Tag Archives: Ethics

How not to run a university (Prologue + Trilogy)

Posted on August 20, 2015 by E Wayne Ross | Comments Off

Here are links to E. Wayne Ross’ commentaries on the ongoing leadership crisis at the University of British Columbia. All the commentaries have appeared on his blog and several have also appeared in the Vancouver Observer:

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Posted in Academic freedom, Academics, Accountability, Administration, Bullying & Mobbing, Commentary, Corporate University, Free speech, Governance

Tagged Academic freedom, Accountability, Arvind Gupta, bullying, Ethics, Free speech, Governance, harassment, higher education administration, Jane Berdahl, John Montalbano, leadership, Sauder School of Business, transparency, UBC, UBC Board of Governors, UBC Faculty Association, UBCFA, University of British Columbia, University presidents

#Dalhousie students, staff & faculty rally against admin mishandling of dentistry students misogynistic Facebook group

Posted on January 6, 2015 by Stephen Petrina | Comments Off

Jennifer Gosnell, DalGazette, January 6, 2014–“Hey hey, ho ho, misogyny has go to go,” roared a crowd of about 200 people gathered at a rally yesterday afternoon outside Dalhousie’s Henry Hicks Building.

The rally targeted Dalhousie administration’s reaction to a misogynistic Facebook group made up of male dentistry students.

The rally came right after the announcement that Dalhousie University has suspended the clinical privileges of thirteen men in their fourth year of Dal’s Doctor of Dental Surgery program.

These men were suspended as Dalhousie’s ongoing response to complaints against the men’s posts in a Facebook group called the Class of DDS 2015 Gentlemen where some of them posted comments about female classmates that included discussions of sexual violence.

The protestors rallied together against a lack of action on Dalhousie’s part and a lack of justice on the part of victims of the posts and survivors of sexual assault.

Jennifer Nowoselski, Dalhousie Student Union Vice President (Internal), spoke of her experiences witnessing harassment on campus.

“I cannot tell you how many students across various faculties come to the Union with complaints of discrimination on a regular basis,” said Nowoselski. “I am enraged.”

“No options to address sexist comments? No options to address sexual harassment? No options to address sexist treatment of women students? Out of justified fear, individuals cannot demand action to make them feel safe on this campus. There is no safe internal process available to our members,” Nowoselski said.

She turned her questions to the Henry Hicks building itself, which hosts university president Richard Florizone’s office.

“Through a media storm, voiced concerns through students and community members, a community-organized rally, petitions, a formal complaint from faculty, threats of losing funding, concern from the government, and with the entire country watching, you created a task force?” Nowoselski asked.

Board members of South House, a student-funded sexual and gender resource centre in Halifax, spoke at the rally. They voiced issues of concern about underfunding for their volunteer-driven services that are often turned to for support by people who have experienced sexual violence.

Various survivors of sexual violence took to the megaphone to discuss the impact of their experiences.

One survivor said she was sexually assaulted by her dentist.

Others shared stories of going to Dalhousie’s offices to report their abuse and being met with blame or disbelief.

#Dalhousie profs complaint on misogynistic dentistry students’ #Facebook posts #highered #dalhousiehateswomen

Posted on January 6, 2015 by Stephen Petrina | Comments Off

CTV, January 5, 2015–Four Dalhousie professors have gone public with a formal complaint they submitted to the university last month, which called for male dentistry students linked to a sexually explicit Facebook discussion to be suspended before classes resume on Monday.

One of the professors, Francoise Baylis, said they decided to go public because they haven’t yet been assured that the complaint has been properly submitted and whether it will be addressed.

“Students have to go back to school tomorrow morning, and in our view, the university has an obligation to provide all students with a safe and supportive learning environment,” Baylis, who teaches at Dalhousie’s medical school, told CTV Atlantic.

“Our view is that it’s important to have at least addressed the complaint prior to the students coming back.”

The formal complaint from Dec. 21 calls for the university to hand out suspensions to all fourth-year students who were allegedly involved in offensive posts discussing female students in the Faculty of Dentistry. The complaint is co-signed by Baylis and fellow Dalhousie professors Jocelyn Downie, Brian Noble and Jacqueline Warwick.

“The purpose of the Complaint was to trigger an interim suspension prior to the start of classes on Monday, January 5, 2015,” the professors said in a statement emailed to CTVNews.ca on Sunday.

The complaint cites a number of posts allegedly made by fourth-year students in the Facebook group called “Class of DDS 2015 Gentlemen.”

One poster reportedly joked about using chloroform to render a woman unconscious. Another asked members which female students they would like to have “hate sex” with. A third post showed a photo of a woman in a bikini with the caption: “bang until stress is relieved or unconscious (girl).”

The formal complaint matches these allegations up to violations under the school’s Code of Student Conduct. It says offending students should be suspended because they “pose a threat of disruption or interference with the operations of the University and the activities of its members.”

Baylis said the formal process was engaged because some of the affected female students either did not consent to, or were not approached about the informal “restorative justice” approach the university decided to take.

On Dec. 17, university president Richard Florizone said administrators were looking into informal complaints by women who were subjects of the offensive posts. He also left the door open to a formal complaint process if the affected women chose to pursue it.

“I ask for our communities to give our students and university administrators the time to complete their work through the restorative justice process and forge meaningful, responsible outcomes,” Florizone said in a statement.

“Our overall response must also address cultures of sexism, misogyny and sexualized violence,” he added.

Baylis said the offensive Facebook posts require both an individual and a “systemic” response.

“All of us believe that we’re at a very unique cultural moment in time where we’re actually able to name the problem publicly, to call this misogyny, to talk about gendered violence,” she said.

Female students open letter to #Dalhousie president Florizone #highered #ubc

Posted on January 6, 2015 by Stephen Petrina | Comments Off

Photo by Stephen Puddicombe/CBC

CBC News, January 6, 2015–A group of fourth-year female students from Dalhousie University’s faculty of dentistry have written an open letter to the president of the school, saying they feel pressured to accept the restorative justice process to resolve the Facebook scandal that has rocked the school.

In a two-page letter addressed to Richard Florizone and disclosed to CBC News on Tuesday, the four unnamed students say they are not willing to accept the university’s response to the Facebook page called the Class of DDS 2015 Gentlemen.

The page was created by some male students in the fourth-year dentistry class and contained misogynistic and sexually explicit posts, including a poll about having “hate” sex with female students and comments about drugging women.

The women say in their letter that they “do not wish for the sexual harassment and discrimination perpetrated by members of our class to be dealt with through this restorative justice process.”

“The university is pressuring us into this process, silencing our views, isolating us from our peers, and discouraging us from choosing to proceed formally,” says the letter.

“This has perpetuated our experience of discrimination. This approach falls far below what we expected from you, and what we believe we deserve.”

The women also say they are concerned about their future at the school.

‘We have serious concerns’

“Telling us that we can either participate in restorative justice or file a formal complaint is presenting us with a false choice. We have serious concerns about the impact of filing formal complaints on our chances of academic success at the faculty of dentistry, and believe that doing so would jeopardize our futures,” they wrote.

“The reason we have not filed formal complaints is also the reason we have not signed our names to this letter.”

