Inside Higher Ed: Healthy but Mismatched History Job Market
The overall numbers look good for historians on the job market this year, but the total figures hide the surpluses of would-be professors in some fields, shortages in others and a decrease in the percentage of new Ph.D.’s going to women.
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Posted in Job market
Maclean’s : Student denied entry to U of T sues for $5-mil
Although Adam Rogers moved his three children and pregnant wife into residence at the University of Toronto’s Mississauga campus, he never saw the inside of a classroom. Rogers — who applied to transfer from Waterloo after his third year — was never accepted into the university despite being offered a residence spot, a situation that he says plunged his family into poverty and is now the centre of a $5-million lawsuit.
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Posted in Legal issues
Inside Higher Ed: Rethinking Work
Given that many attendees at the Modern Language Association’s meeting, this year in Chicago, are here for job interviews, it’s no surprise that working conditions for academics are always a hot topic.
At several sessions this year, panelists sought to reframe the way some of those issues are discussed. With many new Ph.D.’s fearing that their careers may be off the tenure track, panelists considered how to draw attention to the inequities of the adjunct system and whether new models — close to tenure but decidedly not the same — should be embraced. And at other sessions, professors raised concern about whether professors on the tenure track are being hurt by the way service requirements are enforced (but not rewarded).
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Posted in Contingent labor
Inside Higher Ed: A Moderate MLA
The Modern Language Association frequently helps out its critics with provocative session titles and left-leaning political stands offered by its members. At this year’s annual meeting, in Chicago, some MLA members have worried that the association was poised to take stances that would have sent David Horowitz’s fund raising through the roof with resolutions that appeared to be anti-Israel and pro-Ward Churchill.
But in moves that infuriated the MLA’s Radical Caucus, the association’s Delegate Assembly refused to pass those resolutions and instead adopted much narrower measures. The association acknowledged tensions over the Middle East on campus, but in a resolution that did not single out pro-Israel groups for criticism. And the association criticized the University of Colorado for the way it started its investigation of Ward Churchill, but took no stand on whether the outcome (his firing) was appropriate.
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Posted in Academics
The Globe and Mail: Fredericton’s St. Thomas University to lock out its faculty
After 10 months of failed contract negotiations, St. Thomas University in Fredericton announced yesterday it was locking out its faculty – the first time a Canadian academic institution has pre-emptively locked out its academic staff before a strike.
The university pushed back the start of classes until Jan. 10 to reach a resolution, but the faculty recently rejected the administration’s latest offer. A strike vote was planned for next month.
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Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes
Daily Telegraph: Graduates face bleak year on job market
Graduates have been warned of bleak job prospects next year as the credit crunch prevents firms taking on new staff.
A report published today says 2008 is likely to become “easily the worst year” for employment since Labour came to power.
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Posted in Economics
The Boston Globe: Ex-Tufts researcher files bias lawsuit
A former faculty member at Tufts University is suing the college and a prominent professor for allegedly firing her in retaliation after she accused the professor of discriminating against female and minority employees and of singling her out for her sexual orientation.
Susan Lautze, a researcher on humanitarianism who cofounded the Feinstein International Center at Tufts in 1996, says she was fired in 2005 after she accused her supervisor, Peter Walker, of harboring bias toward women and nonwhites.
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Posted in Employment rights
Inside Higher Ed: (Alleged) Crime and (Delayed) Punishment?
Acting on the recommendation of the administration, the St. Louis Community College Board of Trustees voted last week to terminate a music professor accused of sexually abusing a high school student before he came to the college. Denise R. Chachere, the board’s vice president, said that members were unanimous in their decision.
The board had suspended Larry Stukenholtz — a college employee since 2001 and an associate professor of music at the two-year institution’s Meramec campus — in November, pending an investigation of allegations that he had sexually abused a student of his at Mater Dei High School in California in the 1990s. The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) began putting pressure on the college to fire him in 2006 when Stukenholtz’s former student, Sarah Gray, filed a civil suit alleging that he had abused his authority in luring her into a sexual relationship when she was under 18 (Stukenholtz is not a priest, but the alleged abuse happened while he taught at a Catholic high school).
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Posted in Faculty
The New York Times: State of the Unions
By Paul Krugman
Once upon a time, back when America had a strong middle
class, it also had a strong union movement.
These two facts were connected. Unions negotiated good
wages and benefits for their workers, gains that often
ended up being matched even by nonunion employers. They
also provided an important counterbalance to the
political influence of corporations and the economic
elite.
