Mukherjee Reed, Provost and Vice-President Academic, UBC Okanagan (Co-chair)
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Posted in Academic freedom, Academic Labor, Accountability, Administration, BC Education, Black Lives Matter, Campus Life, Critical University Studies, Diversity, Equity, Ethics, Faculty, Governance, Organizing, Race, Shared governance, Staff, Students, Working conditions
The account and evidence of how, when, where, and why Professor Wylie (Peter) was mobbed by UBC administrators are disturbing. It’s a travesty that he had to endure this mobbing. Faculty are tremendously grateful that he brought the facts out for an airing and hearing.
My Campus Administration, Faculty Association, Senate, and Me: A Case Study in Academic Mobbing
Peter Wylie
Faculty member, University of British Columbia
This in the author’s view is a clear case of academic mobbing. The case fits perfectly with what is argued that almost all scholars who study academic mobbing agree is its primary characteristics; it is initiated by administrators whose malfeasance was questioned or revealed though the expression of academic free speech; the target tend to be tenured professors who publicly speak out about administrative wrongdoing; it involves manipulation or misrepresentation of the facts regarding the victim’s motivations or behavior; the target’s colleagues are either poisoned against him or her, or choose not to support the victim due indifference, or a lack of conviction, and the target is left personally and professionally injured, while the perpetrator(s) goes unpunished (MacDonald et al., 2018, para. 12). To this the author would add that the kangaroo court investigation procedures of the university are merely an extension of the academic mobbing process. (pp. 206-207)
Read More: Wylie, P. (2019). My Campus Administration, Faculty Association, Senate, and Me: A Case Study in Academic Mobbing. In C. M. Crawford (Ed.), Confronting Academic Mobbing in Higher Education: Personal Accounts and Administrative Action (pp. 187-210). Hershey, PA: IGI Global.
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Posted in Academic freedom, Academic Labor, Academics, Accountability, Administration, BC Education, Bullying & Mobbing, Censorship, Corporate University, Corruption, Employment rights, Equity, Ethics, Faculty, Free speech, Governance, Legal issues, Scandals, Unions, Working conditions
Tagged Academic freedom, Free speech, Governance, mismanagement, mobbing, Unions, University presidents, Working conditions
*Apologies to the medievalists again. Customized below is our semi-annual appeal to UBC managers to Lay Down the Mace:
As we count down to and roll through graduation, can we please remove the mace from convocation and governance at the University of British Columbia? The mace had its day in the first 100 years of this esteemed University but that day has gone.
Dalhousie University is currently embroiled in controversy over its mace, decorated as it is to demonstrate racial supremacy (“the rose, thistle, fieur-de-lys, and shamrock, depicting the major racial groups of our country”). Indigenous peoples and advocates have said enough already.
Some traditions just aren’t worth maintaining…
At the Nexo Knights’ Graduation Day,
Jestro grabbed a sword, a mace, and a spear and began to juggle them… The unimpressed crowd started to boo… Sweat broke out on his forehead…. He let go of the mace, and it flew across the arena. The crowd gasped and ducked… Then … bam! It hit the power grid on the arena wall. The area lights flickered, then turned off. Soon the power outage surged throughout the city.
Yes, this really did happen in a Lego story! And in England, Bradford College faculty members called the admin’s decision to spend £24,000 on a new mace for graduation ceremonies a “crass bit of judgement.”
At UBC, things were questionable again this past year. With an opportunity to follow faculty and staff members’ and students’ proposal to divest from fossil fuel investments, in mid February UBC chose to continue to be a part of the problem of climate change instead of the solution. Still heavily invested. And after chalking up a $22m budget surplus, in April & May UBC jumped the line at Wholefoods to draw $7,230 in grocery bag donations. On 24 April an Open Letter signed by 110 faculty members was submitted to the UBC Chancellor Reappointment Committee questioning the process.
The days of the mace in Convocation and governance are of the past and that part of the past is no longer worth reenacting.
It’s difficult to know where this University now stands or what it stands for.
It is time to retire the mace, symbol of aggression, authority, and war. It’s time to march to graduation ceremonies in late May and November with open and empty hands as symbolic of peace and reconciliation of controversies and roles of the President’s Office.
UBC’s mace is a relic but a relic of what? The mace is symbolic speech but what is it saying about us now?
From ancient times, this club, this weapon of assault and offence, the mace was gradually adorned until the late twelfth century when it doubled as a symbol of civil office. Queen Elizabeth I granted her royal mace to Oxford in 1589. From military and civil power derives academic authority. The rest is history and it is not all good.