Read Letter: Open Letter to President Richard Florizone

… We are writing this open letter to inform you that, after considering the information that was presented in that meeting, we do not wish for the sexual harassment and discrimination perpetrated by members of our class to be dealt with through this restorative justice process or under the Sexual Harassment Policy. We feel that the University is pressuring us into this process, silencing our views, isolating us from our peers, and discouraging us from choosing to proceed formally. This has perpetuated our experience of discrimination. This approach falls far below what we expected from you, and what we believe we deserve….

Lilia D. Monzó & Peter McLaren on Red Love: Toward Racial, Economic and Social Justice #handsup #highered #criticaled #race

Posted on December 18, 2014 by Stephen Petrina | Comments Off

Lilia D. Monzó & Peter McLaren, Truthout, December 18, 2014– Racism is exacerbated by a capitalist production process that teaches us that some people have a God-given right to pursue their economic and social interests without regard for other people’s right to thrive, free of fear for their own survival. The antidote is red love.

The Slaughter-Bench of Race

It seems that it is an everlasting open hunting season in the United States and the kills are Black men. The senseless killing of unarmed Black young man Michael Brown by a White police officer and the grand jury’s decision to allow the officer to walk without facing a trial through a faltering prosecutorial process (that aims to defend when the target of indictment is a police officer) has brought Ferguson, Missouri, and other communities across the country to their feet in loud and incendiary protest.

Approximately 50 protesters on a 120-mile march from Ferguson to Jefferson City decrying the shooting death of Brown were met with counter-protesters all along the route. Especially stomach-churning was the reception given to the protesters in the sleepy hollow of Rosebud, where the caterwauling and public scouring was most intense as 200 residents screeched at the protesters to “go home and get jobs” along a route littered with 40-ounce beer bottles, watermelons, Confederate flags and fried chicken, and where at least one concerned citizen was wearing a makeshift white hood, redolent of the vile knights of the “Invisible Empire.”

While the corporate media has suggested that the violent response by some protesters – property damage and looting in some instances – diminishes the authentic call for “change” – i.e., a demilitarization of the police, improved police-community relations, urban job creation, increased sensitivity training regarding race among police force recruits – it is hard to ignore the storied observation by Frantz Fanon that violence is oftentimes the only possible response by communities that have lived through centuries of violence – slavery, joblessness, poverty, police profiling, the school-to-prison pipeline and a military-industrial complex that thrives upon the deaths and killing of Black and Brown young men.

In the wake of this blow to the Black community, we have seen a string of similar White police killings of unarmed Black men and an unwillingness to indict them. These include the killing of Eric Garner who was caught on video repeating the words, “I can’t breathe,” 11 times as a New York Police Department officer had him in a chokehold that has been banned by the NYPD for years; the killing of Rumain Brisbon in Phoenix, Arizona; the killing of a 12-year-old boy, Tamir Rice, who was holding a toy gun in a park and shot within two seconds of police arriving on the scene; and the killing of Akai Gurley, a young man who was fatally shot by a rookie NYPD officer in a dark public housing stairwell in Brooklyn. With the growing confidence among White police officers that Black men are fair game for killing without consequences, how many more of our Black children’s lives will we lose?

In the cases of Eric Garner, Tamir Rice and Akai Gurley, the police did not make any effort to assist their dying victims. In the case of Gurley, the officers who shot him – in true “cover your ass fashion” – decided to text their union representative while ignoring calls from the police and medics. Six and a half minutes went by before they finally radioed for assistance. It wasn’t until a detective and FBI agent arrived at the scene of the Tamir Rice slaying that the victim received any first aid. In Eric Garner’s case, numerous police officers stared at his unconscious handcuffed body for seven crucial minutes instead of performing urgent CPR or frantically seeking professional medical assistance. In the case of Michael Brown, we know that his body lay lifeless on a Ferguson street for four hours before it was carted off to the local morgue. While some have attempted to justify police killings of Black men as a function of the job demand for quick decisions and their own survival instincts, this unconscionable and merciless failure to attempt to save these men’s lives, points to something much deeper.

Astonishingly, we are now hearing backlash against protesters that Black men must be suicidal since they are acting in ways that are surely to get them killed. It seems no matter what the circumstance, the narratives shift in order to maintain the sanctity of the White cop. The institutionalized and pretentious discourse of conservative talk show hosts now includes remarks to the effect of: “If Garner can say ‘I can’t breathe’ 11 times, then he can breathe” (obviously these self-proclaimed “critics” don’t realize that being pinned down by police may prevent lungs from re-expanding, forcing out the functional reserve capacity of air while the expiratory reserve volume – which is not oxygenated and basically exists as carbon dioxide gas – still permits vocalization). This vicious insensitivity from the frenetic ranks of these racist prodigies have ripped away any cosmetic prostheses hiding the seething subterranean animus of the White population who have inherited a historical proclivity to blame Blacks for their own suffering and who continue to do so with an increasingly smug impunity.

Given the rancid history of racial violence in the United States, should we be aghast at the audacity of White police officers who continue to shoot first and show little restraint prior or remorse after, and at the imperviousness of prosecutors and grand juries that see only through the dominant lens, justifying the growing epidemic of Black killings by White cops as a “natural” reaction to fearing for their lives? Protesters are demanded to show restraint in a country that has shown no restraint in killing Black communities and other communities of color – physically, psychologically and economically. While we do not advocate for violence, we understand how centuries of pain and humiliation can result in a pent-up rage that eventually explodes.

More recently, African-Americans face the grim new reality of moving from the super-exploited sector of the working class to being even more marginalized as capitalists switched from drawing on Black labor in favor of Latino/a immigrant labor as a super-exploited workforce. As a result of increased structural marginalization, African-Americans are subject to what William Robinson describesas “heightened disenfranchisement, criminalization, a bogus ‘war on drugs,’ mass incarceration and police and state terror, seen by the system as necessary to control a superfluous and potentially rebellious population.”

Racism is not a natural phenomenon, but one that has been produced within each and every institution of our society. Racism is exacerbated through a capitalist production process that teaches us that some people have a God-given right to pursue their own economic and social interests with little regard for the right of every human being and other living organism to thrive in the world free of fear for their own survival and with dignity and freedom. Racism stems from a world that has lost its ability to recognize its social nature and absolute need to love one another. While we must work to make people safe today, we must also consider the long-term goal of anti-racist struggle, which in our view is one and the same as class struggle, such that a new world order, one free from class and founded on love, interdependence, social responsibility, equality and freedom can thrive.

