AAUP Proposes Giving Contingent Faculty a Much Bigger Role in College Governance

The Chronicle: AAUP Proposes Giving Contingent Faculty a Much Bigger Role in College Governance

The American Association of University Professors is poised to urge colleges to give much more say in their governance to contingent faculty members, including many part-time adjuncts, librarians, and graduate students who are paid to teach or conduct research.

In a draft report being released today, the association argues that colleges are ill-served by policies that exclude most instructors who are off the tenure track from governance activities, and offers a list of recommendations for giving contingent faculty members much more say in the affairs of the institutions that employ them.

COCAL Updates

1. Longmate and Hoeller on us in Seattle Times

2. Mexican students on the move

3. A new [to me] website on economic inequality with much that applies to us and also on the need for more progressive taxation, as a start http://inequality.org/

4.The adjunct faculty at American University recently organized a union with SEIU Local 500. Student support was key to the success of our campaign, I believe. The students circulated a petition calling on the administration of the University not to use their tuition dollars for union-busting, they did flash mob and banner drop actions, wrote Op Eds in the student newspaper, and produced a really moving video. You can watch the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RMoYEUzMa0

The student support mitigated against fear and hesitation among the adjunct faculty, and helped minimize the employer’s anti-union tactics. I also believe the students’ activism was an important element in the decision of AU to come to the bargaining table immediately following the vote and to bargain in good faith (which we are engaged in right now).

Anne McLeer, SEIU Local 500

5. Not specifically contingent faculty but too important and hopeful to leave out. The Greek Syriza Left Coalition is polling at 30 right now and might well win the election if held today. Here is their program. Read it and dream or a better world, for us and them. (see below)

6. Texas A&M fired adjunct (for criticizing cross on university building) gets help from AAUP and Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE)
http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2012/06/01/aaup-and-fire-question-treatment-adjunct

and sign petition in support of her

Hello, all:

Please take a moment to sign the online petition in support of adjunct professor Sissy Bradford who was fired by the University of Texas San Antonio for criticizing the university’s handling of the threats against her life and safety that she received after she openly objected to the installation of religious symbols on the newly constructed structures at the entrance to the campus.

http://www.change.org/petitions/texas-a-m-university-at-san-antonio-reinstate-fired-adjunct-professor-sissy-bradford

It’s very important that we support those adjuncts who are retaliated against. AAUP and FIRE have already weighed-in. Let’s make sure our voices are heard.

Best regards,

Matt Williams (NFM)

and a NYT update on the issue
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/03/us/crosses-are-gone-but-clash-lives-on-at-texas-am-san-antonio.html?_r=1

7. Sign petition to get other contingent workers (in this case home care workers) covered by labor and employment laws. Who knows better than us?!
https://www.change.org/petitions/stop-excluding-home-care-aides-from-minimum-wage-and-overtime

8. AAUP job

The AAUP is now accepting applications for a Regional Coordinator position in the Pacific Northwest. Please see the link below and forward to anyone who might be interested:

http://www.unionjobs.com/listing.php?id=1339

In Solidarity,

Kira Schuman

9. Contribute to the Adjunct Project’s Top 100 list
http://adjunctproject.com/adjunct-projects-top-100/

10. A famous labor historian calls for us to again define ourselves (the majority and especially the unionists) as “working class”
http://newlaborforum.cuny.edu/

11. News of mass Mexican march on their federal government against privatization. see below

12. A full update on the SME (the Mexico City electrical workers) whose union was a big support of our efforts to have COCAL in Mexico in the past, but are now under great attack. Our colleagues in Mexico (Marian Teresa and Arturo)have done labor education with this union for years.

13. U of WI TAA [the union that sparked the whole Madison uprising] refuses to endorse Gov. Walkers Demo Opponent and a comment and book suggestions from our Madison ATC PTUunion President colleague Nancy McCahon
See http://taa-madison.org/ and https://www.facebook.com/taa.madison to see than the TAA has spent many hours (days) working for Barrett, the opponent to WI Governor Scott Walker.

The TAA gets huge credit for being those who hurried to the Capitol in Feb. 2011 and camped in protest of “the bomb” that Walkerdropped to end collective bargaining that had been part of the state fabric for decades. If those students had not been there so quickly, it is doubtful that the rest of the protests would have developed as they did. Now that the TAA is not a “certified” union, everyone is watching to see how the UW treats them.

One of several good books about the WI uprising is Cut From Plain Cloth by Scott Weidemann http://www.cutfromplaincloth.com/index.html It is available at Amazon.com & Barnes & Noble, but don’t give them the business. Use his own site and ask Scott for the same discount as Amazon gives –

14. Ward Churchill gets another day in court over his firing at Colorado

15. Condition of Australian contingent faculty (not good)

16. Some very useful information on health insurance, since most of us do not get it paid by our employer, and if we do, it is not year round and/or secure
In 2011 74% of adults aged 19-64 had health insurance all year, but 26% lacked health insurance for part of the year.
Of those without insurance, 70% without coverage for more than a year, 12% for less than 3 months, 8% for 3-6 months, 10% for 6-12 months, 12% 1 year-2 years, 57% 2 years or longer.
Percentage of uninsured by percentage above federal poverty:
Less than 133% 133-249% 250-399% 400% or more
57% 36% 22% 12%

(Commonwealth Fund, quoted in Chicago Tribune 4/20/12)

Comment: for those who say we can’t afford universal medical insurance, let’s cancel it for everyone for one year and then discuss the matter again.

COCAL X Conference in Mexico City August 9-12, 2012

COCAL X Conference in Mexico City

August 9-12, 2012

 

The tenth annual COCAL Conference will be held in Mexico City, on the campus of the National Autonomous University of Mexico from Thursday, August 9 through Sunday, August 12, 2010.

The host for COCAL X is the Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (STUNAM). Contingent faculty activists and representatives from North America will participate in the conference. Presentations and plenaries will be translated into English, French, and Spanish.

unam01

UNAM

(Photo by David Milroy)

Mexico City is about a five hour flight from Washington, D.C.; four hours from Chicago, and three and a half hours from Los Angeles. The conference arrangements include a group hotel and bus transportation to and from sessions.

  • Call for papers

We are requesting submissions for presentations at the COCAL X Conference. The deadline is June 15, 2012. Click here for guidelines for submissions.

  • Conference Registration
  • Early Registration by June 15, 2012: $225
  • Registration after June 15, 2012: $250

Click here for online registration


Click here for a mail-in registration form

 

Below is information about registration and accommodations for planning purposes:

Conference registration fee includes:

  • All workshops, plenaries & materials
  • 5 meals (lunches on Friday, Saturday and Sunday; dinner Friday and Saturday)
  • 2 cultural shows during Friday and Saturday dinners.
  • Visit to two museums on Sunday (Anthropology Museum and Chapultepec Castle)
  • Transfers on buses.