Dr. Thomas Lemieux, School of Economics, with UBC’s Mace at the May 2015 Convocation.
It is time to retire the macebearer, whose importance is inflated every year by the image’s presence on UBC’s graduation pages leading to Convocation. In pragmatic terms, if the mace falls into the hands of the wrong macebearer or manager at this point, someone’s liable to get clocked with it.
Is UBC’s mace still a respectable appendage to Convocation?
Remember, since that fateful November day in 1997, just five months into Martha Piper’s Presidency, when student activists put their bodies and minds on the line at the APEC protest, Tuum Est adorns both the can of mace sprayed in their eyes and the ceremonial mace that the President’s Office is eager to carry across campus every November and May.
Is it not time to retire the mace?
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Posted in Academic freedom, Academic Labor, Accountability, BC Education, Budgets, Commentary, Critical University Studies, Faculty, Governance, Maces, Shared governance, Students, Working conditions
Tagged Academic freedom, Faculty, Global Warming, Governance, Protests, Students, University presidents, Working conditions
Peter Wylie
Associate Professor, Economics
University of British Columbia
Paper Presented at The 8th International Seminar for Local Public Economics,
University Of Guanajuato, Mexico, Nov 10-11, 2016
This paper analyzes the establishment in 2005 and subsequent evolution of a new university campus in the interior region of British Columbia, Canada, until then under-serviced with regard to university provision and with one of the lowest rates of participation of its population in post-secondary education in the province of British Columbia (BC). The paper considers the founding vision of the campus, situated in the city of Kelowna, represented by the original Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the University of British Columbia (UBC) and the Government of BC in relation to its subsequent evolution to today.
To anticipate the results, we find that almost none of the original vision for the campus has been realized, and it has evolved in a way fundamentally opposed to the Government’s expressed intention. This is largely due to the fact that universities are autonomous institutions in Canada largely free of political influence and hence need only follow their own goals rather than those of the Government and/or electorate. It might also be that the Government’s stated vision was political posturing and it fully intended to leave the evolution of the campus entirely to the University and not hold it to account to the MoU. That the campus was left to UBC, one of the world’s top 40 universities in international ranking, and top 20 public universities, to develop as a second, smaller campus in Kelowna than its much larger main campus in Vancouver, a 4-hour drive away, has had important implications for its subsequent development away from the original expressed goals. The paper discusses issues of academic planning, accountability and oversight in the provision of this local public good by the Government funders/taxpayers.
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Posted in Academic freedom, Academic Labor, Accountability, Administration, BC Education, Budgets & Funding, Critical University Studies, Governance, Government, Politics, Shared governance, Student Movement, Students, Unions, Working conditions
Tagged Academic freedom, Administration, Budgets & Funding, Governance, Government, Students, Unions, Working conditions
E. Wayne Ross provided this gem of information and insight to UBC’s “first” Faculty of Education:
In the recent past, Dean Frank has spoken of the possibility of the UBC Okanagan Faculty of Education being “merged” with or administered by the UBC Vancouver Faculty of Education.
I am not aware of any recent developments or announcements regarding this merger, take-over (or what have you) nor am I aware of any discussions or reports on the implications of such an action.
I am raising the issue because in paper delivered earlier this month Peter Wylie, professor of economics at UBCO, describes the take over as a done deal [p. 31].
I agree with Wayne’s points and it would be nice to know which analogy to adopt: merger, make-over, take-over, left-over, etc.? On the other hand, the information here seems like an easy lob over a net just wanting a return…
UBCO’s Faculty of Education has been innovative from its beginning in 2005. Deputy Vice-Chancellor Deborah Buszard called UBCO a “bold new UBC presence” when it was founded.
UBCO Education is a full Faculty that apparently gets along quite well without any Associate or Assistant Deans. That is bold. Apparently, it has gotten along quite readily for nearly the past three years without a Dean. Or if you will on a technicality, an Acting Dean that covers two Faculties.
Indeed, UBCO’s Faculty of Education has done its part in reducing admin bloat and demonstrated quite readily that faculty members can self-manage and govern. That is bold.
Under these conditions, the faculty members and students managed to rescue their BEd program mid December last year from closure. Or, at least they won a reprieve for a year (i.e., new closure date December 2017) and had to limit the admissions to just over 50%. Still, that is bold.
Hello? For what problem is this transfer a solution?
Hello again? At UBCV we have had no (read “0”) discussion about this. This is *not* bold.