Symposium: Public Engagement and the Politics of Evidence in an Age of Neoliberalism and Audit Culture #highered #criticaled #caut #aaup

Posted on December 2, 2014 by Stephen Petrina | Comments Off

Public Engagement and the Politics of Evidence in an Age of Neoliberalism and Audit Culture

July 23-25, 2015

Faculty of Education, University of Regina

This symposium will examine accelerating trends in higher education: neoliberalism, the politics of evidence, and the audit culture. In an age in which value is often equated with accountancy, we will examine the place in the academy for public intellectualism, community-engagement, Indigenous epistemologies, and how the impact of our scholarship is, and ought to be, justly assessed. Invited presenters will provoke lively discussion, but going beyond discussion, and blurring the lines between presenter and audience member, participants will be invited to engage actively with other presenter/participants in attendance for the purpose of effecting changes at their home institutions. Opportunities will be available for reconsidering and strategizing academic issues such as faculty criteria documents, measurement rankings, traditional impact factors, and other academic matters affected by the politics of austerity, neoliberalism, and new management technologies. Action will also be encouraged through submissions to a special issue of in education (the University of Regina Faculty of Education’s journal), potentially collaborating on an edited book, TED-style dissemination videos, producing a list of recommendations, developing examples of inclusive faculty criteria documents, possibly developing a community impact factor as an alternative to journal impact factor metrics, and further actions as collectively discussed at the symposium.

Questions to be explored include:

What counts as scholarship and why?
How do we achieve accountability in an age of accountancy?
How do we measure research impact, (i.e., journal impact factor vs community and policy impact)?
Impact for whom?
Who and how do we determine whose evidence and what research is legitimate?
What can be done? How do we effect change to university practices?

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Posted in Academic freedom, Academic Labor, Critical University Studies, Institute for Critical Education Studies, Politics, Solidarity, Students, Tenure & Promotion, Working conditions

Tagged Academic freedom, Equity, Ethics, Faculty, Free speech, Protests, Unions, Working conditions

U Illinois urged to reinstate prof Salaita, critic of Israeli war in Gaza

Posted on September 10, 2014 by Stephen Petrina | Comments Off

Democracy Now!, September 9, 2014– As the fall school term begins, an Illinois college campus is embroiled in one of the nation’s biggest academic freedom controversies in recent memory. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has sparked an outcry over its withdrawal of a job offer to a professor critical of the Israeli government. Steven Salaita was due to start work at the university as a tenured professor in the American Indian Studies Program. But after posting a series of tweets harshly critical of this summer’s Israeli assault on Gaza, Salaita was told the offer was withdrawn. The school had come under pressure from donors, students, parents and alumni critical of Salaita’s views, with some threatening to withdraw financial support. Thousands of academics have signed petitions calling for Salaita’s reinstatement, and several lecturers have canceled appearances in protest. The American Association of University Professors has called the school’s actions “inimical to academic freedom and due process.” A number of Urbana-Champaign departments have passed votes of no-confidence in the chancellor, Phyllis Wise. And today, Urbana-Champaign students will be holding a campus walkout and day of silence in support of Salaita. We are joined by two guests: Columbia University law professor Katherine Franke, who has canceled a lecture series at Urbana-Champaign in protest of Salaita’s unhiring; and Kristofer Petersen-Overton, a scholar who went through a similar incident in 2011 when Brooklyn College reversed a job offer after complaints about his Middle East views, only to reinstate it following a public outcry.

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AARON MATÉ: As the fall school term begins, an Illinois college campus is embroiled in one of the nation’s biggest academic freedom controversies in recent memory. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has sparked an outcry over its withdrawal of a job offer to a professor critical of the Israeli government. Steven Salaita was due to start work at Urbana-Champaign as a tenured professor in the American Indian Studies Program. But after posting a series of tweets harshly critical of the summer’s assault on Gaza, Salaita was told the offer was withdrawn. Urbana-Champaign has come under pressure from donors, students, parents and alumni critical of Salaita’s views, with some threatening to withdraw financial support.

The move has been criticized both in and outside of the school, with administrators accused of political censorship. Thousands of academics have signed petitions calling for Salaita’s reinstatement, and several lecturers have canceled appearances in protest. The American Association of University Professors has called the school’s actions “inimical to academic freedom and due process.” A number of school departments have passed votes of no-confidence in the chancellor, Phyllis Wise. And today, students will be holding a campus walkout and a day of silence in support of Salaita. A news conference is being held, where Salaita is expected to make his first public comments since his unhiring last month.

AMY GOODMAN: In a public statement, Chancellor Phyllis Wise said her decision to unhire Salaita “was not influenced in any way by his positions on the conflict in the Middle East nor his criticism of Israel.” She goes on to write, quote, “What we cannot and will not tolerate at the University of Illinois are personal and disrespectful words or actions that demean and abuse either viewpoints themselves or those who express them,” unquote. The school has now reportedly offered Salaita a financial settlement for his troubles. The school’s Board of Trustees is expected to take up the controversy at a meeting on Thursday.

For more, we’re joined by two guests. Kristofer Petersen-Overton is an adjunct lecturer of political science at Lehman College. In 2011, Brooklyn College initially decided not to hire Petersen-Overton as an adjunct professor for a seminar on Middle East politics. But the school reversed its decision after criticism that the decision was politically motivated. And Katherine Franke joins us. She’s a professor of law at Columbia University and the director of the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law. She recently canceled a lecture series at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in protest of Steven Salaita’s unhiring.

Professor Franke, let’s begin with you. Talk about the facts of this case and how you got involved.

KATHERINE FRANKE: Well, Professor Salaita was previously a professor at Virginia Tech University, and he had a well-known dossier of books and articles thinking critically about the relationship between indigeneity, meaning native people, and the political environments in which they live—hard questions about dispossession, belonging, state violence and identity. And because of that important scholarly record, the University of Illinois went after him—in a friendly way, unlike what they’re doing now. And he was hired by an overwhelming vote by the American Indian Studies Program there in the normal way that we hire faculty in universities. An offer letter was issued to him. He accepted it. They paid for his moving expenses. He quit his job, a tenured position in Virginia. And he has a small child and a family and a wife, and was ready to move. His course books had been ordered. He had been invited by the university to the faculty welcome luncheon.

And then, on August 1st, he got a letter from the chancellor saying, “We’re sorry, we’re not going to be able to employ you here, because I haven’t taken the last step, which I had not informed you about before, of taking your candidacy to the Board of Trustees.” He had assumed he had an accepted job offer. He had relied on that offer—and at his peril. He now doesn’t have a home, doesn’t have a job and doesn’t have an income.

So what we now have learned, through a FOIA request and the disclosure of emails at the university, is that there was enormous pressure put on the chancellor and the Board of Trustees by large donors of the university, who said, “I’ll take my six-figure donations away if you hire this guy.” And this is as a result of some tweets that Professor Salaita made over the summer during the heat of the Gaza—the Israeli assault on Gaza. He was very upset about it. He himself is Palestinian. He was watching children die and the destruction of Gazan villages that we all watched. And like many of us, he was quite impassioned and used colorful language on Twitter to express his views, and that those tweets somehow made their way to donors at the University of Illinois. And so, the job, as been described even here in the setup, is either withdrawn or somehow not—well, what has happened is he’s just been fired. And so he’s now organizing, along with the rest of us, a response to what is a deliberate campaign by a number of political operatives who put pressure on universities like the University of Illinois to censor critical scholarship, critical comments, critical research about Israeli state policy.

