The New York Times: 3 Iranian-Americans Charged With Spying
Three Iranian-Americans, including U.S. academic Haleh Esfandiari, have been charged with endangering national security and espionage, Iran’s judiciary spokesman said Tuesday.
The charges, which were denied by relatives and colleagues, were another example of Iran’s stepped up accusations that the U.S. is trying to use internal critics to destabilize the government.
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Posted in International
The Chronicle: 5 Views of the AAUP
The American Association of University Professors has been around for 92 years, and still hangs on to its reputation as the premier faculty association and defender of academic freedom. But starting in the 1970s, after it entered into the realm of collective bargaining, its membership began to dwindle, even as academe continued to grow.
As the organization works to put management and financial problems behind it and seeks to attract new members, The Chronicle asked professors about their relationship — or lack of one — with the AAUP. Here is a sampling of those views.
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Posted in Unions
The Chronicle: The AAUP at 92: Amid Declining Membership, a Venerable Organization Faces Battles on Many Fronts
Ernst Benjamin has already retired once from the American Association of University Professors. He has a white beard and receding white hair. He just turned 70.
But these days, he is back in the general secretary’s corner office, in a job he gave up more than a decade ago. He was called in late last year to help steer the association through management and financial crises that threaten its very existence.
“I didn’t have anyone else to go to,” says Cary Nelson, president of the AAUP.
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Posted in Unions
The Boston Globe: UMass faculty, students boo Card
Hundreds of students and faculty erupted in a chorus of boos yesterday when Andrew Card, President Bush’s former chief of staff, rose to accept an honorary doctorate in public service at the University of Massachusetts.
The protesters blamed Card in part for the Iraq war.
The boos and catcalls, including those from faculty who stood on stage with Card, drowned out provost Charlena Seymour’s remarks as she awarded the degree. Protesters say Card lied to the American people in the early days of the Iraq war and should not have been honored at the graduate student commencement.
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Posted in Government
Inside Higher Ed: Key GOP Senator Warns Spellings
For months, ever since the U.S. Education Department began an aggressive push to change federal rules governing accreditation, higher education lobbyists have been urging members of Congress to rein the department in. Using the federal regulatory process to force accreditors to set minimum levels of acceptable performance by institutions on measures of how much their students learn, and to ensure that the institutions they oversee do not discriminate in their transfer policies against academic credits of students from nationally accredited institutions, exceeds the executive branch’s authority and tramples on Congress’s, college groups have argued.
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Posted in Accountability
Inside Higher Ed: The Ward Churchill Endgame
When a faculty panel at the University of Colorado at Boulder last year found Ward Churchill guilty of repeated and intentional instances of research misconduct, the committee included in its report a metaphor for the way many people view the Churchill case:
If a police officer doesn’t like the bumper sticker on a driver’s car and so stops the driver for speeding, is a ticket justified as long as the driver was really speeding?
Hank Brown, president of the University of Colorado System, gave his answer on Friday and it’s clear that to Brown, speeding is speeding. He formally recommended that Churchill, who has tenure as an ethnic studies professor at Boulder, be fired. In a detailed letter to the Board of Regents, Brown said that Churchill’s violations of academic research norms were too serious and too numerous to ignore — regardless of the circumstances that led to all the scrutiny.
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Posted in Academic freedom, Free speech, Tenure & Promotion
The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education: Black Faculty in Higher Education: Still Only a Drop in the Bucket
BHE surveyed the nation’s highest-ranked research universities, the most selective liberal arts colleges, and the 50 flagship state universities to determine their levels of black faculty. Overall, the liberal arts colleges have the most racially diverse faculties. Mount Holyoke College had the highest percentage of black faculty of any of the 100 colleges and universities surveyed.
Nationwide, just over 5 percent of all full-time faculty members at colleges and universities in the United States are black. This percentage has increased slightly over the past decade. But the percentage of black faculty at almost all the nation’s high-ranking universities is significantly below the national average of 5.2 percent.