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Posted in Academic freedom, Academic Labor, Accountability, Administration, BC Education, Faculty, Governance, Students, Working conditions
Tagged Academic freedom, Administration, Faculty, Governance, mismanagement, Unions, Working conditions
Special Issue of Workplace
Edited by
Karen Lynn Gregory & Joss Winn
Articles in Workplace have repeatedly called for increased collective organisation in opposition to a disturbing trajectory in the contemporary university… we suggest that there is one response to the transformation of the university that has yet to be adequately explored: A thoroughgoing and reflexive critique of academic labor.
Table of Contents
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Posted in Academic freedom, Academic Labor, Accountability, Adjuncts & Sessionals, Administration, Contingent labor, Critical University Studies, Equity, Ethics, Governance, Institute for Critical Education Studies, Solidarity, Strikes & Labor Disputes, Student Movement, Technology, Unions, Working conditions
Tagged Academic freedom, academic labor, Contingent labor, Governance, Strikes & Labor Disputes, Unions, Working conditions
Administrators in the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia clamped down on academic freedom today by shutting down its shared listserv after 17+ years in what looks like a knee-jerk reaction.
In addition to blaming the clampdown on faculty members for sharing “their own perspective regarding one or more aspects of the work and trajectory of the Faculty,” the reasoning given was Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL), effective 1 July 2014.
The Dean and Associate Dean explained:
In response to changes to the requirements for the organizational use of email at UBC following the implementation of the Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL http://universitycounsel.ubc.ca/files/2014/06/CASL-FAQs-2014-05.pdf) we have made some changes to how we are using Faculty-generated broadcast email lists. These changes only apply to those email lists created and moderated by the Faculty. The major implication of CASL resides in the definition of “consent” to email exchange. Following the implementation of CASL, we need to be attentive to email recipients’ implied or actual consent to receive emails.
While CASL specifically addresses the intent of a “commercial electronic message” (CEM) and spam, UBC administrators have decided to stretch this to all messages and email, warning that email to a colleague, and one might infer student, who has not given “consent” to be a recipient can be grounds for legal or punitive action.
The CAUT’s initial analysis leaves faculty members wanting:
CAUT will monitor the enforcement of the CASL, and will provide members with any relevant updates as these decisions may provide further clarity about what the law means for academic staff associations.
The implications here are scary but more frightening is UBC managers’ inability to distinguish between academic and commercial messages or distinguish between the legalism of spam and academic freedom.
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Posted in Academic freedom, Academic Labor, Accountability, Administration, BC Education, Governance, Legal issues, Solidarity, Students, Unions, Working conditions
Tagged Academic freedom, Administration, Governance, Legal issues, Students, Unions, Working conditions
We are thrilled to launch this Special Issue of Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labour:
Special Issue of Workplace
Edited by
Mark Stern, Amy E. Brown & Khuram Hussain
Thanks for the continued interest in and support of our journals, Critical Education and Workplace, and our ICES and Workplace blogs. And please keep the manuscripts and ideas rolling in!
Sandra Mathison, Stephen Petrina & E. Wayne Ross, co-Directors, Institute for Critical Education Studies
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Posted in Academic Labor, Accountability, Administration, BC Education, Government, Institute for Critical Education Studies, K-12 issues, Media, Organizing, Solidarity, Strikes & Labor Disputes, Students, Unions
Tagged Administration, Budgets & Funding, Government, K-12 issues, Strikes & Labor Disputes, Students, Unions, Working conditions
The Faculty Association of UBC weighed in on the search for a new President. Since the sudden and still unaccounted for resignation of President Gupta, the University has been reduced to speculation after speculation and controversy after controversy. Now, a search committee for a new President is groping in the dark. With no sense of history or what happened, the search committee is wondering what to do next. Enter the FAUBC:
We strongly urge you to pursue the appointment of an external candidate, one not associated with recent controversies…. Sudden presidential transitions in the university context are unusual, and destructive of internal and external confidence in the institution. It is critical to have a new president who is clearly not part of the pre-existing set of circumstances that saw these crises precipitate.
We add, as well, the observation that the Faculty Association has a large number of unresolved grievances involving the central administration and several deans on core issues such as academic freedom, human rights, and collegial governance (e.g. deans’ interference in hiring and in workload assignments). It will be an unfortunate distraction and complication if the new president is someone al ready implicated in any of these matters. We urge you to seize the opportunity to make a fresh start as we begin to move forward.
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Posted in Academic freedom, Academic Labor, Accountability, Administration, BC Education, Equity, Governance, Shared governance, Unions
Tagged Academic freedom, Administration, Equity, Governance, Unions, University presidents, Working conditions
At the University of British Columbia, there are depths, and then there are new depths, in the mistreatment of PT faculty members. In the midst of a teaching term, a faculty member received this directive from UBC’s administration:
Yes, sad as it is, there are new lows in the mistreatment of faculty members.