Saint Mary’s major changes, #UBC not so much #SMUHalifaxNews #ubcSauderschool

Posted on September 5, 2014 by Stephen Petrina | Comments Off

Welcome Back! Or so two universities sheepishly say to new students in a wake of orientation disasters last year. At UBC, the rape chant at the Sauder School of Business this was the Ubyssey‘s top story of the year. As it went, for the same practice Saint Mary’s University conducted an extensive investigation and issued an exhaustive report– 110 pages. Administrators held or took accountability. At UBC, in Sauder, not so much. A thin 5 page report and no mention of administration– this with a bloated leadership team at Sauder.

So what happened between December 2013, report time and now late summer 2014, orientation time? Well, this summer SMU issued an Update from the President’s Council and created an Action Team. The entire orientation culture was changed. At UBC, not so much.

Sauder Dean Helsley said “There has been a lot of work done in setting expectations for what is appropriate in orientation activities.”

New activities are good.

But Dean Helsley has yet– after a year– to account for his administration’s failures or announce changes at the top that might actually trim the bloat and streamline a few of the associate or assistant deans toward the undergraduate curriculum and students. Nothing yet. Still waiting. Welcome back!

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Posted in Accountability, BC Education, Equity, Students

Tagged Administration, Deans, Equity, Ethics, Faculty, Students, University presidents

Academic #mobbing and #bullying: Special Issue of #Workplace #ubc #edstudies #criticaled #caut #aaup #bced

Posted on May 23, 2014 by Stephen Petrina | Comments Off

Preprints for the next Issue of Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor have just been released. Timed quite ideally with many Universities’ recent initiatives, this Special Issue of Workplace is on Academic Mobbing and Bullying.

Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor

Academic Mobbing and Bullying

No 24 (2014)

Articles

Of Sticks and Stones, Words that Wound, and Actions Speaking Louder: When Academic Bullying Becomes Everyday Oppression
- Harry Denny
Beyond Bullies and Victims: Using Case Story Analysis and Freirean Insight to Address Academic Mobbing
- Julie Gorlewski, David Gorlewski & Brad Porfilio
Graduate Students as Proxy Mobbing Targets: Insights from Three Mexican Universities
- Florencia Peña Saint Martin, Brian Martin, Hilde Eliazer Aquino López & Lillian von der Walde Moheno
Bullying in Academia Up Close and Personal: My Story
- Paul Johnson
Pathogenic Versus Healthy Biofilms: A Metaphor for Academic Mobbing
- Antonio Pedro Fonseca

Workplace and Critical Education are published by the Institute for Critical Education Studies (ICES).

Thank you for the continuing interest in ICES and its blogs & journals,
Sandra Mathison, Stephen Petrina & E. Wayne Ross, co-Directors

ICES
University of British Columbia
2125 Main Mall
Vancouver BC V6T 1Z4
Canada

https://blogs.ubc.ca/ices
https://blogs.ubc.ca/workplace
http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/workplace
http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/criticaled

Comments Off on Academic #mobbing and #bullying: Special Issue of #Workplace #ubc #edstudies #criticaled #caut #aaup #bced

Posted in Academic freedom, Adjuncts & Sessionals, Administration, Campus Life, Employment rights, Faculty, Free speech, Legal issues, Publications, Research, Students, Unions, Working conditions

Tagged Academic freedom, Administration, Equity, Ethics, Faculty, Students, Unions, Working conditions

#USask VP resigns in wake of #academicfreedom scandal #edstudies #ubc #caut #aaup

Posted on May 20, 2014 by Stephen Petrina | Comments Off

CBC News, May 20, 2014–Turmoil at the University of Saskatchewan is intensifying with the sudden resignation of the provost and academic vice-president Brett Fairbairn.

Word of Fairbairn’s resignation came half an hour before an emergency board of governors meeting, which started at 8 p.m. CST Monday.

In a written statement, Fairbairn said stepping down was “the best contribution I can now offer [the university] under present circumstances”.

Fairbairn is the official who wrote last Wednesday to Robert Buckingham, the head of the School of Public Health, firing him as both the school’s executive director and tenured professor, and ordering him off campus.

Demands for more departures

The move touched off an uproar over threats to academic freedom. The firing came after Buckingham openly voiced concerns about the impact on his school of the cost-cutting plan TransformUS.

Buckingham subsequently had his tenure restored, but not his administrative job.

Fairbairn’s resignation touched off a flurry of tweets, with some calling for more departures.

“That’s one down”, said one tweet. “President next?” said another.

‘A deepening controversy, if not crisis’– Minister of Advanced Education, Rob Norris

The province’s minister of advanced education, Rob Norris, spoke at the closed-door board meeting.

He emerged after about an hour, and spoke to the media before leaving for his constituency office.

Norris said he spoke to the board about his continuing concerns “regarding compliance with the University of Saskatchewan Act, and also what I see and what we see as a deepening controversy — if not crisis — regarding the national reputation and international reputation of the University of Saskatchewan.

“That reputational damage that continues is of very deep concern to us,” Norris added.

One section of the act requires senior administration to report to the board before the dismissal of suspension of individuals, “so there are real questions about the substance of that kind of report process, especially given, and in light of the reversal that took place, and some of the commentary around that reversal,” Norris explained.

He left it to the board to consider whether it had breached the act or not.

No violations, board chair says

Around midnight, board chair Susan Milburn emerged, and told reporters both the board and the administration have complied with the legislation.

Just before Milburn came out to speak, she released a written statement saying: “Tonight, we discussed the leadership of the university in depth. We do not want to act in haste and therefore we have not made any final decisions, other than to maintain our strong commitment to financial sustainability and renewal. We will conclude our due diligence before a decision is rendered on university leadership.”

Asked if the board is looking for any other resignations or dismissals, Milburn said, “We don’t want to make any hasty decisions.”

She confirmed the board has received outside legal advice, and that it will discuss the matter further when it meets again next Monday and Tuesday.

Faculty association condemns ‘veto’

One item not discussed Monday night was the demand by the faculty association to rescind a board decision giving the university president a “veto” on tenure decisions.

Faculty association chair Doug Chivers says that violates their collective agreement, which states it’s up to the board of governors to approve recommendations on tenure.

And, he said, that view has been upheld in a judicial review.

Milburn said the association’s demand was not on the agenda for Monday night’s meeting.

When asked about the faculty’s concern, Norris called it a ‘very serious allegation,’ and said his department is looking into it.

Top story of 2013-14 at #ubc? Failure of accountability for Sauder rape cheer #bced #ubcsauderschool #mba #yteubc

Posted on May 5, 2014 by Stephen Petrina | Comments Off

Photo credit: Carmine Marinelli/Vancouver 24hours/QMI Agency

The Ubyssey, April 13, 2014– Starting the year off with a bang, The Ubyssey broke the story that first-years participating in the Commerce Undergraduate Society’s FROSH orientation had been led in a cheer making light of rape. The news shook campus.

As national media jumped on the story, the university scrambled to respond, eventually convening a panel to make recommendations on how to prevent such things from happening in the future.

The Sauder School of Business and its dean Robert Helsley came out of the mess looking less than fantastic. Students said the cheer had been taking place for many years, and there were rumours that Helsley’s predecessor may have been aware of inappropriate events at CUS FROSH.

After Sauder students failed to pass a referendum approving hundreds of thousands of dollars to be put toward the vague goal of mitigating an alleged culture of sexual violence in the faculty, the university was forced to foot the rest of the bill.