Optional tour: Thursday, August 9th visit to Pyramids of Teotihuacan, $50

  • Scholarship Fund
    A COCAL Scholarship can support attendees who may otherwise not be able to attend. Donations to the scholarship fund can be made on the registration form. Scholarship funds will be disbursed to recipients at the conference.
    Scholarships will be awarded in two rounds; the first from a modest pool of existing funds, the second from any leftover funds or additional funds received. For the best chance of receiving a scholarship, apply by the first deadline.
    May 31: first round scholarship applications due
    June 30: second round scholarship applications due

Click here for an application to the scholarship fund

Plenaries and workshop topics

cocal ix plenary

Plenary at COCAL IX

(Photo by David Milroy)

Plenary 1: Changes in academic work in the context of neoliberal globalization
1. Teaching, researching, and disseminating knowledge to the larger community, including academic management of e-learning
2. Gaining and maintaining health, unemployment, and retirement benefits
3. Supporting academic improvement, evaluation processes, and recognition

Plenary 2: Organization and new forms of struggle by academic workers; challenges and strategies for the 21st century
4. Forming and building unions, associations, federations, networks and coalitions
5. Expanding employment rights: hiring, retention, tenure, wages, health benefits, and safety
6. Strengthening union rights: institutional recognition, alliances and federations, collective bargaining rights, and labor laws and regulations
7. Supporting political rights, cultural rights, and academic freedom
8. Exploring forms of struggle and achievements: campaigns, negotiations, demonstrations, work stoppages, strikes, and use of new technologies and social media

Plenary 3: Culture and identity of the new academic citizens in North America and the world
9. Creating a sense of academic culture and university identity: freeway flyers and working with multiple assignments and institutions
10. New forms of academic citizenship, new work and the changing university community: finding spaces of resistance to the corporate model of higher education
11. Fighting discrimination and inequality: multicultural identity, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and different capabilities
12. Building connections between the contingent academic worker and the university community: tenure-track faculty, research faculty, students, staff, and administrators

Planned Social/Cultural Events

pyramid1

Teotihuacan Pyramids

(Photo by David Milroy)

      • Visit to the castle of Chapultepec and the National Museum of anthropology
      • Tour of Ciudad Universitaria facilities (UNESCO-World Heritage Site)
      • Friday and Saturday dinners organized by Mexican university unions with music and dance

Optional preconference excursion day ($50 extra):

        • Visit to the pyramids of Teotihuacan

 

Accommodations

Hotel Radisson Paraíso Perisur
Cuspide 53, Col. Parque del Pedregal, 14020 Mexico D.F.
$82 US, taxes included, each night for a single-bed or double-bed room.  Additional persons in room are $10 per person, up to 4 persons total per room.

  • Services included with this rate: Single or double room with free high-speed wireless internet for COCAL attendees.
  • This hotel is the closest to the university.
  • In rooms: a work desk with lamp, cable TV, mini bar and iron/ironing board.
  • At hotel: wireless Internet access, a fitness center, cell phone rentals, an American Airlines ticket office, and on-site car rentals.
  • Breakfast is not included in the room rate.  There is a hotel buffet from 7:00 AM to 12:00 noon which costs $15 US (taxes are included). There is also a big shopping center and a variety of inexpensive places to eat very near the hotel.
  • Suggested tips: bellboys $1.50 US and housekeepers $1 US.
  • To make reservations, call (011) + 52 55 59 27 59 59 extension 1286, and mention “COCAL UNAM” to get the special price. You can pay by credit card.
    You may also pay by interbank transfer to BBVA Bancomer 0164753755 (Standardized Bank Code 012180001647537555).  Be aware of extra fees for international bank transfers.
    If you have questions, please contact the Sales Manager, Mrs. Rocio Guzmán
    Telephone (011) +52 (55) 56 06 42 11, fax 55 28 16 33.
  • For photos of the hotel, click here: http://www.radisson.com/mexico-city-hotel-df-14020/mexicoci/locations

Hotel Royal Pedregal
Periférico Sur 4363, México, D. F.
$82 US, taxes included, each night for a single-bed or double-bed room.

  • In rooms: air-conditioning, satellite TV, telephone, mini-bar, tea/coffee and internet access
  • At hotel: arcade, children’s club, car rent, fitness center and full health spa offering a variety of beauty and massage treatments, sauna, steam room and spa tub.
  • Breakfast is not included in the room rate.  There is a hotel buffet from 7:00 AM to 12:00 noon which costs $13 US (taxes are included). There is also a big shopping center and a variety of inexpensive places to eat very near the hotel.
  • To make reservations call 1-866-332-3590 and ask for either Reservation Manager, Erika Ruiz or Nancy Carrillo
    They are available 9:00 AM-6:00 PM, Monday to Friday, and 9:00 AM-1:00 PM Saturday and Sunday
    Mention “COCALV” to get the special price (make sure you say it exactly like this: C-O-C-A-L-V).  You can pay by credit card.
    Special price for COCAL attendees is good only through August 3rd, 2012.
  • For photos of the hotel, click here: http://royal-pedregal.hotel-rn.com/?lbl=ggl

COCAL Updates

Updates in brief and links

1. Would we be better off with no labor law that the one we have? [Is there a more to this story for the organizing of the over 80% of con- tingent faculty in the US currently with no union representation?]
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/13181/american_workers_shackled_to_labor_law

2. NLRB invites briefs on reexamination of Yeshiva case in current case of Park Point College and the faculty attempt there of organize with CWA
http://www.nlrb.gov/news/board-invites-briefs-question-faculty-member-status
and for background on that case http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/08/02/union

and for more analytical background http://chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/beyond-yeshiva-nlrb-tackles-both-church-and-state/31246

and from IHE http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/05/24/nlrb-action-suggests-possibility-reopening-yeshiva-case-faculty-unions

3. A provocative analysis of a famous social science experiment wirh great relevance to us by our WA colleague, Jack Longmate (see below)

4. The “New Economy Movement” by Gar Alperovitz, with some relevance to us
http://www.alternet.org/economy/155452/the_rise_of_the_new_economy_movement/?page=entire

5. Very good report on the Amazon shareholder meeting in Seattle and the protests and shareholder resolutions there, by Paul Haeder, “adjunct wage slave” activist at Amazon has twice fired whole groups of people for trying to unionize in the past. Use Powells (of Portland, OR) for your book purchases, through the union there, at http://www.ilwulocal5.com/support and the union gets a % of each sale.