For an analysis of the new academic work and workplace, see “Threat Convergence.”
Oh yea, almost forgot, happy birthday UBC!
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Posted in Academic freedom, Academic Labor, Academics, Accountability, Adjuncts & Sessionals, Administration, Faculty, Unions, Working conditions
Tagged Academic freedom, adjuncts, Administration, Contingent labor, University presidents, Working conditions
[Cross-posted from Where the Blog has No Name]
University of Louisville president James Ramsey posed for photo in sombrero, poncho at the his 2015 Halloween party
In the late 1990s, Kentucky’s legislature initiated a program to upgrade and reform the state’s postsecondary education system, it was called “Bucks for Brains.” (The state’s promotional tagline at the time was “Open for Business.”)
I was recruited to the University of Louisville in 2001 and spent two-and-a-half years on the faculty there as a department chair and distinguished university scholar, which gave me an up close and personal experience with a university administration that’s, as they say where my family’s from, sigogglin.
John W. Shumaker, a classics scholar, was UofL president when I arrived and he proved to be an incredible fund raiser, increasing the university’s endowment from under $200 million to $550 million.
Of course, the UofL has long been the recipient of corporate largesse, especially from the Louisville’s corporate giants Brown-Forman (one of America’s largest spirits and wine companies); Brown & Williamson (which chemically enhanced the addictiveness of cigarettes, remember whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand? No? Well I’m sure you remember Russell Crowe playing Wigand the blockbuster movie The Insider); Papa John’s Pizza (UofL football Cardinals play in Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium); and Yum! Brands (“feeding the world” crap food via KFC, Pizza Hut, and, of course, Taco Bell, more on the Mexican connection later).
The Brown & Williamson Club at the University of Louisville’s Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium
After Shumaker left to head up the University of Tennessee (where he resigned in disgrace after 3 years), he was replaced by James R. Ramsey, who had been Kentucky’s state budget director under Gov. Paul E. Patton (who became wealthy by exploiting Kentucky’s coal miners).
Patton’s major achievement as governor was overhauling postsecondary education in the Kentucky. But Patton’s political career was de-railed by duelling scandals: (1) an extramarital affair and a sex-for-favors scandal; and (2) pardoning four of his political advisers who were indicted for violating Kentucky’s campaign finance laws and for allegedly abusing his patronage powers.
All of this is just everyday Kentucky politics, so Patton wasn’t distracted enough to forget he had to find a soft-landing for his budget director, thus Ramsey, with no university administration experience, became the 17th president of the University of Louisville.
Since Ramsey has been in office the UofL, in endowment has continued to grow and is now pushing the $1 billion mark, which is really the only logical explanation for why he hasn’t been bounced because Ramsey’s administration has more ethical lapses than Carter has liver pills, pretty much proving that the UofL has more bucks than brains.
Robert Felner: Former Dean, Convicted Felon
Felner arrived in Louisville with some spiffy credentials: PhD in psychology from Yale; former head of the department of psychology at the University of Illinois; a CV packed with pages upon pages listing his publications in top journals and, most importantly for the UofL administration, a staggering number of grants.
Despite several red flags about Felner’s candidacy for dean of UofL’s College of Education and Human Development, Ramsey and his long time provost, Shirley Willihnganz, couldn’t wait to get Felner on campus.
Ramsey was in such as rush to land Felner he and Willihnganz forgot to tell the interim dean (and other finalist for the position) they hired Felner, so he was left to discover the decision when Felner call his secretary and started giving her instructions. So much for that HR seminar!
Things in CEHD soon started to fall apart.
I resigned from my department chair position two weeks after Felner took over as dean and later moved to UBC.
Within a few years, there had been 30 grievances filed by faculty and students against Felner for a wide range of abusive managerial practices and a faculty vote of no-confidence in Felner’s leadership of the CEHD. Reasons given by faculty for the vote of non-confidence included:
Public humiliation of faculty, work place harassment, retaliation for voicing opinions, little or no governance, decisions that hurt College, unacceptable and unfair hiring practice; rude, offensive, unethical behavior by CEHD representatives; denial of support for research to those who differ in opinion; and extreme inequity of pay. (See CEHD meeting notes published here.)
Despite the abominable conditions in CEHD, UofL Provost Willihnganz and Ramsey both supported Felner publicly.
One year after the vote of no-confidence, Felner announced he was leaving the UofL to become president of the University of Wisconsin, Parkside.