Today, however, the American union movement is a shadow
of its former self, except among government workers. In
1973, almost a quarter of private-sector employees were
union members, but last year the figure was down to a
mere 7.4 percent.
Yet unions still matter politically. And right now
they’re at the heart of a nasty political scuffle among
Democrats. Before I get to that, however, let’s talk
about what happened to American labor over the last 35
years.
It’s often assumed that the U.S. labor movement died a
natural death, that it was made obsolete by
globalization and technological change. But what really
happened is that beginning in the 1970s, corporate
America, which had previously had a largely cooperative
relationship with unions, in effect declared war on
organized labor.
Don’t take my word for it; read Business Week, which
published an article in 2002 titled “How Wal-Mart Keeps
Unions at Bay.” The article explained that “over the
past two decades, Corporate America has perfected its
ability to fend off labor groups.” It then described
the tactics – some legal, some illegal, all involving a
healthy dose of intimidation – that Wal-Mart and other
giant firms use to block organizing drives.
These hardball tactics have been enabled by a political
environment that has been deeply hostile to organized
labor, both because politicians favored employers’
interests and because conservatives sought to weaken
the Democratic Party. “We’re going to crush labor as a
political entity,” Grover Norquist, the anti-tax
activist, once declared.
But the times may be changing. A newly energized
progressive movement seems to be on the ascendant, and
unions are a key part of that movement. Most notably,
the Service Employees International Union has played a
key role in pushing for health care reform. And unions
will be an important force in the Democrats’ favor in
next year’s election.
Or maybe not – which brings us to the latest from Iowa.
Whoever receives the Democratic presidential nomination
will receive labor’s support in the general election.
Meanwhile, however, unions are supporting favored
candidates. Hillary Clinton – who for a time seemed the
clear front-runner – has received the most union
support. John Edwards, whose populist message resonates
with labor, has also received considerable labor
support.
But Barack Obama, though he has a solid pro-labor
voting record, has not – in part, perhaps, because his
message of “a new kind of politics” that will transcend
bitter partisanship doesn’t make much sense to union
leaders who know, from the experience of confronting
corporations and their political allies head on, that
partisanship isn’t going away anytime soon.
O.K., that’s politics. But now Mr. Obama has lashed out
at Mr. Edwards because two 527s – independent groups
that are allowed to support candidates, but are legally
forbidden from coordinating directly with their
campaigns – are running ads on his rival’s behalf. They
are, Mr. Obama says, representative of the kind of
“special interests” that “have too much influence in
Washington.”
The thing, though, is that both of these 527s represent
union groups – in the case of the larger group, local
branches of the S.E.I.U. who consider Mr. Edwards the
strongest candidate on health reform. So Mr. Obama’s
attack raises a couple of questions.
First, does it make sense, in the current political and
economic environment, for Democrats to lump unions in
with corporate groups as examples of the special
interests we need to stand up to?
Second, is Mr. Obama saying that if nominated, he’d be
willing to run without support from labor 527s, which
might be crucial to the Democrats? If not, how does he
avoid having his own current words used against him by
the Republican nominee?
Part of what happened here, I think, is that Mr. Obama,
looking for a stick with which to beat an opponent who
has lately acquired some momentum, either carelessly or
cynically failed to think about how his rhetoric would
affect the eventual ability of the Democratic nominee,
whoever he or she is, to campaign effectively. In this
sense, his latest gambit resembles his previous echoing
of G.O.P. talking points on Social Security.
Beyond that, the episode illustrates what’s wrong with
campaigning on generalities about political
transformation and trying to avoid sounding partisan.
It may be partisan to say that a 527 run by labor
unions supporting health care reform isn’t the same
thing as a 527 run by insurance companies opposing it.
But it’s also the simple truth.
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
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Posted in Commentary
UPI: Iraqi oil, health, teacher demands unmet
Iraq’s teachers and healthcare workers, like the oil unions earlier this year, are demanding the government take action on improving working conditions.
The teachers union representing workers in 15 provinces took to the streets of Baghdad Sunday in a one-day strike, saying it will escalate actions if the government doesn’t deal next month.
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Posted in Protests, Strikes & Labor Disputes
Post-Gazette: City schools, union make progress in contract talks
Progress was made yesterday during a bargaining session between the Pittsburgh Public Schools and the teachers union, a school board member said.