6. Raritan Valley CC (NJ) adjunct union to protest at trustees meeting lack of progress in negotiations for contract.
http://www.nj.com/hunterdon-county-democrat/index.ssf/2012/05/adjunct_instructors_at_raritan.html

7. Duquesne adjunct union (USW) to have NLRB representational election in June-July, by mail.
http://triblive.com/news/1857832-74/duquesne-university-bargaining-election-usw-adjuncts-board-mail-unit-adjunct

8. TN to allow any professor, contingent or regular, to have automatic credential to teach in high schools
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2012/may/24/measure-allows-professors-to-teach-at-high/

9. Greek brain drain as all university adjuncts are laid off and progressive [read realistic] graduate econ program is cancelled.
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-05-24/greeces-brain-drain-has-begun

10. A blog by former adjunct on public higher ed in The Atlantic
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/05/the-good-news-and-the-bad-news-about-public-colleges/257615/

11. Repressive “Truncheon law” against Quebec student strikers causes backlash as both strike and popular support spread
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/may/24/quebec-truncheon-law-rebounds-student-strike

and a video, courtesy of Maria Peluso, pres. of the PT union a Concordia U in Montreal, of the now-daily demonstrations of what has become a social strike, not just limited to the privatization of higher education
http://indypendent.org/2012/05/23/red-square-revolt-quebec-students-strike
and this from Marie Blais of the largest contingent faculty union in Quebec
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/5/25/maple_spring_nearly_1_000_arrested

12. Some useful info on preparing student for the real world of work (like how to form a union and otherwise protect yourself on the job) see below

13. Kalamazoo CC (MI) adjuncts vote overwhelmingly for union rep by AFT local
http://tinyurl.com/d5x5jnl

14. Adjunct fired at Texas A&M (a public university) for objecting to cross displayed on top of university building
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2150442/University-professor-complained-crosses-campus-fired.html
and http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/05/29/adjunct-loses-courses-after-going-public-about-threats-she-received#.T8Tan5PAxzk.email

15. Interview with Guy Standing, author of The Precariat http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2012/s3426520.htm

16. “Revenge of the Underpaid Professors” on taking for profit companies into course selling
http://chronicle.com/article/Revenge-of-the-Underpaid/131919/

and some interesting comments and replies http://moreorlessbunk.wordpress.com/2012/05/29/suicide-squad-attack/

17. More protests in Quebec and Chile and I hear rumors of Mexico too?? [is neoliberalism, as least in education, being put on the ropes? http://www.mediacoop.ca/story/chilean-winter-maple-spring/10945

18. Quebec students were ordered to give the cops their planned march route and this is what they sent.
https://twitter.com/PWeiskel08/status/205679006195007489 (wait for the map to load)

19. Republican NLRB member resigns over leak to person connected to Romney
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303807404577430771449920122.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

20. Latest blog from the homeless adjunct (film roadtrip) http://junctrebellion.wordpress.com/tag/adjunct/

21. Higher ed professors and students in Brazil strike and ask for support
http://portal.andes.org.br/imprensa/noticias/imp-ult-783225410.pdf

Conference: Doing and Undoing Academic Labour

‘Doing and Undoing Academic Labour’

7 June 2012, 9:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

University of Lincoln (UK)

In recent decades, a wealth of information has been produced about academic labour: the financialisation of knowledge, diminution of professional autonomy and collegiality through managerialism and audit cultures; the subsumption of higher education into circulations of capital, proletarianisation of intellectual work, shift from dreams of enlightenment and emancipation to imperatives of ‘employability’, and experiences of alienation and anger amongst educators across the world.

This has also been a period of intensifying awareness about the significance of these processes, not only for teachers and students in universities, but for all labour and intellectual, social and political life as well. And now we watch the growth of a transnational movement that is inventing new ways of knowing and producing knowledge, new forms of education, and new possibilities for pedagogy to play a progressive role in struggles for alterantives within the academy and beyond.

Yet within the academy, the proliferation of critical work on these issues is not always accompanied by qualitative changes in everyday practice. The conditions of academic labour for many in the UK are indeed becoming more precarious and repressive – and in unequal measure across institutions and disciplines, and in patterns that retrench existing inequalities of gender, physical ability, class, race and sexuality. The critical analysis of academic labour promises much, but often remains disconnected from the ways we work in practice with others.

This conference brings together scholars and activists from a range of disciplines to discuss these problems, and to consider how critical knowledge about new forms of academic labour can be linked to struggles to humanise labour and knowledge production within and beyond the university.

Contributors

  • Mette Louise Berg – ‘Situated reflections: on gender and becoming an academic’
  • Anna Curcio – ‘Race and Gender in the Edu-Factory’
  • Richard Hall – ‘Educational technology and the war on public education’
  • Maria Do Mar Pereira – ‘(Im)Possible Labour? Critical Education in “Performative” Universities’
  • Dean Lockwood, Rob Coley and Adam O’Meara – ‘What a relief to have nothing to say…Academic labour and language in the rhizome’
  • Andrew McGettigan – ‘Value for money: degree awarding powers, standards and academic labour’
  • Justine Mercer and Howard Stevenson – ‘The frontier of control revisited: managerial authority and academic labour revisited’
  • Sara Motta – ‘The messiness of motherhood in the neoliberal university’
  • Gigi Roggero – ‘Occupy Knowledge’

Public / Free / Open
This conference is public, free and open to everyone; we warmly invite you to attend. Please register via the website so we know how many people will be attending. If you have any questions about the event, please contact Dr. Sarah Amsler at samsler@lincoln.ac.uk.

Getting here
Doing and Undoing Academic Labour will be held in Learning Landscapes, MB1019, the University of Lincoln. Click here for a map of the campus.

We hope to see you here!

Best wishes,

Dr. Sarah Amsler
Sr. Lecturer in Education
Centre for Educational Research and Development
University of Lincoln
Lincoln LN6 7TS

Faculty Unions Mobilize to Regain Lost Ground in Elections

The Chronicle: Faculty Unions Mobilize to Regain Lost Ground in Elections

Labor unions that represent college instructors are gearing up for several major battles at the polls in the coming months, out of a conviction that they must flex more muscle politically if they are to prevent further assaults on their members’ pocketbooks and bargaining power.

Although labor-related issues have long been key points of contention in state and national elections, labor activists in academe are especially geared up for the current election cycle in response to the attacks that fiscally conservative Republican lawmakers mounted against them after the elections of 2010.

How did Quebec Students Mobilize Hundreds of Thousands for Strike?

Labor-Relations Board Seeks Input on Faculty Unions at Private Colleges

Labor-Relations Board Seeks Input on Faculty Unions at Private Colleges

The National Labor Relations Board is soliciting legal briefs on the question of whether or not faculty members at private colleges should be considered managers, a distinction that determines whether they are eligible for union representation.

Since a 1980 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, National Labor Relations Board v. Yeshiva University, professors at private colleges have been typically classified as managers and, therefore, largely barred from forming unions. In asking for the briefs in its announcement this week, the NLRB said it was seeking help in responding to a case involving Point Park University, a private institution in Pittsburgh where faculty members petitioned for a union election and voted, in 2003, to be represented by a local chapter of the Communications Workers of America.