The Chronicle of Higher Education described Felner as “riding high” a couple of years into his deanship at UofL, well-paid, and having secured a $700,000 grant from the US Department of Education. However, he “pressed his luck” during his last weeks in Louisville.
Even though only $96,000 remained in the account, he implored Louisville officials to approve a $200,000 subcontract with a nonprofit organization in Illinois that had already received $450,000 from the grant. Perhaps, he suggested, the university could draw on a special fund that had been established by the daughter of a former trustee.
The Illinois group, Mr. Felner said, had been surveying students and teachers in Kentucky. That survey would “let us give the feds something that should make them very happy about the efficiency and joint commitment of the university to doing a good job with an earmark, as I know we will want more from this agency,” he wrote in an e-mail message on June 18.
But on June 20, his last day as Dean of CEHD before he headed off to Wisconsin, those big black SUVs with government plates (like the ones you see on Criminal Minds) rolled into the CEHD parking lot. US Secret Service, US Postal Inspectors, and UofL Police questioned Felner and escorted him off campus, along with his computers and records.
There was a simultaneous raid on UW-Parkside to confiscate material Felner had shipped ahead of his arrival there.
In October 2008, a federal grand jury indicted Felner on nine counts of mail fraud, money laundering, and tax evasion. According to the indictment,
the Illinois nonprofit group, known as the National Center on Public Education and Prevention, was simply a shell that funneled money into the personal bank accounts of Mr. Felner and Thomas Schroeder, a former student of his and the group’s “executive director.” Prosecutors say the two men siphoned away not only the $694,000 earmarked grant, but also $1.7-million in payments from three urban school districts, money that ought to have gone to the legitimate public-education center that Mr. Felner had created in Rhode Island.
In January 2010, Felner pleaded guilty to nine Federal charges, including income tax evasion.
In May 2010, Felner was sentenced to 63 months in US Federal Prison for his role in defrauding defrauding the UofL and the University of Rhode Island, where he had been director of the School of Education, of $2.3 million of US Department of Education funds earmarked for No Child Left Behind Act research.
10775-033 aka Robert Felner was released from US Prison in May 2014
For a a short course on the felonious Felner see the PageOneKentucky.com summary of events. For a full course on the Felonious Felner and the incompetence and ethical lapses of Ramsey’s UofL administration click here. (Shout out to Jake at PageOneKentucky for excellent investigative reporting on Felner and the UofL.)
For Workplace Blog coverage of Felner click here.
And here is a Louisville Courier-Journal profile of Felner that pretty much sums up the guy that Ramsey defended until he pleaded guilty: Robert Felner profile: Arrogant, outrageous, abusive and duplicitous.
Felner Footnotes: Indians, John Deasy, Non-Disclosure Agreements & Ramsey as the Frito Bandito
(1) When Felner announced his resignation, UofL president Ramsey wroted to Felner and said he was worried about “letting the Indians get back in control of the reservation.” That’s some serious respect for university faculty and the idea of shared governance, eh?
(2) Los Angeles school superintendent, John Deasy, has had his academic credentials called into question. Deasy was given a PhD by the University of Louisville after he was enrolled for four months and received a total of nine credits.
Deasy’s doctoral advisor was, surprise, Robert Felner! Deasy had previously awarded $375,000 in consulting contracts to Felner, while Deasy was Superintendent of Santa Monica schools.
Ramsey appointed a “blue-ribbon” panel to investigate Deasy’s degree. The panel found that getting a PhD in four months at the UofL was not cause for concern, thus plunging the UofL’s academic reputation down into the neighbourhood of fly-by-night for-profit “higher” education.
Deasy is now working in an unaccredited training program sponsored by educational de-formers the Broad Foundation, which teaches school leaders business methods and supports charter schools and closing public schools.
(3) Ramsey has been making double retirement payouts to UofL administrators for their silence.
In March 2014, UofL made a $346,000.00 settlement with university counsel Angela Kosawha:
It costs a lot for Ramsey to cover up details of his administration’s incompetence and shenanigans, but remember there are lots of bucks at UofL.
(4) Provost Shirley Willihnganz stepped down as UofL provost earlier this year. The Louisville Courier-Journal reported that
Under her watch, however, university employees have stole, misspent or mishandled at least $7.6 million in schemes at the health science campus, the law school, the business school and the athletic department’s ticket office.
Willihnganz also was criticized for approving about $1 million in buyouts for former high-ranking employees, some of which included agreements not to disparage the university or its leaders.
