Departments

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academic labor

  • SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
    10/12/2021

    "The Chair" Creator: How to Fight Adjunctification

    by Annie Julia Wyman

    "The academic job market had collapsed -- indeed, it has been collapsing for more than a decade. Even L.A., where people famously go to get their dreams stomped on, seemed like a better bet."

  • SOURCE: Dissent
    10/4/2021

    The "Eds and Meds" Sector Needs a New Deal

    by Ian Gavigan and Jennifer Mittelstadt

    COVID has given university administrators license to escalate their war on unionized labor in all facets of operations, from instruction to food services. All university workers need to recognize their common interest and organize to make universities pay living wages, offer fair benefits, and support equitable community development.

  • SOURCE: The American Prospect
    9/20/2021

    The Failure of Financialized Higher Ed

    by Kelly Grotke

    "Higher education has been captured by a vicious circle of financialization, which is destroying it as an affordable and widely available right of the citizenry, and as an engine of social mobility."

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    9/20/2021

    Fights over Tenure Aren't About Tenure

    by Molly Worthen

    "The fight over tenure is not really about tenure. It’s a proxy for a larger debate about the meaning of academic freedom and the priorities of higher education." If academics want to successfully protect tenure, they must engage the culture war battle, too. 

  • SOURCE: Washington Monthly
    9/17/2021

    Adjunct Professors Need a Better Ground Game

    by Mia Brett

    If universities aren’t going to invest in tenure track teaching lines, then we need to make sure that they participate in and support the professionalization of adjuncts. Statewide adjunct unionization may be the way to make that happen. 

  • SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
    8/13/2021

    "Be Paranoid": Will Administrators Back Faculty Teaching Controversial Topics?

    "Many faculty members across the country are concerned that in this politically polarized environment, some students or outside groups could come looking for trouble. The threat of students recording classroom conversations and posting snippets online out of context is not new, after all."

  • SOURCE: Washington Monthly
    8/4/2021

    How to Cure Colleges’ Adjunct Addiction

    by Holly Brewer

    "Rather than bring absurd administrative costs under control, administrators are going after the university’s core function by opting to hire the cheapest possible teachers." The solution is a government floor on instructor pay and a ceiling on the number of adjuncts a university can employ.

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    6/9/2021

    It’s Time for an Overhaul of Academic Freedom

    by Emily J. Levine

    The idea of academic freedom doesn't account for the present precarity of most university teachers, and doesn't rest on a positive concept of what professors should do with students and the public. 

  • SOURCE: CNN
    6/9/2021

    Give Kids the "Summer Slowdown" They Need

    by David M. Perry

    Many parents, teachers and academics included, may wonder what they can do to fix the damage of COVID on kids' emotional health. The author suggests considering doing little. 

  • SOURCE: The New Republic
    5/25/2021

    Academic Tenure Is Broken. Nikole Hannah-Jones’s Case Makes That Clear

    by William Egginton

    Many academics have objected to political interference in the University of North Carolina's decision to ignore the faculty recommendation to tenure Nikole Hannah-Jones as a Knight Foundation Chair of Journalism. This incident should not obscure the ways that the tenure system entrenches inequality when it works properly. 

  • SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
    5/18/2021

    Dropout Professors

    by Gretchen Soderlund

    Sharing the stories of professors who, like her, dropped out of high school, one historian argues that we need open-admission and affordable public colleges and an education system that does more to keep students in. 

  • SOURCE: The Guardian
    5/1/2021

    Studying History Should not be Only for the Elite, Say Academics

    Professor Kate Williams said she was angry that the Tory government is “pushing a vision that only Stem subjects [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] matter and degrees are only worthwhile if you immediately move to a job paying a very high salary”.

  • SOURCE: Al Jazeera
    4/30/2021

    The Real ‘Second-Class Citizens’ Of Academia

    by Donald Earl Collins

    Cornel West's complaints of being treated like a second-class citizen by Harvard may reflect disrespectful treatment. But thousands of adjunct professors experience worse as a matter of routine on the front lines of American universities.