The university panel chaired by VP Students Louise Cowin — which, due to pressure from First Nations groups and the media came to include aboriginal issues after a handful of students at FROSH sang a chant related to Pocahontas— came out with recommendations that have mostly yet to be implemented. Read More: The Ubyssey

I appealed directly to Dean Helsley and President Toope with a reworded cheer:

All together now: A.D.M.I.N.!

A is for we like Accountability!
D is for it will be Deferred!
M is for the Money that runs the show!
I is always for I point the other way when the heat is on!

All together now!

UBC President Stephen Toope and Sauder School of Business dean Robert Helsley, how accountable is it to let two student executives of the Commerce Undergraduate Society (CUS) take the fall for the Sauder rape cheer?

At Saint Mary’s University, where a similar cheer took place, Student Union president Jared Perry said, “I tender my resignation.”

At UBC, Enzo Woo and Gillian Ong, president and VP engagement of the CUS respectively, resigned.

All together now: A.D.M.I.N.!

A is for we like Accountability!
D is for it will be Deferred!

A month and a rushed fact-finding report later, the administration at UBC remains entrenched solely in damage control. Curiously, the words “administration” and “administrator” do not appear in the fact-finding report [“student/s” appears 46 times].

Protect the brand! Especially now. Especially for commerce. No resignations, no accountability.

Photo Credit: Arno Rosenfeld, The Ubyssey

More appeals, but still no accountability at the top:

In the fact-finding report, curiously, the words “administration” and “administrator” do not appear while “student/s” appears 46 times. There were no facts to find on administrators or administration?

If it is plausible that of the 11 Assistant and Associate Deans + Dean Helsley, none have responsibilities for “students” in their portfolio, then the President’s Office has failed. That’s a fact of administrative bloat: Between 1999 and 2013, this Faculty’s administrators at that level more than doubled. Yes, Sauder has Dean Muzyka to thank. And increasing tuition and fees have that to factor in. Yet none of these 12 now have any responsibilities for students? I don’t buy that. So is the buck or loonie passed back to the Sauder Dean’s Office?

Similarly, someone or something is failing at the top if of the 12 senior administrators none have curriculum in their portfolio. I find it incomprehensible that it has taken this cheer, a fact-finding report, campus outrage, and nearly 2014 for Sauder to finally get around to, announced on 1 November by Dean Helsley, “Implementing changes in the curriculum to enhance themes of social justice, ethics, gender and cultural sensitivity, and their role in corporate social responsibility and the creation of a civil society”?

A top business school finally getting around to this? In this economy and world? There are 12 senior administrators and none have curriculum and courses in their portfolio? What exactly are they doing? Not all can be running around consulting, like Bob Sutton, teaching CEOs how not to be assholes.

Comments Off on Top story of 2013-14 at #ubc? Failure of accountability for Sauder rape cheer #bced #ubcsauderschool #mba #yteubc

Posted in Academic freedom, Accountability, Administration, BC Education, Critical University Studies, Equity, Ethics, Media, Organizing, Politics, Protests, Student Movement, Students, Working conditions

Tagged Academic freedom, Administration, Equity, Ethics, Faculty, Students, University presidents, Working conditions

CFP: Academic Mobbing (Special Issue of Workplace) #edstudies #criticaled #occupyed #bced #yteubc

Posted on May 5, 2014 by Stephen Petrina | Comments Off

LAST Call for Papers

Academic Mobbing
Special Issue
Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor

Editors: Stephen Petrina & E. Wayne Ross

Editors of Workplace are accepting manuscripts for a theme issue on Academic Mobbing. Academic mobbing is defined by the Chronicle of Higher Education (11 June 2009) as: “a form of bullying in which members of a department gang up to isolate or humiliate a colleague.” The Chronicle continues:

If rumors are circulating about the target’s supposed misdeeds, if the target is excluded from meetings or not named to committees, or if people are saying the target needs to be punished formally “to be taught a lesson,” it’s likely that mobbing is under way.

As Joan Friedenberg eloquently notes in The Anatomy of an Academic Mobbing, the toll taken is excessive. Building on a long history of both analysis and neglect in academia, Workplace is interested in a range of scholarship on this practice, including theoretical frameworks, legal analyses, resistance narratives, reports from the trenches, and labor policy reviews. We invite manuscripts that address, among other foci:

Effects of academic mobbing
History of academic mobbing
Sociology and ethnography of the practices of an academic mob
Social psychology of the academic mob leader or boss
Academic mobbing factions (facts & fictions) or short stories
Legal defense for academic mob victims and threats (e.g., Protectable political affiliation, race, religion)
Gender norms of an academic mob
Neo-McCarthyism and academic mobbing
Your story…

Contributions for Workplace should be 4000-6000 words in length and should conform to APA, Chicago, or MLA style.

FINAL Date for Papers: May 30, 2014

Comments Off on CFP: Academic Mobbing (Special Issue of Workplace) #edstudies #criticaled #occupyed #bced #yteubc

Posted in Academic freedom, Accountability, Administration, Advocacy, Campus Life, CFPs, Critical University Studies, Diversity, Employment rights, Environment, Equity, Ethics, Free speech, Government, Human Rights, Legal issues, Organizing, Politics, Publications, Research, Solidarity, Students, Unions, Working conditions

Tagged Academic freedom, Administration, Ethics, Faculty, Legal issues, Organizing, Protests, Students, Unions, Working conditions

Student leader denounces rape culture on Canadian campuses

Posted on March 6, 2014 by Stephen Petrina | Comments Off

Diana Mehta, CTV News, March 2, 2014– A student union leader at the University of Ottawa says an online conversation among five fellow students in which she was the target of sexually graphic banter shows that “rape culture” is all too prevalent on Canadian campuses.

Anne-Marie Roy, 24, is going public despite being threatened with legal action by four of the male students, who say the Facebook conversation was private.

Nonetheless, Roy — who received a copy of the conversation via an anonymous email — said she felt compelled to speak out, especially since the five individuals were in positions of leadership on campus.

“They should be held accountable for those actions. Actions have consequences and I think that this is certainly something that can’t go unnoticed,” said Roy, who heads the Student Federation of the University of Ottawa.

“Rape culture is very present on our campuses…I think that it’s very shameful to see that there are student leaders who are perpetuating that within their own circles.”

The incident was first reported in the Fulcrum, the university’s English language student newspaper.

Roy said she was sent screenshots of the Facebook conversation on Feb. 10, while student elections were being held on campus.

The online conversation — a copy of which was obtained by The Canadian Press — included references to sexual activities some of the five individuals wrote they would like to engage in with Roy, including oral and anal sex, as well as suggestions that she suffered from sexually transmitted diseases.

“Someone punish her with their shaft,” wrote one of the individuals at one point. “I do believe that with my reputation I would destroy her,” wrote another.

After confronting a member of the conversation in person, Roy said she received an emailed apology from all five men which emphasized that their comments were never actual threats against her.

“While it doesn’t change the inadmissible nature of our comments, we wish to assure you we meant you no harm,” the apology, written in French, read.