She also was forced to apologize to CEHD faculty in 2008 for failing to take any common-sense action against Felner for his intimidation, harassment, humiliation and retaliation against faculty, staff, students and alumni.
Willihnganz said at the time that she tended to dismiss the early complaints against Felner — including a no-confidence vote by faculty — because he was a “high performer” and because the complaints came from professors and staff “entrenched in their ways and resistant to change.”
She later told faculty at a meeting that she was sorry. “Mostly what I think I want to say is people have been hurt and something very bad happened, and as provost I feel like I am ultimately responsible for that,” she said.
No duh! She actually is directly responsible for the Felner disaster (along with Ramsey), that’s probably why she feels that way. And speaking of resistance to change …
(5) This next item has nothing to do with Felner, except that his former boss and advocate, James Ramsey, is also the long time boss of UofL basketball coach Rick Pitino who admitted to having sex with a women in a swanky Italian restaurant in Louisville. Apparently that’s not a problem with Ramsey and the UofL because Pitino said it wasn’t rape.
And, now Pitino is using hookers and strippers to recruit high school basketball players to come to the UofL. See Dave Zirin’s pieces on the latest Ramsey supervised scandal:
(6) And I almost forgot. Remember the Taco Bell/Mexican connection. This week Ramsey had a little halloween party at the UofL. Ramsey goes racist (again). Yes, he dressed up like the Frito Bandito.
UofL President James Ramsey says “Yo quiero Taco Bell.”
And you thought the HR training at UofL was bad, get that guy to the diversity office and cross your fingers that they’re better than the university’s accounting folks.
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Posted in Academic Labor, Administration, Bullying & Mobbing, Commentary, Corporate University, Corruption, Diversity, Ethics, Faculty, Governance, Just Kidding (not), Scandals, Working conditions
Tagged Corruption, Criminal investigation, Diversity, Ethics, felons, James Ramsey, non-discloure agreements, Robert Felner, Scandal, Shirley Willihnganz, University of Louisville, University presidents
There are a few high profile workplaces wherein the worker pays to work: amateur athletes in sporting venues, strippers in strip clubs and students in classrooms are among the most notable. On 17 August however, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) overturned Northwestern University’s football team’s bid to unionize as employees. This overturned a 2014 regional NLRB decision paving the way for players to unionize.
The decision hinges on whether athletes are “primarily students” and whether those with funding or paid jobs are “statutory employees.” The NLRB did not rule on these questions and researchers have yet to adequately theorize the problem of whether students per se are workers. If students are workers, what type of workers are they?
Ivan Illich offered the best analysis thus far in depicting students as shadow workers (see also NYT article). Without the shadow work or unpaid work of students, and increasingly professors, academic capitalism would come to a halt or at least be curbed. Paying students for studying and performing in classrooms would mean that colleges and universities would have to recognize all students as the workers or employees that they are. The 2004 NLRB decision that graduate student teaching assistants are “primarily students” entirely overlooks shadow work. Like the athletes at Northwestern, all students would have the prerogative to unionize.
Compensating or remunerating shadow work would mean that colleges and universities would have to recognize that most of its faculty members are doing the work of two these days.
But the counter question is why faculty members are all too willing to do the work of two? This academic shadow work buttresses and contributes to the growth of academic capitalism—it bails out the system from certain failure. As Illich says, “increasingly the unpaid self-discipline of shadow work becomes more important than wage labor for further economic growth.”
In “Threat Convergence,” we tried to work through this problem by analyzing the changing nature and definition of the academic workplace. It’s a start. Given the fragmentation, intensification, segmentation, shifting and creep of academic work, it is due time researchers attended to the problem as opposed to the continued romanticism of the intellectual.
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Posted in Academic Labor, Athletics, Employment rights, Institute for Critical Education Studies, Organizing, Students, Unions
Tagged Faculty, Strikes & Labor Disputes, Students, Unions
As questions go unanswered regarding the suspicious resignation of UBC President Arvind Gupta, the Faculty Association of UBC is pressing for answers. The University has been silent about the sudden resignation, writing off the past year of Gupta’s appointment as a mere “leadership transition.” Four years of leadership transitions– the last two and the next two– sound more like an administrative crisis than merely a change.
FAUBC President Mark MacLean, August 10, 2015:
Shortly before 1pm on Friday, I received a phone call from the University to inform me that Professor Arvind Gupta would resign as President of UBC effective at 1 p.m. that afternoon, and that a public announcement would be made at 1:15 p.m. This news came as a complete surprise to me, and I have spent the weekend trying to make sense of it.
