Post-Gazette: CCAC faculty union files charge with NLRB
The faculty union at Community College of Allegheny County said yesterday it has filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board, asserting that job cuts there were a de facto college reorganization.
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Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes
Inside Higher Ed: Column on Gay Marriage Prompts Dismissal
Days after a local newspaper published his opinion piece supporting same-sex marriage, an adjunct instructor at Brigham Young University learned that he would not be rehired to teach courses in the philosophy department.
“I believe opposing gay marriage and seeking a constitutional amendment against it is immoral,” Jeffrey Nielsen wrote in the June 4 Salt Lake Tribune. “Currently the preponderance of scientific research strongly suggests that same-sex attraction is biologically based. Therefore, it is as natural as a heterosexual orientation, even if rare.… [L]egalizing gay marriage reinforces the importance of committed relationships and would strengthen the institution of marriage.”
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Posted in Academic freedom, Employment rights, Free speech
The New York Times: Mexico: Police and Teachers Clash Ahead of Polls
OAXACA, Mexico (Reuters) – Thousands of Mexican police firing tear gas fought a running battle with striking teachers in a southern city on Wednesday in the latest violence between protesters and security forces before July elections.
Backed up by a helicopter clattering overhead, police on foot briefly dislodged teachers from the main square in the city of Oaxaca where they had been camped for three weeks demanding higher wages.
Witnesses and press reports said shots were fired during clashes in downtown streets. One policeman was shot in the leg before the teachers retook the square, popular with tourists visiting the picturesque city.
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Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes
Narco News: Teachers Repel 3,000 Police from Oaxaca’s Historic Center
Thousands of Police Surround the City Center as Strikers Hold Their Ground
By Geoffrey Harman
The Other Journalism with the Other Campaign in Oaxaca
June 14, 2006
OAXACA CITY: In a scene that is starting to look all too familiar in Mexico, the police attempted to disrupt the Oaxaca teachers strike in downtown Oaxaca City this morning. At roughly 3 a.m. a police helicopter flew low over the tent city where the teachers have been camped for the past 23 days and shot canisters of tear gas. Meanwhile, 3,000 state police armed with riot shields and clubs entered the chaos and tore apart the roughshod shelters where the teachers had been staying. During the course of the six-hour police intervention three people were reported to have been killed (this is unconfirmed), two women and one child.
Radio Plantón (the teachers’ pirate radio station, which had been broadcasting from the Zócalo, or central square, since the strike started and had been the main source of information for the striking teachers) was dismantled and has been off the air since the first police attack. (Four journalists from the station were among the first to be arrested: Arcelio Ruiz Villanueva, Ociel Martínez Martínez, Eduardo Castellanos Morales and Roberto Gazga.) The teachers are now broadcasting on the college radio station 89.7 FM and 113.95 AM. At roughly 10 am the police retreated and the teachers re-took the Zócalo. During the course of the struggle unconfirmed reports have said four people were arrested (three of which were from Radio Plantón), 20 people hospitalized and three police taken hostage.
Narco News: Stand-off Continues as Oaxaca Teachers’ Strike enters Fourth Week
By Nancy Davies
June 12, 2006
The strike by Section 22 of the Síndicato Nacionál Trajabadores Educativas (SNTE), the teachers’ union, enters its fourth week in a stand-off that seems no closer to resolution. SNTE Section 22 vows to increase pressure on Ulises Ruiz Ortega (URO) by continuing the invasions or blockades of government property such as PEMEX distribution terminals, the Chamber of Deputies, the state attorney general’s office, the collection tollbooth of Huitzo on the Oaxaca-Mexico highway, the Institute of State Public Education for Oaxaca, the Secretary of Finances’ office, and the so-called public works such as the renovation of Llano Park and the Fountain of Seven Regions, and the widening of Fortin Road.
Furthermore, teachers are now soliciting citizen signatures to depose URO as governor of the state. At the corner of Independencia and Porfirio Díaz streets on Sunday, June 11, two young teachers and a professor were requesting passersby to sign on.
Narco News: Oaxaca Near Meltdown Over Teacher Strike
More than Just an Educators’ Pay Dispute, the Conflict Is a Sign of Governor Ruiz’s Inability to Rule a State Fed Up with Repression and Corruption
By Nancy Davies
June 7, 2006
It’s unprecedented and nobody knows what will happen, but nobody is backing down.
Tens of thousands of striking teachers occupy the center of Oaxaca city, sprawled out under camp tents, on top of cardboard cartons, on stairs and walls and benches. The plantón — the occupying camp — has now been going on for fifteen days. It covers 56 blocks, preventing all traffic and access to the heart of the central square, or zócalo.
The striking teachers have with them in the zócalo and the Plaza de la Danza their embroidery and their children. Oaxaca Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortíz has called in Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) obligations in more than half the municipalities of Oaxaca and obtained signed condemnation of the teachers, along with their demands to control education at the municipal level, from more than 250 municipal mayors, which means breaking the union.