Workplace Issue #19 Launched

The Institute for Critical Education Studies is pleased to announce the launch of Workplace Issue #19, “Belonging and Non-Belonging: Costs and Consequences in Academic Lives.”  The new issue is accessible at Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor.

This special issue represents powerful narrative analyses of academic lives– narratives that are sophisticated and sensitive, gut-wrenching and heart-rendering. “Belonging and Non-Belonging” was guest edited by Michelle McGinn and features a rich array of collaborative articles by Michelle, Nancy E. Fenton, Annabelle L. Grundy, Michael Manley-Casimira, and Carmen Shields.

Thank you for the continuing interest in Workplace

Institute for Critical Education Studies
https://blogs.ubc.ca/ices/

CFP Journal of Research Practice: Special issue on research assistantships.

Proposals are now being accepted for a special issue about research assistantships for the international, transdisciplinary Journal of Research Practice (JRP).

Graduate students, academics, professionals, community members, and other research partners are invited to share their experiences, insights, and concerns around research assistantships. This special issue is intended to showcase the multilayered complexities of research assistantships from different perspectives and across different disciplines. We encourage themes related to research learning, mentoring, working dynamics, power issues, researcher identity, communication between research assistants and researchers (and other team members), as well as the varied legal, ethical, and moral issues associated with the employment and education of research assistants.

Proposals of about 500 words will be accepted until July 15, 2012. Authors of selected proposals will be requested to develop their proposals into manuscripts by February 1, 2013, to be considered for the special issue.

For more information, please consult
http://jrp.icaap.org/index.php/jrp/announcement/view/9

We look forward to your engagement.

Michelle K. McGinn & Ewelina K. Niemczyk, Guest editors
Faculty of Education, Brock University, Canada
ewelina.niemczyk@brocku.ca

COCAL Updates

Updates in brief and links

1. A good short discussion about strikes and general strikes, public and private. Appropriate for us and for Mayday. Go out and make some noise on May Day. See below.

2. Latest edition of Too Much, the newsletter about the superrich and economic inequality
http://www.toomuchonline.org/tmweekly.html

3. A very good post on the issue of conflicts/commonalities of interest with FTTT faculty, joint unions, etc, by our wise friend in Vancouver, Frank Cosco. He posted this as after a notice of the new combined union forming at U of OR and subsequent disucssion on the ADJ list. See below

4. More report, on workshop on contingent faculty at Green River College, WA. http://youtu.be/JptEezAjvjQ.
and see below

5. A reminder of the roots of May Day and why it is both dangerous and important to teach about it (and other labor history)
http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=10111

6. And more on May Day http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=10113

7. And a poem for May Day, from Christy Rodgers at Whatif@igc.org (see below)

8. For-profits schools fighting proposed regulations in CA
http://www.baycitizen.org/government/story/more-transparency-sought-vocational/?utm_source=Newsletters&utm_campaign=a8f60dbca3-May_2_Daily_Newsletter&utm_medium=email

9. Colorado State Adjuncts: the new majority http://www.collegian.com/index.php/article/2012/05/colorado_state_adjuncts_the_new_majority

10. CA State U faculty in SFA vote overwhlemingly for rolling strike authorization
http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2012/05/03/california-state-u-faculty-authorizes-rolling-strikes

11. Walmart forced to pay millions in lost overtime. [Is there a lesson here for us?]
http://www.laborradio.org/Channels/Story.aspx?ID=1697462

12. Kalamazoo CCC (MI) contingents file for union recognition with AFT local.
http://www.mlive.com/news/kalamazoo/index.ssf/2012/05/part-time_instructors_forming.html

13. What a difference did MayDay make?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/may/02/occupy-wall-street-panel-may-day

14. A new adjunct reflects on our status
http://www.sentinelsource.com/opinion/columnists/guest/is-there-any-hope-for-college-adjuncts/article_a0c2b645-e176-5c1a-bc9c-d2aaed39b71c.html

15. The April 20 “The Solution to Faculty Apartheid” conference held at Green River Community College in Auburn, WA, which featured Keith Hoeller, Frank Cosco, Kathryn Re, and me, is described in a feature in that college’s student newspaper, The Current, at http://issuu.com/thecurrcentgrcc/docs/issue10volume46. Click on the issue and then advance to page 10. It has a nice picture of Frank and Keith.
To view the Youtube video of the conference, select http://youtu.be/JptEezAjvjQ.
Jack Longmate

16. Lettert exchange in CHE http://chronicle.com/article/At-Salem-State-U-We/131751/

17. Student debt ande adjunct wages
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matthew-ross-smith/student-debt-loan-interest-rates_b_1474141.html?ref=money

18. PT lecturers in Taiwan protest wage gap http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2012/05/02/2003531800

19. Contingent faculty on welfare http://chronicle.com/article/From-Graduate-School-to/131795/

20. Adjunct Hero http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/education-oronte-churm/adjunct-hero-andrew-mcfadyen-ketchum

Updates in Full

1. https://t.co/qoRke0ut

“If you want a General Strike organize your co-workers”
An Interview with Joe Burns, author of Revivingthe Strike

at Lawrence, Mass.Bread and Roses Centennial April 28th, 2012

by Camilo Viveiros

Introduction: Many in the Occupy movement have called for a general strike on May 1stbut most Occupy activists aren’t involved in labor organizations or organizedin their workplaces. While General Assemblies may be somewhat effectiveinstitutions at reaching the agreement of assorted activists around future directactions, workplace stoppages require the large scale participation of workersin decision-making structures. The interview below gives some organizing advicefor those who have called the general strike. I hope that this interview willinspire Occupy activists to consider the difficult work ahead that is needed tobuild democracy in the workplace. We are the 99%!

Camilo: You’ve written this very important book Reviving the Strike that gives us a lot of insight about some ofthe challenges, but also the importance of strikes as a tactic. Thank youfor your work promotingthe increased use of the strike as a tool to use building working class power. In”Reviving the Strike” you argue that the labor movement must revive effectivestrikes based on the traditional tactics of labor– stopping production andworkplace-based solidarity. As someone who sees the strike as avital tactic to achieve economic justice I want to ask you a few questions.

Right now Occupyand other activists across the country have been agitating for a general strikeon May 1st. Resolutions have been passedat General Assemblies around the country.

There are alot of new activists that have joined the Occupy Movement, some never havinghad any organizing experience or labor organizing experience. Could you share some of the examples of creativeways that newer activists and established labor activists can think about thiscoming year, maybe toward next May 1st or toward the remote futureof how people can embrace new creative strategies to organize toward strikesinvolving larger numbers of folks.