This was a sudden and immediate resignation, and I am skeptical that the reason for it is simply that Professor Gupta wishes to return to the life of a Professor of Computer Science. We of course, will not hear directly from Professor Gupta since such resignations typically come with a non-disclosure agreement.
The Board of Governors must explain what transpired to end Professor Gupta’s Presidency after only one year. What caused this leadership crisis?
Over the past year, I had conversations with Professor Gupta about his desire for UBC to thrive as a place where faculty are supported and valued unconditionally. He truly viewed us as his colleagues. Contrary to some of the public speculation since his resignation, he had a serious plan well under development to achieve the goals he set for himself and the University, and faculty were at the heart of his plan.
In support of this plan, President Gupta’s budget decisions were designed to move resources into the academic units and to mitigate the impacts that high growth rates of student numbers are having on the entire university. As a result, significant amounts of money are set to move from non-academic operations to support research and teaching.
Does Professor Gupta’s resignation mean the Board no longer supports realigning the University’s resources to better support the research and teaching missions?
Professor Gupta saw faculty as the heart of the University and collegial governance as a fundamental principle upon which the best universities operate. Will the Board of Governors continue to use these principles as the basis of its relationship with the faculty?
I believe Professor Gupta’s resignation represents a serious loss to UBC. It certainly represents a failure point in the governance of the University. We need to understand this failure and the Board must recognize that we cannot move on until we do.
I also have questions about the future leadership of the University. We have in progress searches for a Provost and VP Academic, a Vice President Research, and a Vice President External and Communications. Those who fill these positions must ultimately hold the confidence of the President they will serve. What will happen with these searches now? President Emerita Martha Piper has considerable experience as a past UBC President, but should she hire three key Vice Presidents for the next President of UBC?
All of my concerns and questions aside, I am committed to working with Professors Redish and Piper under the same model of trusty and openness with which I was able to operate with President Gupta. I have every expectation they will want to continue the positive relationship that has developed between the Administration and the Faculty Association over the past year.
I invite you to send me your responses to the President’s resignation.
Sincerely;
Mark Mac Lean
President of the UBC Faculty Association
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Posted in Academic freedom, Academic Labor, Accountability, Administration, Unions
Tagged Academic freedom, Administration, Faculty, Unions, University presidents
Stephen Petrina, Sandra Mathison & E. Wayne Ross
The convergence of the casualization, fragmentation, intensification, segmentation, shifting and creep of academic work with the post-9/11 gentrificaton of criticism and dissent is arguably one of the greatest threats to academic freedom since the Nazi elimination of the Jewish professoriate and critique in 1933, Bantu Education Act’s reinforcement of apartheid in South Africa in 1952, and McCarthyism in Canada and the US in the 1950s and 1960s. In the history of education, this would be quite the claim yet the evidence seems to speak for itself. Academic work has been fragmented into piecemeal modes and intensified as academics absorbed, through amalgamation, traditional clerical staff and counseling work. The balance of the academic workforce has been reduced and casualized or segmented to an “at whim,” insecure, unsalaried part-time labor pool, the 8-hour workday and 40-hour academic workweek collapsed to 60-80 hours, and the primary locus of academic work shifted off-campus as the workplace crept into the home and its communal establishments. Academic stress— manifested as burnout through amalgamation and creep of work, and as distress through bullying, mobbing and victimization— underwrites increases in leaves of absence. Non-tenure track faculty are hit particularly hard, indicating “contingency or the precariousness of their position” as relentless stressors.
Nowadays, it’s whimsical to reminisce about work-life balance and promises that the academic workforce will be renewed as boomers retire with baited expectations, or that the workweek and workplace for salaried full-timers could be contained within the seduction of flextime and telecommuting. In many ways, the flexible workplace is the plan for boomers by boomers with both nest eggs and limits on retirement age breaking. As currency values, retirement portfolios, and savings spiral downward while dependent children and grandchildren and inflation spiral upward, incentives to retire erode. Precariously unemployed, underemployed and part-time academics aside, boomers still in the academic system are trended to face the biggest losses. As economic incentives to retire decrease, incentives for intellectual immortality and legacy management flourish with the boomers’ political leanings moving toward the center. One can hardly blame them.