“We realize the content of our conversation between friends promotes values that have no place in our society and our campus, on top of being unacceptably coarse.”

But Roy felt the apology wasn’t enough.

“I was very torn up by the conversation,” she said. “I also think there needs to be a level of responsibility taken for the words that were said in that conversation.”

Roy decided she would bring it up at a Feb. 23 meeting of the student federation’s Board of Administration, which oversees the affairs of the student union.

#Berkeley students protest UC President Napolitano #highered #edstudies #occupyeducation #ubc #yteubc

Posted on February 16, 2014 by Stephen Petrina | Comments Off

Photo by Alejandra Gonzalez Ramirez

Sahil Chinoy and Adriann Dinolfo, Daily Californian, February 13, 2014–UC President Janet Napolitano has been protested across her tour of the UC system, and her visit to UC Berkeley proved no different as individuals from several campus coalitions coalesced in two separate demonstrations Thursday – one continuing into the night – to express their discontent.

As of 1 a.m., the demonstrations remained ongoing, although a diminished version of earlier iterations, with about 30 to 40 protesters outside the Blum Center for Developing Economies, inside of which nine students have locked themselves.

BAMN, a group that advocates for immigrant rights, began the first round of protests at 10 a.m. with a small group of about 15 people outside Sutardja Dai Hall. Three hours later, about 150 people gathered on Upper Sproul Plaza for another protest led by the Students of Color Solidarity Coalition.

Both groups expressed disapproval of Napolitano’s history of deportation as the former Secretary of Homeland Security and of her nonacademic background.

Jasmene del Aguila, a UC Berkeley freshman watching the Sproul Plaza protest, said she supported the demonstrators because she knows undocumented students attend the university, adding that these individuals should have the same opportunities as other students.

In comparison, Nic Jaber, a UC Berkeley sophomore who also observed the protest, was not convinced the SCSC had the right strategy.

“Whether or not she enforced immigration has nothing to do with her proclivity to be our UC president,” Jaber said. “She’s trying to work with us, and we just keep slapping her in the face.”

The protesters then marched through campus and blocked the entrance of the Blum Center, near where BAMN was still stationed.

Nine SCSC students entered the Blum Center about 2:40 p.m., chaining the door and locking themselves inside, according to SCSC organizer and UC Berkeley alumna Natalie Sanchez. She added that the students are risking arrest, and some are risking deportation.

The protesters have three demands to the administration: that individuals inside the building receive amnesty, that Chancellor Nicholas Dirks call for Napolitano’s resignation and that those in solidarity cancel classes Friday and “build a strike.”

Cuts to English language learning programs in #BCed #highered #caut #edstudies #ubc #ubced #bcpoli

Posted on February 13, 2014 by Stephen Petrina | Comments Off

Cindy Oliver, CAUT Bulletin, January 2014– English Language Training (ELT) programs play an increasingly critical role in Canada’s post-secondary institutions as the diversity and complexity of our student population changes, and with it, the need to address those changes with programs that strengthen language proficiency. Although post-secondary education is primarily a provincial responsibility, the federal government plays a crucial role in the funding of ELT programs across the country. And it’s the looming cuts to the federal government’s contribution to those programs that has united British Columbia’s student organizations and the Federation of Post-Secondary Educators to pressure governments to take a different approach.

On Dec. 16, the federation, along with the BC division of the Canadian Federation of Students held a press conference at the Vancouver Community College’s (VCC) downtown Vancouver campus to announce plans to launch a province-wide campaign to pressure the federal and provincial governments to protect the funding arrangement that sees close to $20 million in federal funding flow through BC’s Ministry of Advanced Education to support a range of ELT programs in BC institutions.

It was no coincidence the press conference was held at the Vancouver campus of VCC; it is the largest provider of ELT programs in western Canada. It’s a role that VCC has excelled at for more than 40 years. And it has become something of a professional hub for a growing number of international students who have come to Canada to begin a new life, but need to strengthen their English language skills to ensure they can fully participate in their new country.

On hand for the press conference was Saeideh Ghassarifar, a foreign trained doctor who enrolled at VCC after immigrating to Canada from Iran. During media interviews, Ghassarifar pointed out she has an extensive educational background in her chosen field — she has three degrees, including a PhD in health care education — but she recognizes that her English language skills need to be much stronger. As she said in one interview, “as a doctor I need to understand and be understood when I am dealing with patients.” For her, the VCC English language programs are critical to her ultimate success in this country.

However, the very programs Ghassarifar accesses at VCC are under threat if the federal government moves ahead with its plans to withdraw funding currently in place under a long-standing federal-provincial settlement services agreement. It is through that agreement that BC receives close to $20 million in federal funding that eventually works its way into ELT programs at institutions like VCC. The change to the settlement program in BC, if it goes ahead as announced, would take effect on April 1, 2014.

The federal government’s rationale for cutting the funding makes no sense. Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s austerity rhetoric has permeated every aspect of life in Canada, from oversight of the environment to the muzzling of federal government researchers and scientists. In every case, Harper’s approach has been to diminish the capacity of government to provide information and services that would fulfill the federal government’s part of the social contract with Canadians, a contract that should respect our rights as citizens while ensuring sustainable and balanced growth is shared. During his tenure as Prime Minister we have seen no evidence that he intends to keep up his side of the contract.

Just as troubling, however, is that Harper’s reneging on the $20 million in funding for BC programs comes at a time when the provincial government’s commitment to post-secondary education has come under enormous pressure. For most of the past 12 years, core funding of BC’s public institutions, like in many other provinces, has simply not kept pace with the demands of increased enrolment or system-wide cost pressures. Add in the fact that government policy shifts that have allowed tuition fees to skyrocket over that same period — in BC the average undergraduate tuition fee has more than doubled — and the pressures on access and affordability have simply added more barriers to the education that government, business leaders and the broader community all know are critical to our collective success as both a province and a country. Notably, the BC Business Council — hardly a left-wing think tank — has pointed out on numerous occasions that 75 per cent of all new jobs in BC will require some form of post-secondary education (a degree, diploma, certificate or completed apprenticeship). The council notes that currently only two-thirds of BC’s labour force has that education.

The cuts in funding for English language programs are a step backwards. They will hurt students, the very people that BC and Canada need to support and encourage. Our campaign will focus on their stories and highlight the urgent need to keep ELT funding in place. Working together with allies and the broader community we are confident we can make a difference.

Cindy Oliver is president of the Federation of Post-Secondary Educators of BC.

Time for action on racial equity in Education at #UBC #ubced #yteubc #bced #bcpoli #edstudies #highered

Posted on February 12, 2014 by Stephen Petrina | Comments Off

In a previous blog on UBC Professor Jennifer Chan’s complaint of racial discrimination in her application to the David Lam Chair in Multicultural Education, I suggested a few things:

Given that the term of the current Lam Chair expired, it should itself should be left vacant, without a faculty member holding for two years.
With administrative terms winding down, the spring will be time for our new Dean, closing in on his third year, to ‘shuffle the cabinet’ and appoint a new administration to take affirmative action on racial equity in Education.

Questions were raised about why I said “time for reflection” when I should have said time for action on racial equity. Point taken.