Joe Burns: First of all, I think the fact that people are talking about this strikeand the general strike is a good thing because it starts raising people’sconsciousness about where our real source of power is in society, which isultimately working people have the power to stop production because workingpeople are the ones who produce things of value in society. On the other hand, if you look back throughhistory about how strikes happened, how in particular general strikes happened,what you’ll find is that they’re organized in the workplace by organizersorganizing their co-workers. And that’sreally the key aspect here. If you lookat how most general strikes in the United States have come about, it’s becausethere’s been strike activity in the local community, people have built bonds ofsolidarity. And then, let’s say oneLocal goes out on strike, they put out an appeal for other Locals to help them,and then eventually it breaks out beyond the bounds of the dispute between justthem and their employer and becomes a generalized dispute between all theworkers in the city and the employers in the city. So it really happens as part of a process ofsolidarity being built step by step.

“It hasn’treally happened where people have put out a general call saying let’s strike,let’s do a general strike on this day. “

It hasn’treally happened where people have put out a general call saying let’s strike,let’s do a general strike on this day.

One of thethings that I focus on in my book, is the need to refocus on the strike. And to do that, that really takes workplaceorganizing in both union and non-union shops, where people go in and do thehard work of talking to their co-workers, forming an organization, andultimately walking out together. I thinkit’s scary to do, to strike, to ask people in these isolated workplaces tostrike all by themselves makes it very difficult.

“…people goin and do the hard work of talking to their co-workers, forming anorganization, and ultimately walking out together”

Camilo: What do you think it would take to actually organize, to bring back thecapacity to have a general strike in the United States?

Joe Burns: In order to have a general strike I think we need to have a workers’movement that’s based in the workplace. If you look at, in the early 1970’s there’s a good book called Rebel Rank and File that a number of folks edited and it’s got articles. It’s really about how the generation of 60’s leftists,a lot of them went back into the workplaces and did organizing, and that in theearly 70’s there were tons of Wildcat strikes which aren’t authorized by theunion leadership. Some of them, like thePostal Strike of 1970 involved 200,000 postal workers striking against thefederal government, in an illegal strike. But that didn’t happen just by itself, it happened because people wentin to their workplaces and organized it. So, how are we going to get a general strike in this country? I think it’s going to be because we redevelopa labor movement or a broader workers’ movement that’s based on thestrike. I think the efforts of Occupyfor the class-based sort of thinking will help in that. Ultimately, though, I think we need at somepoint to devote our attention to the workplace, because the workplace is thesite of where the strike and struggle need to generate from.

Camilo: During the takeover of the capital building in Wisconsin somefolks speculated that what should have happened is that public sector workerswho were under attack should have gone on strike. But in some ways public sector workers areeven more restricted around strike guidelines than private sector workers andso they have less right to strike. Whatare your thoughts around public sector workers who are really bearing a largebrunt of the attack on labor over the last year, and what would the challengesbe to building the solidarity necessary to consider strikes of public sectorworkers?

Joe Burns: I think what you find studying labor history is that even though strikeswere illegal up until 1970, Hawaii became the first state to authorize a legalstrike, regardless of that workers struck by the hundreds of thousands, publicsector workers in the 1960’s. And infact the laws giving them the right to strike were done after the fact, andthey were only passed because workers were striking anyway and legislaturesdecided to set up an orderly procedure to govern strikes. So what you find is hundreds of thousands ofteachers striking throughout the 1960’s, and that’s really how public employeesbuilt their unions. And they did it inthe face of injunctions, so a judge may order them back to work and startjailing leaders, but like in Washington state in a rural community all theteachers showed up together, everyone who was on strike, and told the judge toarrest them all. And the judge backeddown because it didn’t look good.

So that’sreally how we won our unions to begin with in the public sector, in the 1960’s,so when you fast forward to today and look at strikes in the public sector, whenyou look at Wisconsin in particular, clearly the Wisconsin teachers is what reallykicked off the whole Wisconsin battle. They organized calling in sick, and two-thirds of Madison teachersdidn’t show up to work and that’s what really kind of fueled the beginning ofthe takeover of the capitol, along with the grad students and so forth. So it was based on a strike. Some people wanted that to expand into ageneral strike, but that really wasn’t going to happen unless the people mostinvolved which were the public employees, took the lead on that. And they chose, and made a strategic decisionafter four days to go back to work and fight by other means. I think that’s the strategy that they wantedto do and that made sense for them.

Camilo: With union density not at its peak what are the some of theopportunities for non-union organizations to use striking as a tactic? What aresome of the lessons we can learn from the Wildcat strikes of the 70’s, and howcan we have enough flexibility to try to go beyond the stranglehold that Laborlaw has on workers’ organizations right now?

Joe Burns: I think there’s been a lot of good movement in recent yearsto look at different forms of worker organization beyond the traditionalunions. So you’ve had workers’ centers,you’ve had various alternative unions, the IWW and so forth, all looking at howdo you organize particular groups of workers. The question that all of them eventually run into is, you can have youralternative form of organization but ultimately it’s a question of power, anddo you have the power to improve workers’ lives. And to do that traditionally, that’s been atthe workplace the ability to strike or otherwise financially harm anemployer. So I think part of what movingforward we’ll see with the revival of the workers’ movement in this country isa lot of coming together of these different forms of organizations, embracingtactics such as the strike. And reallysome of them are the best situated to do it, because they don’t have the hugetreasuries and buildings and conservative officials that you find in a lot ofunions.

“…ultimatelyit’s a question of power, and do you have the power to improve workers’ lives.”

Camilo: So, what would your advice be to a non-union Occupy activistwho maybe voted for a general strike during a general assembly, or who wants tosee a general strike come to fruition at some point, what would your suggestionsbe for those activists that are out there who are seeing the need for thistactic to be embraced.

Joe Burns: I think go into your workplace. The strike and strike activity needs to berooted in the workplaces, and if it’s based on people outside of the workplacecalling on people to engage in strike activity, that’s not going to work. Not saying you need to just bury your head insome local place, you need to have a broader perspective and broader activism,but if you really want to see a general strike, go out and organize workers,your co-workers or however you want to do it to build forms of organizationin the workplace.

Joe Burns is staff attorney and negotiator, withthe Association of Flight Attendants/ Communications Workers of America andauthor of Reviving the Strike.http://www.revivingthestrike.org

Camilo Viveiros has been a multi-racial economicjustice organizer for over 20 years. Hehas developed organizing trainings for the Occupy movementwww.popularassembly.org and does campaign and leadership development,popular education, strategy and direct action trainings for grassroots groups. 401-338-1665 camilo@activism2organizing.org

On Sun, Apr 29, 2012 at 7:52 PM, Michael wrote:
May Day has generated a lot of talk about “general strikes.” Here’s what the unions in Ontario said about what it took to organize a real general strike there years ago (attached).

General strikes are like heaven. Everyone who talks about it isn’t going there.

To be effective, movements need to be credible in the eyes of their constituents. When they start to speak in terms that are hyperbolic, bombastic, exaggerated, flatulent, or wishful thinking, they lose credibility.

The class struggle is not a ‘dream state’ in which one gets to conjure up fantastic plans and have them turned into reality. Unlike the little engine that could, repeating the words frequently does not make it possible to do what social reality says can’t be done(in that moment).