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Posted in Campaigns & Contracts
World War 4 Report: Iraq: public-sector workers launch sit-in campaign
raq’s teachers and healthcare workers are uniting with other public-sector employees to demand the government take action on improving working conditions, and pledge to begin a campaign of public sit-ins in Baghdad Dec. 26. The teachers union representing education workers in 15 provinces marched in Baghdad Dec. 16 in a one-day strike, pledging to escalate actions if the government doesn’t deal next month. The teachers are demanding the same pay as colleagues in the safer Kurdistan region, and for greater investment in deteriorating schools. Security is also a key demand, following the slaying of a Baghdad school director last month. Speaking to the Baghdad newspaper al-Mada, the deputy head of the Teachers’ Syndicate, Burhan Nema, said “Iraqi teachers will stage a sit-in as part of a protest campaign that calls for improving the living standards of 500,000 families living in poverty.”
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Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes
icWales.co.uk: Teachers’ strike threat over funds
TEACHERS in the Vale have threatened to go on strike in a row over funding for schools.
Members of the National Association of Schoolmasters, Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT) claim that the underfunding of schools could increase class sizes and threaten jobs.
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Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes
Lexington Herald-Leader: KCTCS chief’s pay takes bite of morale
Michael McCall, the head of Kentucky’s community college system, recently made headlines around the country when a national survey found that he was the highest paid president of a community college system in the country.
Faculty and staff of the Kentucky Community and Technical College System knew McCall made a good salary for the difficult job of creating an entirely new system of community and technical schools — a move that came out of the higher education reform act of 1997.
But faculty members such as Jake Gibbs were shocked to find that McCall’s package of salary and benefits totaled $610,000. That number, which is from a survey by the Chronicle of Higher Education, does not compare favorably to the pay of KCTCS faculty and staff members, who not only are the lowest paid in Kentucky, but rank well below national averages for community colleges. Current state funding problems mean that bigger raises are probably out of the question for the immediate future.
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Posted in Administration, Salary/Economic Benefits
The New York Times: Scholars and the Military Share a Foxhole, Uneasily
The United States military is frequently criticized for not doing enough to reduce civilian casualties or to stabilize the places it is fighting to protect. Yet what happens when the outside experts who can offer such advice are condemned for doing exactly that?
Questions about collaboration between soldiers and scholars have been around at least since World War II, but they have arisen with particular urgency in recent months at professional meetings, in journals, on campuses and on the Internet over programs related to Afghanistan and Iraq.
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Posted in Government
All Hungary News: Nationwide strike starts in Hungary
Thousands of Hungarian workers have started a nationwide, general strike of an unspecified length to protest against the government’s plans to reform the health care and pension systems. The strikes, called for by the trade unions’ umbrella organization LIGA and the Worker’s Councils, are expected to cause delays in train services on Monday and later this week. The two organizations are demanding that the government withdraw a bill – to be voted on today – that will allow for the partial privatization of the country’s health insurance system, while protesting against a new pension calculation rule that they say will result in a cut of 8%-10% to the pensions of those who retire next year.
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Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes
ChinaView.cn: Two-month Israeli teachers’ strike ends
sraeli government and the Secondary School Teachers Organization (SSTO) on Thursday morning finally reached an agreement, ending a two-month-long teachers’ strike that affected some 500,000 students across Israel.
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Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes
Jerusalem Post: Both sides declare victory at end of school strike saga
The reaction among teachers, parents and politicians was one of gratified relief on Thursday as 20 hours of marathon negotiations, stretching through Wednesday night and into Thursday morning, produced the outline of a deal between secondary school teachers and the government to end the 65-day strike.
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Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes
Jerusalem Post: Analysis: Just the beginning…
Despite the enthusiastic back-slapping coming out of the Secondary School Teachers Organization (SSTO), the Education Ministry and the Treasury, the “historic” deal signed Thursday amounted to a very small gain for the nation’s secondary school teachers.
In May, the elementary school teachers’ National Teachers Union (NTU), representing two-thirds of Israel’s teachers, signed an agreement with the Finance Ministry that instituted a new wage arrangement in which salaries would start at more than NIS 5,000 per month and rise 30% faster than previously, in exchange for an almost one-third increase in work hours. The reform also gave more authority over personnel decisions to principals.
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Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes
Police in thought pursuit
The Washington Times: Police in thought pursuit
December 27, 2007
By Bruce Fein – The Pope had his Index of Forbidden Books. Japan had its Thought Police against subversive or dangerous ideologies. And the United States Congress and President Bush have learned nothing from those examples.