Comments Off on Time for action on racial equity in Education at #UBC #ubced #yteubc #bced #bcpoli #edstudies #highered

Posted in Accountability, Advocacy, Chan Case, Diversity, Equity, Ethics, Faculty, Human Rights

Tagged Equity, Ethics

Reasonable hostility: Academic freedom & speech under threat #highered #edstudies #criticaled #bced #bcpoli #ubc #yteubc

Posted on February 11, 2014 by Stephen Petrina | Comments Off

No disrespect, but… Politic for politic, as faculty and student activism over the last decade was generated in response to administrative measures taken to devalue academic budget lines and increase debt loads, administrators formed policies that shored up their powers to police campus speech and launch investigations. Following an introduction of a Respectful Environment policy in 2008, in anticipation of an upcoming political protest on campus in March 2009, the President of UBC circulated a “Respectful Debate” memo warning students and faculty to “pay special attention to the rules that govern our conduct” for speech. Legislation of respect entangles or snares the left and right in the same finely meshed dragnet attenuating civil liberties. This also recalibrates a network of surveillance media and technologies, challenging nearly all protections in the workplace. Some self-identified centrists or voices of reason welcome the new measures, adopting roles of third persons while reporting to administrators that loose lips sink scholar-ships.

In Canada and the US, these new respectful workplace policies, which anticipate or respond to workplace legislation and court decisions, mean that academic freedom and charter or constitutional rights noticeably contract at the campus gates. Watching postsecondary institution by institution adopt similar respectful workplace policies, the Executive Director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT), issued a memorandum in late March 2009 advising vigilance: “the test of ‘disrespect’ identified in these policies is for the most part experiential and subjective – notions like ‘feelings of shame’ or ‘embarrassment’ crop up repeatedly.” He subsequently asserted, “a major problem in Canadian universities is not that too many people are asserting their academic freedom, but that too few are.”

Similar policies in the US are compounded by the Supreme Court’s 2006 Garcetti v. Ceballos opinion that “when public employees make statements pursuant to their official duties, the employees are not speaking as citizens for First Amendment purposes, and the Constitution does not insulate their communications from employer discipline,” reinforcing managerial discretion and prerogative. Although academic freedom remains a special concern of free speech rights and was deferred by the Court in Garcetti, legal analysts such as Harvey Gilmore concur that “Garcetti has now become the definitive statement on a public employer’s discretion in managing office operations, and that discretion includes controlling an employee’s speech made in the scope of the employee’s professional capacity.”

Following legislation in four other provinces, on 1 July 2012 new legislation in BC came into effect through an amendment of the mental disorder section of the Workers Compensation Act. The new amendment in Section 5.1 provides for potential compensation if the disorder

(i) is a reaction to one or more traumatic events arising out of and in the course of the worker’s employment, or
(ii) is predominantly caused by a significant work-related stressor, including bullying or harassment, or a cumulative series of significant work-related stressors, arising out of and in the course of the worker’s employment.

For legal preparation for this legislation now common across Canada, universities such as UBC folded a large scope of potential infractions into their respectful workplace policies. What stands as protection for disability or “mental disorder” and against “bullying or harassment” under the law is extended in higher education policy to common modes of academic speech—commentary and criticism—that might be articulated in the wrong tone.

Offices of Human Resources introducing or monitoring respectful workplace policies oversimplify speech by stressing, “it is not what you say but how you say it that counts.” Repeated in HR across higher education and curiously by some administrators, this folksy maxim come respectful workplace policy draws on centuries of etiquette texts. “Rather than seeing public talk occasions as needing politeness or civility, a better norm” Karen Tracy proposes, “is reasonable hostility.” She effectively hashes out parameters for democratic communicative practice and flips this “aphorism on its head, it is not merely how something is said, but what a person says that matters.”

Only certain types of face-attack are legitimate and desirable in local governance situations. ‘Reasonable hostility’ is the name for acts that are. Reasonable hostility involves person-directed attack; it is remarks that imply disrespectful, undesirable things about others. Targets of reasonable hostility will judge speakers uttering those remarks to be rude, disrespectful, unfair, and so on…. A speaker might be cognizant that his or her remarks may have this effect, but their purpose is to express outrage about a wrong. The speaker sees self’s central aim as witnessing a truth or expressing righteous indignation.

Faculty and students are bookended by a reformalization of academic speech on one side and a normalization of administrative equivocation, deception included, on the other. Can voices of critique and voices of liberty speak together, with reasonable hostility, as a voice of truth? Can the left and right speak (together)?

Read More: Petrina, S. & Ross, E. W. (2014). Critical University Studies: Workplace, Milestones, Crossroads, Respect, Truth. Workplace, 23, 62-71.

Comments Off on Reasonable hostility: Academic freedom & speech under threat #highered #edstudies #criticaled #bced #bcpoli #ubc #yteubc

Posted in Academic freedom, Accountability, Administration, Advocacy, BC Education, Censorship, Commentary, Critical University Studies, Ethics, Faculty, Free speech, Legal issues, Organizing, Solidarity, Student Movement, Students, Unions, Working conditions

Tagged Academic freedom, Administration, Ethics, Free speech, Legal issues, Organizing, Students, Working conditions

The just-in-time professor #highered #edstudies #criticaled #ubc #bced

Posted on February 10, 2014 by Stephen Petrina | Comments Off

THE JUST-IN-TIME PROFESSOR:
A Staff Report Summarizing eForum Responses on the Working Conditions of Contingent Faculty in Higher Education
January 2014

The post-secondary academic workforce has undergone a remarkable change over the last several decades. The tenure-track college professor with a stable salary, firmly grounded in the middle or upper-middle class, is becoming rare. Taking her place is the contingent faculty: nontenure-track teachers, such as part-time adjuncts or graduate instructors, with no job security from one semester to the next, working at a piece rate with few or no benefits across multiple workplaces, and far too often struggling to make ends meet. In 1970, adjuncts made up 20 percent of all higher education faculty. Today, they represent half.

Step 1 is acknowledge the problem: Plight of adjunct faculty #highered #edstudies #criticaled #bced #ubc #ubced

Posted on February 10, 2014 by Stephen Petrina | Comments Off

Audrey Williams June, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 7, 2014– Maria C. Maisto, president of New Faculty Majority, answered via email select questions submitted by viewers of The Chronicle’s online chat about adjunct issues. The questions and her responses have been edited for brevity and clarity.

Q. Some adjuncts have access to health-care benefits already and don’t need to be covered by the Affordable Care Act. Do you support an exemption so that we could keep our current teaching loads (and paychecks) rather than face colleges cutting our hours so they don’t have to cover us?

A. In this scenario, is the institution getting an exemption from the employer mandate, or is the adjunct with health insurance getting an exemption from having his/her workload reduced? (Don’t like the latter.)

As we indicated in our comments to the IRS, we think that (1) institutions should not be allowed to avoid or circumvent the letter and spirit of the law, namely that no one should be uninsured; (2) educational quality and commitment to the mission of education, particularly as a public good, should be driving institutional response to the ACA, so avoiding excessive course loads is actually a good thing if it is accompanied with the kind of compensation that reflects the real importance of the work. Since these aims can conflict with one another in this context, administrators need to closely collaborate with faculty, with unions, and with students to craft solutions for each individual institution that achieve both aims in a financially sustainable (and legally compliant) way.