JBHE recently surveyed the nation’s highest-ranked universities to determine the number and percentage of blacks on their faculties. We received responses from 26 high-ranking universities. MIT and CalTech declined to provide updated data on their black faculty.*
This Year’s Results
Of the 26 high-ranking universities that responded to our survey this year, blacks made up more than 5 percent of the total full-time faculty at only five institutions. Emory University in Atlanta has the highest percentage of black faculty at 6.8 percent.
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Posted in Faculty
The Stanford Daily: Imposter caught
Azia Kim was like any other Stanford freshman. She graduated from one of California’s most competitive high schools last June, moved into the dorms during New Student Orientation, talked about upcoming tests and spent her free time with friends.
The only problem is that Azia Kim was never a Stanford student.
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Posted in Students
The Boston Globe: Letter he sent to Dershowitz cited as possible threat
An evolutionary biologist from Rutgers University said he was told that a talk he was scheduled to give at Harvard University Friday was canceled because he compared Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz to a Nazi last week in a letter to the editor published in the Wall Street Journal.
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Posted in Faculty
The Chronicle: Venezuela’s President Eliminates Entrance Exams for Public Universities
In a move intended to open university access to students from poor families, Venezuela will eliminate its national college aptitude test and some other examinations, President Hugo Chávez announced last week.
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Posted in Academics, International, Students
The Chronicle: U. of Colorado President Recommends Dismissal of Ward Churchill
The president of the University of Colorado system recommended last week that Ward Churchill be dismissed “for repeated failures to meet minimum standards of professional integrity.” A lawyer for Mr. Churchill says the ethnic-studies professor is being retaliated against for exercising free speech.
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Posted in Academic freedom, Free speech
The Chronicle: Method of Using Student Evaluations to Assess Professors Is Flawed but Fixable, 2 Scholars Say
Student evaluations of instructors are deeply imperfect tools that are often misused by college administrators — but the evaluations should not be scrapped, two scholars said here on Saturday at the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science. Each scholar sketched a model for reforming the faculty-assessment system.
“At best, student ratings provide a weak measure of instructional quality,” said Anthony G. Greenwald, a professor of psychology at the University of Washington. “They’re heavily influenced by grades, and they’re also influenced by class size.”
Mr. Greenwald presented an analysis of the student ratings of more than 14,000 courses given at his university from 1997 to 2001. He was especially interested in exploring how average course ratings varied by department. Courses in Washington’s dance department, for example, typically received high student evaluations, while chemistry, physics, and mathematics courses tended to rate poorly.
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Posted in Faculty
In an outrageous attack on the academic freedom of a progressive high school teacher, Michael Baker, a long-time social studies teacher at Lincoln (Nebraska) East High, was fired from his job earlier this month for showing the Emmy award winning documentary Baghdad ER.
Baker is one of fewer than 50 teachers in the state of Nebraska with National Board for Professional Teaching Standards certification. NBPTS certification is voluntary and an indication that Baker has meet the highest level of the teacher profession in the US.
Baker cannot talk freely about what happened because he reached an agreement with the school district. Part of that agreement prohibits him from saying anything “disparaging” about it, he says.
Baker hosts the radio program “Room 101,” an interview/call-in show that focuses on progressive education issues. Podcasts of “Room 101” are available here. He recently interviewed the producers and directors Baghdad ER on the show.
Baker expects to continue teaching at Southeast Community College and at the University of Nebraska, where he teaches a course on the history of American public education.
Read the Lincoln Journal Star story on Baker’s forced retirement here.
Read Matthew Rothschild’s (editor of The Progressive magazine) piece on about the firing on CommonDreams.org.
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Posted in Academic freedom
Miami Herald: Barry freezes salaries, limits rise in tuition
Barry University faculty and staff members will not get raises this year as the school struggles to keep tuition down amid declining enrollment.
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Posted in Salary/Economic Benefits
The Athens News: Does campus strife make OU faculty look tempting to union organizers?
With all the controversy over shared governance, budget cuts and related issues at Ohio University, is the faculty ripe for unionization?