Magical thinking is not a good substitute for careful planning, painstaking organizing, and the demonstrated readiness of massive numbers of people to take responsibility for constructing a new social reality.

General strikes are always mass protests. All mass protests, however, are not general strikes. It pays to know the difference.

Michael

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3. Evening
It is good news when a new union gets going…it’s a really difficult process with lots of emotion, fears and doubts. Not nearly as tough as it was in the past but still tough.

In our post-sec world the fear of conflict of interest as this thread is called is real because single units composed of the “in” group and the “out” group too often haven’t measured up to the unity implicit in the word union. There are too many examples of the “out” group ending up even weaker. The result is that people sadly end up in the seemingly-bizarre but realistic position of arguing that two unions have to be better than one.

Any objective view cannot justify the inequities of privileging overtime for one group of members while denying pay equity for the other. The same goes for the privileging of one group with the right to continually evaluate the other (acting as the worst type of unprofessional manager) in ways that are hard to distinguish from bullying.

Doesn’t have to be that way. Hope the Oregon effort ends up on the better side of the history around these efforts. It won’t be at all easy for a single unit. They would have to tread new ground just to make life less contingent for their contingents. To create a really equitable situation will probably require new vision and concerted effort by the safer and more secure full-time leaders over a couple of decades.

The 20 or so federated post-sec unions in FPSE in BC, Canada, have worked hard at it for most of thirty years and still can’t point to wall to wall success although we have some significant examples of equitable situations. What started as a system of only community colleges has seen a half dozen of its institutions morphed into universities with mixed research, teaching and service workloads within “teaching” university contexts. Sad to report that the unions in a couple of the new universities have succumbed to the strange allure the privileged and stratified model but happily most of them have retained the equitable model that is in the genes of FPSE locals.

Last year, FPSE developed a set of bargaining policies and principles for universities. They can be viewed at the fpse.ca website (type university bargaining principles or something similar into the site’s search box). It is an attempt to provide useful guidelines for approaching the challenges of university bargaining. (Questions and comments welcome.)

In the Program for Change (check it out at the vccfa.ca website from May) Jack Longmate and I have set out a wide longterm agenda/menu for change that can really make life better for folks. There are successes in the States to point to. Many aspects of work life are under the control of faculty and can start to change in 2012 without any cost at all, with or without a union. We are not completely helpless.

In a unionist view, there’s nothing magical about the research or service part of one’s work. If it’s work that the boss paying for, it’s work. Those faculty leading unions need to think as unionists first and faculty second.

Frank Cosco
VCCFA & FPSE
Vancouver

Quoting Jack Longmate :

Hi Karen,

Pleased that we have concurrence about overloads. With course overloads, it
makes it very difficult for full-timers to argue that they are overworked
and underpaid, so the practice amounts to being self-inflicting wound apart
from contributing to the dysfunction of the system. To get those full-time
faculty invested in teaching course overloads to recognize that is easier
said than done. I don’t believe it’s ever happened voluntarily. (When the
limit on course overloads was imposed on my campus–no more than 167 percent
of full-time workload–one union officer complained about how this
restriction would cause an economic hardship for her family. That is, she
had customarily taught about 167 percent of a full-time load.)

In Washington community and technical colleges, part-time faculty are
restricted by a workload cap and cannot teach full-time at a given
institution period, so a simply status conversion, unfortunately, is a not a
realistic at present. In Vancouver, by contrast, conversion from
probationary “term” status to non-probationary “regular” status is a natural
progression. It’s helped by the fact that part-time and full-time faculty
are paid from the same salary scale and have the same set of expectations
(unlike here where part-timers are hired to “just teach”).

—–Original Message—–
From: adj-l-bounces@adj-l.org [mailto:adj-l-bounces@adj-l.org] On Behalf Of
Karen Thompson
Sent: Saturday, April 28, 2012 5:40 PM
To: Contingent Academics Mailing List
Cc: Contingent Academics Mailing List
Subject: Re: [adj-l] Conflicts of Interest

Of course there should be no overloads for full-timers (except perhaps for
summer), but faculty need to negotiate a variety of ways to make sure their
salaries are deservingly high. Part-time faculty who teach a full-time load
must be converted to full-time. Limits on part-time teaching are necessary
to make sure those teaching s full-time load are considered full-time
faculty. These are simultaneous goals in negotiations. Again full-time and
part-time faculty can be on the se page here: limits AND conversion.

Sent from my iPhone

On Apr 28, 2012, at 6:58 PM, “Jack Longmate”
wrote:

Hi Mayra,

Course overloads are certainly allowable through collective bargaining.
At
my college, Olympic, the current CBA imposes some limits on full-time
faculty overloads: no more than 167 percent of a full-time load. Since
its
ratification, at least one full-timer for one term taught at 297 percent,
that is, approximately three times a standard full-time workload. I wrote
about that in http://www.cpfa.org/journal/10fall/cpfa-fall10.pdf, pages 12
and 9. (Before that limitation was enacted, I had heard rumors of similar
percentages about some full-time faculty.) But while I’m pleased that my
college has imposed some limits, those limits only affect overloads in
excess of 167 percent–those between 100 and 166 percent, from the
standpoint of the CBA, are consider normal and routine and perfectly fine.

When full-time faculty are able to teach course overloads at will, there’s
very, very little chance for job security to be extended to part-time
faculty, because if part-time faculty jobs were actually protected, it
would
interfere with the ability to teach course overloads. This is sort of the
gist of the conflict of interests.

The other side of the coin are caps on the workload of part-time faculty.
You’re probably aware that in California, there’s been considerable debate
and legislative action regarding the cap on part-time workload–I believe
it’s no more than 67 percent that a part-time instructor can teach in a
given community college district. In Washington state, the cap is a bit
more liberal–I believe it’s 85 percent at my college–but I don’t think
our
pay is close to that of California’s.

In Washington, caps exist in order to avoid cases of backdoor tenure. In
Washington state, by teaching full-time for a period of time, one can
satisfy one of the statutory requirements of tenure. In order to ensure
that it never happens, colleges impose these caps.

In my forays into possible reform of the state tenure laws–to eliminate
the
caps in order to thereby enable those who want and need more work–one of
the obstacles offered by one union lobbyist has been an aversion to
opening
up the state’s tenure statutes for the fear being that tenure might run
the
risk of getting eliminated altogether, which closes the discussion.

The solution, which would avoid the in-fighting that Karen alludes to,
would

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4. The remarkable workshop entitled “Teach-in on Adjunct Faculty” that took
place at Green River Community College on April 20, 2012, moderated by Keith
Hoeller and Kathryn Re, is available for viewing at

One highlight is Keith’s reading of a statement of support from Cornel West.
It’s at about the 0:01:00 mark.

Frank Cosco, president of the Vancouver Community College Faculty
Association, speaks on “Abolishing the Two-track System”; his remarks begins
at about the 0:06:00 mark.