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Posted in Uncategorized
The NarcoSphere: “The Center of the City Looks Like a War Zone”—Scenes of Chaos in Downtown Oaxaca City as Striking Teachers Defend Themselves from Police Attack
By Nancy Davies, Posted on Wed Jun 14th, 2006 at 06:59:48 PM EST
The center of the city looks like a war zone. On the tourist street, broken glass and broken bricks and stones lie everywhere. Torn and crumpled tents lie destroyed, flattened in every street, along with personal belongings, trash, and burned objects.
The teachers have regrouped. According to Enrique Pineda Rios, a physical education teacher sitting with a group of five men armed with sticks on Porfirio Diaz about two blocks north of the zocalo, about 80% of the zocalo has been reoccupied by the teachers.
Pineda Rios told me that three teachers and one of their children were killed by the gas used in the attack. More than twenty teachers have been wounded. Pineda Rios told me that the teachers were unarmed but the federal police (and I asked him twice, was it local police or federal; he says federal. He told me that more federal police are on the way.) accompanied by the state troops entered with gas, clubs and guns. He also told me the teachers were awaiting a renewed police attack at 2:00PM. An older teacher was circulating with surgical masks , handing them out to everyone.
The radio station of the university, which is acting as a news station for the strikers, reports 10 dead.
I saw one teacher cleaning the broken glass off his car. The back window was shattered when a gas cannister shot through it, landing on the front seat beside the teacher. Helicopters are circling.
The teachers remain defiant and are sending out requests for citizen assistance. The radio stations reporting for the gov say stay home, the teachers are burning, breaking rioting, etc. That’s clearly not true. They look shocked but not violent -grim, I would say, including the women who remain.
Some who received the worst of the tear gas retreated several blocks and were washing out their eyes with water. The radio reported many injurred arriving at the hospital.
Every business in the center is closed, with their metal doors padlocked.
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Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes
Inside Higher Ed: Another committee at the University of Colorado at Boulder has found that Ward Churchill committed “serious, repeated and research misconduct.” The latest panel to make this finding is the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct. A special committee examined a range of allegations against Churchill and its findings were released last month. While Colorado administrators will ultimately decide whether Churchill should be fired from his tenured position, the faculty committees’ work has been seen as crucial. On the committee whose findings were released Tuesday, six members recommended dismissal, two voted for suspension without pay for five years and one voted for suspension without pay for two years. Churchill has said repeatedly that he did not commit misconduct and that the university is trying to punish him for his controversial views”
The Chronicle News Blog: Another Panel at U. of Colorado Calls for Ward Churchill to Be Sacked
The slow wheels of an academic investigation continue to grind toward firing Ward Churchill from the University of Colorado at Boulder. This afternoon, the university’s Standing Committee on Research Misconduct issued its report. The report agreed with a previous investigative committee’s report that Mr. Churchill, who gained infamy in 2005 for comparing some victims of the World Trade Center terrorist attacks to “little Eichmanns,” had committed serious research misconduct and should be disciplined (The Chronicle, May 17).
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Posted in Academic freedom, Free speech
The Chronicle: Policies with special appeal for women
Harvard University issued its first progress report Tuesday on the hiring of female and minority faculty members, announcing that it would spend $7.5-million over the next three years to improve working conditions for professors.
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Posted in Equity
The Chronicle: Lawsuit over restrictions on study in Cuba
A group of scholars and students sued the U.S. Treasury Department on Tuesday in an effort to force the Bush administration to rescind rules changes made in 2004 that have choked off most academic travel to Cuba. The department is in charge of enforcing the U.S. economic embargo against Cuba.
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Posted in Academic freedom
Journal Inquirer: Dean protests ouster from UConn School of Engineering post
STORRS – Amir Faghri didn’t see
One day before the U.S. Secretary of Energy was due to visit the University of Connecticut to tour a fuel cell center – a visit Faghri had helped arrange – the dean of the School of Engineering was asked to resign.
When Faghri objected, he said Monday, he was removed from his position as dean, just hours after the energy secretary’s visit.
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Posted in Administration
Western Michigan University’s faculty union filed at least one Freedom of Information Act request to obtain documents showing why university administration selected certain degrees for elimination.
“We’re just trying to get all the possible information we can for the faculty who are having to prepare their arguments for keeping programs open,” said Alan Rea, spokesman for Western’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors.
The union is awaiting the university’s response, Rea said.
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Posted in Administration
Miami Herald: FIU set to give President Maidique a big pay increase
Florida International University President Modesto ”Mitch” Maidique could earn more than $500,000 a year under a contract negotiated Monday.
The three-year deal would raise Maidique’s base salary from $326,340 a year to $385,507. In addition, he would receive a 20 percent ”supplement” — equivalent to $77,101 — from the FIU Foundation, the university’s fundraising arm.
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Posted in Administration, Salary/Economic Benefits
Corvallis Gazette-Times: EOU union reaches a deal
The faculty union at Eastern Oregon University reached a tentative agreement on a revised contract, likely preventing the first-ever strike at a state university in Oregon.