Apparently some parties are at least edging toward that question. Last night, the OU chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) was scheduled to hold a meeting for faculty, to hear accounts from other universities where profs have chosen to unionize under the AAUP banner.
One of the scheduled panelists was Stephen Aby, a professor of bibliography at the University of Akron, and a past president of the AAUP chapter there.
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Posted in Organizing
WGN-AM: Chicago Teachers Union President Warns of Possible Strike
Stewart Wants Talks To Intensify
Chicago Teachers Union President Marilyn Stewart says her landslide re-election victory shows the union is unified and wants contract negotiations to step up. Stewart defeated Debra Lynch by a wide margin in Friday’s election.
Stewart said Monday she wants contract talks to intensify. She also warns a stike is always possible. “It depends on what happens in negotiations,” Stewart said at a news conference.
“That’s not our goal, to strike. Our goal is to get a fair contract for my members. Now, a 76% margin tells them they need to get serious with us and give us a contract. There’s money to be had in CPS,” Stewart said.
The current contract expires June 30th.
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Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes
Thousands of schools reopen in Nepal as teachers end strike
Kathmandu- Millions of school children Monday started returning to schools after a Maoist-led teachers and student union called off their 11-day-old school strike.
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Posted in International, Strikes & Labor Disputes
Mail & Guardian (South Africa)
May 25, 2007
Public-sector unions outline wage demands
Johannesburg
Public-sector unions on Friday warned the government of
“indefinite labour action” if their demands for better
pay and working conditions were not met.
The unions outlined six demands in a two-page
memorandum submitted to the government in mass marches
across the country.
These included a 12% salary increase, the filling of
vacant posts and a housing allowance in line with
housing costs and salaries.
“Failure to meet these demands by May 31 2007 will
result in indefinite labour action by all unions until
the demands are met.”
The unions indicated they were willing to return to
negotiations if the state “drastically” improved its 6%
wage-increase offer.
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Posted in International, Strikes & Labor Disputes
The fourteenth issue of Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor is now available online at http://cust.educ.ubc.ca/workplace/
“Beyond the Picket Line: Academic Organizing after the Long NYU Strike” features essays gathered by Michael Palm (Chair of the Graduate Student Organizing Committee at New York University), all of which address the implications of graduate worker activism for the future of higher education. The graduate union at NYU has the distinction of being the first to bargain a contract at a private university, and the first to see negotiations terminated by a private university administration. *Workplace 14* provides various critical accounts of the administration’s renunciation of the union, and a series of in-depth analyses of the strike that followed. Written by the strikers themselves—with one important contribution by a unionist at the City University of New York—these articles comprise one of our most urgent releases to date.
Contents include:
“Introduction to the Special Issue”
by Michael Palm
“The Future of Academia is On the Line: Protest, Pedagogy, Picketing, Performativity”
by Emily Wilbourne
“The Professionalizing of Graduate ‘Students’”
by Michael Gallope
“Making It Work: Audre Lorde’s “The Master’s Tools” and the Unbearable Difference of GSOC”
by Elizabeth Loeb
“The NYU Strike as Case Study”
by David Schleifer
“Armbands, Arguments, Op-Eds, and Banner-Drops: Undergraduate Participation in a Graduate Employee Strike”
by Andrew Cornell
“Another University is Possible: Academic Labor, the Ideology of Scarcity, and the Fight for Workplace Democracy”
by Ashley Dawson
The issue also contains six new book reviews (edited by William Vaughn) as well as Wayne Ross’s *Workplace Blog.*
We are pleased to announce that Stephen Petrina (http://cust.educ.ubc.ca/faculty/petrina.html) has joined *Workplace* as a general editor. Stephen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Curriculum Studies at the University of British Columbia where he teaches courses in research methodology, curriculum theory, cultural studies, new media, and technology. His research explores the interconnections among cognition, emotion(s), and technology, concentrating especially on how we learn (technology) across the lifespan. Stephen was co-editor of *Workplace* 7.1, “Academic Freedom and IP Rights in an Era of the Automation and Commercialization of Higher Education” (http://www.cust.educ.ubc.ca/workplace/issue7p1/), and his recent articles have also appeared in *Technology & Culture*, *History of Psychology*, *History of Education Quarterly* and the *International Journal of Technology and Design Education*. Welcome Stephen!