My portion, “The Overload Debate: Conflict of Interest between Full- and
Part-time Faculty” begins at 0:20:30 is synchronized with a set of
Powerpoint slides–should anyone wish a copy, please let me know.

The video was masterfully edited by Mr. Dave Prenovost.

Best wishes,

Jack Longmate

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7.

A Poem for May Day

By “Mr. Toad” former Detroit autoworker, 1980
(with thanks to Shaping San Francisco)
The eight hour day is not enough;
We are thinking of more and better stuff.
So here is our prayer and here is our plan,
We want what we want and we’ll take what we can.

Down with wars both small and large,
Except for the ones where we’re in charge:
Those are the wars of class against class,
Where we get a chance to kick some ass..

For air to breathe and water to drink,
And no more poison from the kitchen sink.
For land that’s green and life that’s saved
And less and less of the earth that’s paved.

No more women who are less than free,
Or men who cannot learn to see
Their power steals their humanity
And makes us all less than we can be.

For teachers who learn and students who teach
And schools that are kept beyond the reach
Of provosts and deans and chancellors and such
And Xerox and Kodak and Shell, Royal Dutch.

An end to shops that are dark and dingy,
An end to bosses whether good or stingy,
An end to work that produces junk,
An end to junk that produces work,
And an end to all in charge – the jerks.

For all who dance and sing, loud cheers,
To the prophets of doom we send some jeers,
To our friends and lovers we give free beers,
And to all who are here, a day without fears.

So, on this first of May we all should say
That we will either make it or break it.
Or, to put this thought another way,
Let’s take it easy, but let’s take it.

Cal State students begin hunger strike to protest cuts

The New York Times: At California State, Protesters Start a Fast

Angry about tuition increases and cuts in courses and enrollment, a dozen students at California State University have taken their protest beyond marches — their usual tactic — and declared a hunger strike.

On Thursday, the second day of the fast, supporters were preparing a kale, apple and celery juice concoction for the protesters at the Northridge campus. The students have pledged to forgo solid food for at least a week, perhaps longer if the administration does not move to meet some of their demands, which include a five-year moratorium on student fee increases and a rollback of executive salaries to 1999 levels.

Cal State faculty authorizes strike

LA Times: Cal State faculty authorizes strike

The union representing California State University faculty announced Wednesday that its members have voted to authorize a two-day strike should negotiations over salary, class sizes and other issues continue to stall.

The vote could result in two-day rolling strikes at the 23 campuses, most likely beginning in the fall, according to the California Faculty Assn.

StatsCan: Female university professors make less money than males

Female university professors make less money than males

University faculties have become more inclusive of women in recent decades, though their salaries still trail those of their male counterparts, new data shows.

Figures from Statistics Canada show the average salary of full-time faculty at Canadian universities was $115,513 in the 2010-11 school year. That was up 2.8 per cent from the previous year.

Among male teaching staff, the average pay was $120,378, and among females, $106,970 Ñ or 88.9 per cent of males’ pay.

COCAL Updates

COCAL updates in brief and links from Joe Berry:

1. Faculty at U of OR get agreement on mixed bargaining unit recognition (it includes ALL contingents) joint AFT/AAUP affiliate
http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/newsroom/2012PRs/UOAgree.htm

2. Yet another article supports what most of us in the union movement have long said, as wealth goes up, empathy declines [or “the rich are different from you and me, they have more money…” and less empathy for others.]
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-wealth-reduces-compassion

3. Ad for adjunct job specifies that the person not be teaching anywhere else and reactions.
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/04/25/usc-job-ad-rankles-adjuncts
and http://www.nationalreview.com/phi-beta-cons/296957/adjuncts-alarmed-over-usc-job-posting-nathan-harden
and http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/confessions-community-college-dean/mandatory-monogamy-adjuncts

4. More on union recognition at U of OR
http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2012/04/25/faculty-union-advances-u-oregon

5. Very interesting contrast in US press coverage between French and US elections. Are there lessons here for how the press frames our issues in higher ed? (such as making the extreme privatization and casualization trends of US seem normal here, but covering them differently, if at all, overseas.) The question, of course, is how to change or challenge this press frame.
http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=10095

6. Student veterans group revokes charters of locals at over 20 for-profit colleges
http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2012/04/26/veterans-group-lists-profits-where-it-revoked-charters

7. Capella U (a for profit) to offer college credit (classes) online to higher school students for a fee. [Is there anything not for sale if one has enough money? Didn’t Marx say something about “All that is solid melts into the air?”]
http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2012/04/26/capella-posts-25000-free-tutorials-through-sophia

8. The for-profits’ war on philanthropy
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2012/04/26/essay-profit-colleges-undermine-traditional-role-philanthropy
http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2012/04/26/capella-posts-25000-free-tutorials-through-sophia

9. Ten Ways for a non-tenure track faculty to get fired [some of these are good, some obvious and some just plain wrong IMHO, especially the one about not trusting (some) “help” (clerical staff). They can be our best allies, individually and collectively.]
http://chronicle.com/article/10-Ways-to-Get-Yourself-Fired/131630/

10. New memo reveals union suppression at Kaplan U in NYC
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/04/19/1084585/-BREAKING-Kaplan-University-Suppressing-Union-Organizing-In-NYC

11. Blog from union organizer at East-West U in Chicago
http://academeblog.org/2012/03/21/shooting-itself-in-the-foot-east-west-universitys-anti-union-campaign/

12. More on new play about for-profits
http://www.campusprogress.com/articles/theatre_of_the_absurd_former_for-profit_college_advisor_takes_his_stor/

13. Update on massive Quebec student strike agains huge tuition increases
http://www.marxist.com/quebec-revolt-analysis-april-2012.htm

14. Kaplan and other for-profits were part of ALEC and their ED task force
http://truth-out.org/news/item/8766-washington-posts-kaplan-and-other-for-profit-colleges-joined-alec

15. AAUP summer institute http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/about/events/si2012.htm

16. More on Gren River CC (WA) adjunct apartheid event and disposable teachers
http://dissidentvoice.org/2012/04/disposable-teachers/

Quebec Students Endure Despite Police State Repression

Photo by Peter McCabe, The Gazette

After 11 weeks of the student movement in Quebec, marked by 185,000 in protests and strikes, momentum is increasing as the Charest government is nervously clamping down. With all of the ingredients of a revolution, police state tactics are marring what would otherwise be forceful, yet peaceful, dissent in a mass movement for political change.  Joel Bergman reports that

The scope of the repression by the police is almost unheard of in Quebec — one would have to go back 40 years to see anything of this magnitude.  Over the course of one week alone, we saw upwards of 600 arrests at various campuses and demonstrations.  At the Université du Québec à Outaouais (UQO) on 19th April, the police broke the picket lines and locked the students out of the campus.  A few hundred students soon arrived on buses to demonstrate in solidarity with their brothers and sisters. Teachers soon joined, as well.  The police unleashed brutal repression on them with a few students and professors left bloody from baton hits to the head.  The demonstration of around 800 students then held a mass assembly and decided to march on the police lines and reclaim the university. They marched on the police, beating them back and they managed to reclaim the university for a short period of time before more police forces were called in and mass arrests commenced.  Approximately 300 ended up arrested at UQO.