Congress is perched to enact the “Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 20007 (Act),” probably the greatest assault on free speech and association in the United States since the 1938 creation of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Sponsored by Rep. Jane Harman, California Democrat, the bill passed the House of Representatives on Oct. 23 by a 404-6 vote under a rule suspension that curtailed debate. To borrow from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, the First Amendment should not distract Congress from doing important business. The Senate companion bill (S. 1959), sponsored by Susan Collins, Maine Republican, has encountered little opposition. Especially in an election year, senators crave every opportunity to appear tough on terrorism. Few if any care about or understand either freedom of expression or the Thought Police dangers of S. 1959. Former President John Quincy Adams presciently lamented: “Democracy has no forefathers, it looks to no posterity, it is swallowed up in the present and thinks of nothing but itself.”
Denuded of euphemisms and code words, the Act aims to identify and stigmatize persons and groups who hold thoughts the government decrees correlate with homegrown terrorism, for example, opposition to the Patriot Act or the suspension of the Great Writ of habeas corpus.
The Act will inexorably culminate in a government listing of homegrown terrorists or terrorist organizations without due process; a complementary listing of books, videos, or ideas that ostensibly further “violent radicalization;” and a blacklisting of persons who have intersected with either list.
Political discourse will be chilled and needed challenges to conventional wisdom will flag. There are no better examples of sinister congressional folly.
The Act inflates the danger of homegrown terrorism manifold to justify creating a marquee National Commission on the Prevention of Violent Radicalization and Ideologically Based Violence (Commission) in the legislative branch. Since September 11, 2001, no American has died from homegrown terrorism, while about 120,000 have been murdered.
In the so-called post-September 11 “war” against international terrorism, Mr. Bush has detained only two citizens as enemy combatants. One was voluntarily deported to Saudi Arabia; the other was indicted, tried and convicted in a civilian court of providing material assistance to a foreign terrorist organization. And employing customary law enforcement tools, the United States has successfully prosecuted several pre-embryonic terrorism conspiracies amidst numerous false starts.
Prior to September 11, homegrown terrorism consisted largely of Timothy McVeigh, Eric Rudolph, the Unibomber and the D.C. Metropolitan area snipers. The Act, nevertheless, counterfactually finds “homegrown terrorism … poses a threat to domestic security” that “cannot be easily prevented through traditional federal intelligence or law enforcement efforts.”
Twelve members of the commission will be appointed by the president and leaders in the House and Senate. They will predictably serve the political needs of their political masters.
The commission’s Big Brother task is to discover ideas and political associations, including connections to non-U.S. persons and networks, that promote “violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence in the United States.” And “violent radicalization” is defined as “the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of ideologically based violence to advance political, religious, or social change.”
Under the Act, William Lloyd Garrison would have been guilty of promoting “violent radicalization” for publishing the anti-slavery Liberator in 1831, which “facilitated” John Brown. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton would have been condemned for assailing laws disenfranchising women and creating an intellectual atmosphere receptive to violence. And Martin Luther King, Jr. would have fallen under the Act’s suspicion for denouncing Jim Crow and practicing civil disobedience, which “facilitated” H. Rap Brown.
The commission will certainly hold choreographed public hearings. Witnesses will testify that non-Christian ideas or vocal challenges to the status quo promote “an extremist belief system” that facilitates ideologically based violence. Internet communications, the media, schools, religious institutions and home life will be scrutinized for promoting pernicious thoughts.
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes observed in Gitlow v. New York (1925): “Every idea is an incitement. It offers itself for belief and if believed it is acted on unless some other belief outweighs it or some failure of energy stifles the movement at its birth. The only difference between expression of an opinion and an incitement in the narrower sense is the speaker’s enthusiasm for the result.”
Lengthy lists of persons, organizations and thoughts to be shunned will be compiled. Portions of the Holy Koran are likely to be taboo. The lives of countless innocent citizens will be shattered. That is the lesson of HUAC and every prior government enterprise to identify “dangerous” people or ideas — for example, the 120,000 innocent Japanese-Americans herded into concentration camps during World War II.
The ideological persecutions invited by the Act will do more to create than to deter homegrown terrorism. Mark Anthony’s words in “Julius Caesar” are a fitting commentary on what Congress is prepared to enact: “O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts, and men have lost their reason.”
Bruce Fein is a constitutional lawyer with Bruce Fein & Associates and Chairman of the American Freedom Agenda.
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Posted in Commentary, Free speech