The union, Associated Academic Professionals, will vote to ratify the deal Tuesday.
“We achieved some justice,” said union president Greg Monahan.
The EOU faculty contract expires June 30, 2007. However, the contract has a reopener clause that allows salary and other portions of the contract to be renegotiated. Mindful of Eastern Oregon’s status as the lowest-paying among the Oregon University System schools, the union had asked for salary increases.
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Posted in Campaigns & Contracts
Virginia Tech has become the latest university to announce automatic one-year extensions of the tenure clock for junior faculty members who become parents through either birth or adoption.
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Posted in Tenure & Promotion
With last-minute lesson plans on the brain, adjuncts making their teaching debuts might overlook what to wear on the first day of class. Not to worry — a new online training course has them covered.
AdjunctImpact, a classroom preparation program for adjuncts, weighs in on just about any topic, including faculty fashion. Program users come to a page where a range of outfits are displayed for them. There are traditional business suits, more casual combinations and even army fatigues.
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Posted in Contingent labor
The Chronicle: DISCRIMINATION-SUIT VICTORY FOR MALE PROFESSORS
A judge has decided that 40 white male professors who brought a discrimination suit against Northern Arizona University 11 years ago are entitled to $1.4-million in back pay and raises. The professors alleged that the university had discriminated against them in a pay-equity plan by giving raises of up to $3,000 each to certain minority and female professors, but giving no raises to them.
At the same time, one of those professors, George H. Rudebusch, together with a group of about 200 other white male professors and 80 female professors, filed a class-action reverse-discrimination lawsuit against the university’s president at the time, Eugene M. Hughes.
The suit against Mr. Hughes was later dismissed, and that dismissal was upheld by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in 2002. But the appellate judges, who considered both lawsuits together, held in their opinion that the 40 professors were entitled to a jury decision on whether the raises given were higher than necessary to make up for past inequities.
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Posted in Equity
The Scotsman: Teachers’ strike threat
TEACHERS voted to ballot for industrial action yesterday after calling for reduced class sizes in Scotland.
The decision was taken by members of the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) teaching union at its annual conference in Dundee.
The Scottish Executive plans to reduce class sizes in primary one and some S1/2 classes from August 2007.
Teachers want no more than 25 per primary one class and a maximum of 20 in S1 and S2 English and maths.
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Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes
The Athens News: Profs raise questions about negative faculty evaluation of president
The secretary of the Ohio University faculty group that gave a poor rating to top OU administrators on Friday defended the legitimacy of the group’s survey against various charges on Friday.
The OU chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) on Wednesday announced results of the survey, which found that most respondents “disagreed” or “disagreed somewhat” with giving votes of confidence to President Roderick McDavis, Provost Kathy Krendl and Vice President for Regional Higher Education Charles Bird.
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Posted in Administration
The Chronicle: A New Leader Navigates SUNY’s Stormy Seas
For a former Navy officer who commanded fleets in the Mediterranean Sea and flew reconnaissance missions over Bosnia, it may seem odd to be considered courageous for submitting a budget proposal.
But the aggressive financial plan that Vice Adm. John R. Ryan pressed this academic year, during his first six months as chancellor of the State University of New York, has earned him a reputation as a gutsy leader.
Breaking with the recent history of modest budget requests by SUNY leaders, Admiral Ryan asked the state to give the 64-campus system significant increases, including more than $156-million in new funds to hire full-time faculty members, expand honors programs, and meet other needs.
In the end, SUNY received much of what the new chancellor requested. For the system’s four-year campuses and graduate-level colleges, the final state budget included $1.36-billion, an 11.3-percent increase over the previous year and enough money for the system to add 380 full-time faculty members. “It is by far and away the best budget we’ve had in two decades,” says Thomas F. Egan, chairman of SUNY’s Board of Trustees.
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Posted in Administration
Call for Programs:
The Coalition on the Academic Workforce (CAW) is looking for programs (association- and institution-based) that support the work and professional development of contingent faculty
The Coalition on the Academic Workforce maintains a website, http://www.academicworkforce.org/, where it is developing two lists of programs that address adjunct and contingent faculty work.
One list will feature programs supported by associations, and it will document various kinds of help associations offer adjunct and contingent faculty. The other list will feature institutional programs.
If your institution has a program or policy that supports non-tenure line faculty members through benefits and practices to help these teachers share in institutional work, practice, and culture, please send an electronic link or description of that program to Monica F. Jacobe at mjacobe@aaup.org. You may also send information about programs you may know of at other institutions.
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Posted in Uncategorized
The Capital Times: UW’s Wiley to return pay raises
University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor John Wiley says he’ll give back any pay raises he receives from now until the time he retires.
Wiley said he told UW System President Kevin Reilly he would return in the form of donations any raise awarded to him on Friday by the Board of Regents. The board, meeting in Milwaukee, split $246,000 in raises over two years among 13 other chancellors, 15 provosts and several top UW System executives, including Reilly.
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Posted in Administration, Salary/Economic Benefits