Over the last 3 days, police have been especially brutal in clamping down on the protesters.  Yet despite the pattern of intimidation and arrests, the movement is growing in momentum and will.  High school students, looking at their future, are joining in with a presence in the movement that we’ve not seen in North America since the 1960s.

Read more In Defence of Marxism and Montreal Gazette

Quebec student strike contines

The Chronicle of Higher Education: The Biggest Student Uprising You’ve Never Heard Of
April 23, 2012, 5:32 am

By Marc Bousquet

250,000 students pack the streets in largest demo in Quebec history

A guest post by Lilian Radovac. (BTW, SoCal readers may want to know that Marc is speaking at UC-Irvine a 4 p.m. 4/23 on New Media/New Protests.)

On an unseasonably warm day in late March, aquarter of a million postsecondary students and their supporters gathered in the streets of Montreal to protest against the Liberal government’s plan to raise tuition fees by 75% over five years.  As the crowd marched in seemingly endless waves from Place du Canada, dotted with the carrés rouges, or red squares, that have become the symbol of the Quebec student movement, it was plainly obvious that this demonstration was the largest in Quebec’s, and perhaps Canadian, history.

The March 22nd Manifestation nationale was not the culmination but the midpoint of a 10-week-long student uprising that has seen, at its height, over 300,000 college and university students join an unlimited and superbly coordinated general strike.  As of today, almost 180,000 students remain on picket lines in departments and faculties that have been shuttered since February, not only in university-dense Montreal but also insmaller communities throughout Quebec.
Aerial news footage of the March 22nd Manifestation nationale

Manifesto for universities that live up to their missions

Manifesto for universities that live up to their missions (to sign click here)

Publicly subsidized universities ought to fulfil three missions – teaching, research, and service to the community – as defined by their objectives and their mutual implication.

For signatories of the present manifesto these missions have the following objectives:

  • preserving knowledge as accumulated through history, producing new knowledge and passing on both old and new knowledge to as many students as possible along with the questions they have prompted;
  • training students in research methodologies, in critical analysis of the social consequences of scientific issues, practices and findings, in the development of free thinking, avoiding any form of dogma, with the common good as an objective as well as the acquisition of competence for a responsible professional activity;
  • contributing to the reflection of social systems on themselves, particularly on the kind of model they use for their own development.

Nowadays current modes of governance in universities run against the above definition of what a university ought to be. Their mantras are efficiency, profitability, competitiveness. Universities are invited to become the agents of maximum production in as little time as possible, to turn out scientists and professionals that are competitive, flexible and adapted to market demands – the improvement of humanity is then measured in terms of economic growth and technical breakthroughs, and the progress of universities in terms of ‘critical mass.’

Consequently, universities are subjected to more and more frequent international evaluations and audits that measure their respective productivity and contribute to their positions in various rankings.

Though they do not deny that university practices and their effects have to be assessed, the signatories note that current evaluations are based on narrow criteria, that are often formal and fashioned on standardized practices; that the competition they foster among universities leads to a race to publish, with the number of published papers sometimes prevailing on their interest; that procedures involve cumbersome red tape with recurrent reminders that the logic universities have to comply with is the logic of markets and globalization.

Beyond the minimum endowments granted to universities, the selection of research that can be financed is largely determined by calls for tenders and the size and reputation of the teams that apply. Such a situation distorts the purpose of university research, which ought to be open to projects carried by small, relatively unknown teams. Rather, it favours the submission of well presented projects rather than of projects that could further knowledge.

Subsidies granted to universities often depend on student populations. In the case of a closed envelope, this leads to ‘hunting for students,’ which in turn may entail a lesser quality teaching as well as the risk of doing away with important but small departments.

University teachers are expected to explain what profession-related forms of expertise they are to develop in students. While it is imperative to teach students the skills they will need in their professional activities, highlighting these skills might lead teachers to overly stress utilitarian and saleable knowledge at the expense of basic sciences and of reflexive and critical knowledge.

The involvement of university staff in domestic management and representation is more and more numerous and encroaches on services to society at large.

The above mentioned elements contribute to increase the strain to which university staff are subjected and may possibly destroy the ideals of once passionate teachers and researchers.

To support their vision of the university, the signatories of the present manifesto call for the following measures:

  • making sure that university research is allowed the kind of freedom that is necessary to any finding, the right to waver and the right to fail;
  • reaching a correct balance between critical and operational knowledge and between general and profession-related skills in the various study courses offered by the universities;
  • promoting services to society;
  • reining in the production of red-tape, the rat-race and other stress factors that prevent university staff from carrying out their duties properly;
  • assessing university practices and their consequences in view of the specific objectives of universities and not of market expectations.

To meet these requirements they consider that it is necessary:

  • to assert the objectives of the university as defined above;
  • to provide global subsidies for higher education;
  • to use criteria for awarding public money that promote diversity in research and that preserve the quality and plurality of study courses on offer.

They call upon:

Public authorities and academic bodies to recognize that universities ought to try and achieve objectives that are in tune with their identity and social function, and provide the means thereof;

University staff to oppose measures and practices that go against the positions defined in this manifesto; to promote an in-depth analysis of the growing unease among university staff, of its causes and of possible solutions; to participate in concrete actions – to be decided on depending on contexts – to put forward their positions and proposals wherever necessary; to support movements and actions outside the university that aim at the common good.

(to sign click here)

U. of California at San Diego Settles Racial-Harassment Complaints

U. of California at San Diego Settles Racial-Harassment Complaints

The University of California at San Diego has reached a settlement with the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education after an investigation of racial-harassment complaints on the campus.

The complaints stemmed from several incidents, including public displays of hanging nooses and a Ku Klux Klan-style hood, that began last year and seemed to take aim at African-American students. The incidents prompted student protests, and the president of the University of California system, Mark G. Yudof, responded to the apparent racism on his Facebook page. “It has no place in civilized society, and it will not be tolerated—not on this particular campus, not on any University of California campus,” he wrote.

Cal State faculty holds vote to authorize strike

Cal State faculty holds vote to authorize strike

LOS ANGELES—Some 24,000 California State University employees are beginning a two-weeklong vote on whether to authorize their union to declare a strike after 22 months of negotiations failed to yield a new contract.

Members of the California Faculty Association, which represents professors, librarians, coaches and counselors across the system’s 23 campuses, start voting Monday and have until April 27 to say whether they authorize the union’s board of directors to call a two-day strike at an unspecified date.