Enthusiasts of anything “flexible” (learning, space, time, work, etc.) and everything “tele” (commuting, conference, learning, phone, work, etc.), academics readily workshift with additional liability but no additional remuneration— instead is an unquestioned acceptance of the “overtime exemption”— while the employer saves about $6,500 per year per worker in the tradeoff as worksite or workspace shifts from campus to home. The academic workweek is now conservatively 60 hours with many PT and FT reporting persistent 70-80 hour weeks. Perhaps academic women can finally have it all after putting in the 120 hour workweek. One reason institutions now cope with many fewer FT hires is that academics are all too willing to do the work of two. As Gina Anderson found a decade ago, “with apparently unconscious irony, many academics reported that they particularly valued the flexibility of their working week, in terms of both time and space… in the same breath as reporting working weeks in the order of 60 hours.” For most academic workers, the cost of flexibility is effectively a salary cut as overheads of electricity, heat, water, communication and consumables are shifted to the home. Carbon footprint reductions are a net benefit and for a minority, the savings of commuting and parking offset the costs of this homework or housework. What is the nature or implications of this increasing domestication of academic work and displacement of the academic workplace? For academic couples with or without children, the dynamics of housecohabitry, househusbandry or housewifery necessarily change as the academic workplace shifts and labor creeps into the home. With temptations to procrastinate on deluges of academic deadlines, academic homes have never been cleaner and more organized. Nevermind the technocreep of remote monitoring. Over the long run, although some administrators cling to the digital punch card and time stamp with Hivedesk, Worksnaps or MySammy, “smashing the clock” in the name of flextime and telework is about the best thing that ever happened to academic capitalism.
This is not exactly a SWOT analysis, where Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats are given due treatment. Rather, the focus is on this threat convergence as it resolves through historic displacements of the academic workplace and work. To what degree are the new policies for academic speech inscribed in academic work, regardless of where it’s done? As the academic workplace is increasingly displaced and distributed, are academic policies displaced and distributed as well? Observed at work, monitored at home and tracked in between—these are not so much choices as the cold reality of 21st century academic work.
Read More: Threat Convergence
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Posted in Academic freedom, Academic Labor, Academics, Accountability, Adjuncts & Sessionals, Administration, Bullying & Mobbing, Critical University Studies, Free speech, Government, Institute for Critical Education Studies, Students, Technology, Working conditions
Tagged Academic freedom, adjuncts, Faculty, Free speech, Research, Students, Working conditions
New Workplace Issue #24
Workplace and Critical Education are published by the Institute for Critical Education Studies. Please consider participating as author or reviewer. Thank you.
Comments Off on New Workplace Issue: Academic Bullying & Mobbing #highered #ubc #caut
Posted in Academic freedom, Academic Labor, Academics, Accountability, Adjuncts & Sessionals, Bullying & Mobbing, Critical University Studies, Diversity, Equity, Ethics, Free speech, Government, Institute for Critical Education Studies, Organizing, Publications, Solidarity, Student Movement, Students, Technology, Unions, Working conditions
Tagged Academic freedom, Academics, adjuncts, Legal issues, Unions, Working conditions
New Workplace Issue #25
Workplace and Critical Education are published by the Institute for Critical Education Studies. Please consider participating as author or reviewer. Thank you.
Comments Off on New Workplace Issue: Reforming Academic Labor, Resisting Imposition, K12 and #HigherEd #criticaled
Posted in Academic freedom, Academic Labor, Adjuncts & Sessionals, Critical University Studies, Faculty, Government, Institute for Critical Education Studies, Research, Solidarity, Students, Unions, Working conditions
Tagged Academic freedom, adjuncts, Unions, Working conditions
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Peter Wylie: My Faculty Association and Me: A Case Study in Sweetheart Unionism and Academic Mobbing
My Faculty Association and Me: A Case Study in Sweetheart Unionism and Academic Mobbing
By Peter Wylie
This paper recounts recent experiences of mine with the University of British Columbia (UBC) Faculty Association (UBCFA). I am a tenured Associate Professor at UBC, Okanagan campus (UBCO) and I began my FA role as 1st Vice-Chair of the Okanagan Faculty Committee (OFC), an executive position on this standing committee of the FA, in July 2017. The paper is couched in terms of the relatively recent concept of academic mobbing, defined as “an insidious, non-violent and sophisticated kind of psychological bullying that predominantly takes place in college and university campuses.”1 It also employs the concept of “sweetheart unionism” defined as a deal between an employer and union officials that benefits both at the expense of employees; in this case, a deal between UBCO and UBCFA that benefits UBCO management and FA Executive Director and staff in Vancouver at the expense of UBCO faculty members.
My Faculty Association and Me A case Study in Sweetheart Unionism and Academic Mobbing.pdf
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Posted in Academic Labor, Bullying & Mobbing, Commentary, Corporate University, Faculty, Free speech, Solidarity, Unions
Tagged bullying, Corporate Univeristy, Free speech, mobbing, UBC, UBCFA, unionism, Unions, University of British Columbia