Personally I believe with many of my colleagues that fighting for higher course loads may be beneficial for some individuals in the short term but highly problematic for the quality of education and the profession in the long term. I realize that can be hard to face when one has had one’s course load and income reduced, but it’s something that we have to confront honestly as members of the educational profession. And I think it’s reprehensible that so many of our colleagues continue to be forced into positions where their personal economic survival is being pitted against the professional responsibilities to which they have committed as educators.

Q. I don’t think universities will do anything drastic to improve the plight of adjuncts overnight. But what are some ways in which universities can gradually move toward better treatment of adjuncts?

A. Step 1 is to acknowledge the problem—it’s a huge first step. Do a self-study to find out what the conditions actually are on one’s campus and how they compare to conditions locally, regionally, and nationally. The most important aspect of this step is to LISTEN to the contingent faculty on campus (including through anonymous surveys) and to commit to protecting their right to give honest answers—no retaliation allowed. There are good resources at the Delphi Project on the Changing Faculty and Student Success.

Most important: Commit to change and get broad campus and community buy-in. Don’t assume that anyone is not a potential ally. Ground the work in the research and understanding that transforming the working conditions of contingent faculty will benefit students, the campus, and the community in the long run.

Q. What do you say about claims that colleges would have to raise tuition to pay adjuncts more and give them health benefits?

A. I think that’s a scare tactic that has been effectively challenged by the kind of work that the American Association of University Professors has done to analyze the audited financial statements of colleges and universities. Money is there, and faculty and administrators and students should all be working together to put pressure on states to reinvest in higher education. See also Delphi’s “Dispelling the Myths.”

Q. Does New Faculty Majority want colleges to turn adjunct jobs into full-time jobs?

A. NFM believes that part-time faculty, especially those that have been long-serving, should be given first preference for full-time jobs that open up. But we also believe that part time should really mean part time—100 percent pro rata compensation—it should not mean full-time work for less than part-time pay. On this issue we have to be careful to remember that people who need part-time work are often caregivers, especially women, and people with disabilities, so we don’t want to forget about them in our recognition that there is a need for full-time positions and a huge number of people who are willing and able to fill them.

Overuse and Abuse of Adjunct Faculty #highered #adjunct #edstudies #criticaled #ubc #bced #bcpoli

Posted on February 10, 2014 by Stephen Petrina | Comments Off

Richard Moser, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 13, 2014– The increasing exploitation of contingent faculty members is one dimension of an employment strategy sometimes called the “two-tiered” or “multitiered” labor system.

This new labor system is firmly established in higher education and constitutes a threat to the teaching profession. If left unchecked, it will undermine the university’s status as an institution of higher learning because the overuse of adjuncts and their lowly status and compensation institutionalize disincentives to quality education, threaten academic freedom and shared governance, and disqualify the campus as an exemplar of democratic values. These developments in academic labor are the most troubling expressions of the so-called corporatization of higher education.

“Corporatization” is the name sometimes given to what has happened to higher education over the last 30 years. Corporatization is the reorganization of our great national resources, including higher education, in accordance with a shortsighted business model. Three decades of decline in public funding for higher education opened the door for increasing corporate influence, and since then the work of the university has been redirected to suit the corporate vision.

The most striking symptoms of corporatization shift costs and risks downward and direct capital and authority upward. Rising tuition and debt loads for students limit access to education for working-class students. The faculty and many other campus workers suffer lower compensation as the number of managers, and their pay, rises sharply. Campus management concentrates resources on areas where wealth is created, and new ideas and technologies developed at public cost become the entitlement of the corporate sector. The privatization and outsourcing of university functions and jobs from food service to bookstores to instruction enrich a few businessmen and create more low-wage nonunion jobs. Increasingly authoritarian governance practices have become the “new normal.”

Tag Archives: Ethics

How not to run a university (Prologue + Trilogy)

#Dalhousie students, staff & faculty rally against admin mishandling of dentistry students misogynistic Facebook group

#Dalhousie profs complaint on misogynistic dentistry students’ #Facebook posts #highered #dalhousiehateswomen

Female students open letter to #Dalhousie president Florizone #highered #ubc

Lilia D. Monzó & Peter McLaren on Red Love: Toward Racial, Economic and Social Justice #handsup #highered #criticaled #race

Symposium: Public Engagement and the Politics of Evidence in an Age of Neoliberalism and Audit Culture #highered #criticaled #caut #aaup

Public Engagement and the Politics of Evidence in an Age of Neoliberalism and Audit Culture

July 23-25, 2015

Faculty of Education, University of Regina

U Illinois urged to reinstate prof Salaita, critic of Israeli war in Gaza

Saint Mary’s major changes, #UBC not so much #SMUHalifaxNews #ubcSauderschool

Academic #mobbing and #bullying: Special Issue of #Workplace #ubc #edstudies #criticaled #caut #aaup #bced

Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor

Academic Mobbing and Bullying

#USask VP resigns in wake of #academicfreedom scandal #edstudies #ubc #caut #aaup

Demands for more departures

No violations, board chair says

Faculty association condemns ‘veto’

Top story of 2013-14 at #ubc? Failure of accountability for Sauder rape cheer #bced #ubcsauderschool #mba #yteubc

All together now: A.D.M.I.N.!

CFP: Academic Mobbing (Special Issue of Workplace) #edstudies #criticaled #occupyed #bced #yteubc

LAST Call for Papers

Student leader denounces rape culture on Canadian campuses

#Berkeley students protest UC President Napolitano #highered #edstudies #occupyeducation #ubc #yteubc

Cuts to English language learning programs in #BCed #highered #caut #edstudies #ubc #ubced #bcpoli

Time for action on racial equity in Education at #UBC #ubced #yteubc #bced #bcpoli #edstudies #highered

Reasonable hostility: Academic freedom & speech under threat #highered #edstudies #criticaled #bced #bcpoli #ubc #yteubc

The just-in-time professor #highered #edstudies #criticaled #ubc #bced

THE JUST-IN-TIME PROFESSOR:
A Staff Report Summarizing eForum Responses on the Working Conditions of Contingent Faculty in Higher Education
January 2014

Step 1 is acknowledge the problem: Plight of adjunct faculty #highered #edstudies #criticaled #bced #ubc #ubced

Overuse and Abuse of Adjunct Faculty #highered #adjunct #edstudies #criticaled #ubc #bced #bcpoli

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Tag Archives: Ethics

July 23-25, 2015

Faculty of Education, University of Regina

Demands for more departures

No violations, board chair says

Faculty association condemns ‘veto’

All together now: A.D.M.I.N.!

LAST Call for Papers

THE JUST-IN-TIME PROFESSOR: A Staff Report Summarizing eForum Responses on the Working Conditions of Contingent Faculty in Higher Education January 2014

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THE JUST-IN-TIME PROFESSOR:
A Staff Report Summarizing eForum Responses on the Working Conditions of Contingent Faculty in Higher Education
January 2014