Special thanks go to Stephen and to Franc Feng for their tremendous design work on the current issue. We welcome Franc as a member of the Workplace Collective.
We also want to express our gratitude to Julie Schmid for her continued editorial assistance.
Look for issues on “Mental Labor” (headed up by Steven Wexler) and “Academic Labor and the Law” (edited by Jennifer Wingard) in 2008.
(Please note that from this release forward, the journal will forgo the point system [1.1, 1.2, 2.1, etc.] and number according to our total collection of issues thus far. Although the last issue was 7.1 [the thirteenth release], we number this issue 14.)
Thanks for your continued support.
Solidarity,
Christopher Carter
Assistant Professor
Department of English
University of Oklahoma
Co-editor, *Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor*
E. Wayne Ross
Professor
Department of Curriculum Studies
University of British Columbia
http://web.mac.com/wayne.ross
Co-Editor, *Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor*
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Posted in Contingent labor, Organizing, Strikes & Labor Disputes, Students, Unions
Jennifer Wingard
Syracuse University
CFP: Academic Labor and Law
Special Section of Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor, 2008
The historical connections between legislation, the courts, and the academy have been complex and multi-layered. This has been evident from early federal economic policies, such as the Morell Act and the GI Bill, through national and state legislation that protected student and faculty rights, such as the First Amendment and affirmative action clauses. These connections continue into our current moment of state and national efforts to define the work of the university, such as the Academic Bill of Rights and court cases regarding distance learning. The question, then, becomes whether and to what extent the impact of legislation and litigation reveals or masks the shifting mission of the academy. Have these shifts been primarily economic, with scarcities of funding leading many to want to legislate what is considered a university education, how it should be financed, and who should benefit from it? Are the shifts primarily ideological, with political interests working to change access, funding, and the intellectual project of higher education? Or are the shifts a combination of both political and economic influences? One thing does become clear from these discussions: at their core, the legal battles surrounding higher education are about the changing nature of the university—the use of managerial/corporate language; the desire to professionalize students rather than liberally educate them; the need to create transparent structures of evaluation for both students and faculty; and the attempt to define the types of knowledge produced and disseminated in the classroom. These are changes for which faculty, students, administrators, as well as citizens who feel they have a stake in higher education, seek legal redress. This special section of Workplace aims to explore the ways in which legislation and court cases impact the work of students, professors, contingent faculty, and graduate students in the university. Potential topics include but are not limited to:
Academic Freedom for students and/or faculty
o Horowitz’s Academic Bill of Rights
o Missouri’s Emily Booker Intellectual Diversity Act
o First Amendment court cases concerning faculty and student’s rights to freely express themselves in the classroom and on campuses
o Facebook/Myspace/Blog court cases
Affirmative Action
o The implementation of state and university diversity initiatives in the 1970s
o The current repeal of affirmative action law across the country
Benefits, including Health Benefits, Domestic Partner Benefits
o How universities in states with same-sex marriage bans deal with domestic partner benefits
Collective Bargaining
o The recent rulings at NYU and Brown about the status of graduate students as employees
o State anti-unionization measures and how they impact contingent faculty
Copyright/Intellectual Property
o In Distance Learning
o In corporate sponsored science research
o In government sponsored research
Disability Rights and Higher Education
o How the ADA impacts the university
Sexual Harassment and Consensual Relationships
o How diversity laws and sexual harassment policies impact the university
Tenure
o The Bennington Case
o Post 9/11 court cases
Contributions for Workplace should be 4000-6000 words in length and should conform to MLA style. If interested, please send an abstract via word attachment to Jennifer Wingard (jlwingar@syr.edu) by Friday, August 24, 2007. Completed essays will be due via email by Friday, December 28, 2007.
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Posted in CFPs
