academic labor 
-
SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
5/15/2023
How Media Discussions of Tenure Distort its Meaning and Undermine Academics
by Deepa Das Acevedo
Tenure absolutely does not provide "a job for life" for anyone, but the belief that it does is used to justify political attacks on academics.
-
SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
5/5/2023
The Labor of Teaching and Administrative Hysteria
by Elise Archias and Blake Stimson
Although diversity and cultural sensitivity administrators often embrace (and arguably encourage) student complaints about ideas presented in the classroom, students are more harmed when administrators use those complaints to undercut the expertise and autonomy of faculty who have effective ways of teaching difficult material.
-
SOURCE: Academe
5/8/2023
Faculty and Librarians Must be Allies in the Fight to Save Higher Ed
by Emily Drabinski
"A robust defense of free expression requires an equally vociferous defense of the institutions where that speech is most widely celebrated. The fight for higher education must be a fight for the library as well."
-
SOURCE: The Baffler
4/27/2023
DeSantis's Real Campus Attack is on Labor
by Dan Royles
"I’m exhausted because I teach U.S. history, including African American and LGBTQ+ history, at a public university in Florida." This places the author at the intersection of DeSantis's public attacks on verboten ideas and his quieter steps to gut tenure protections for the state's faculty and union representation for all educators in Florida.
-
SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
4/25/2023
U. of Michigan Faculty Shouldn't Flatter New President while the Administration Busts Unions and Politicians Trash Higher Ed
by Silke-Maria Weineck
Top administrators increasingly share with conservative politicians a "desire to refashion universities in the image of the American workplace, where at-will employees do what they’re told by feudal overlords who have poems commissioned in their praise."
-
SOURCE: The Nation
4/19/2023
Rutgers Strikers Ran the Table; Is This the Way out of Higher Ed's Crisis?
by Jonathan David
Three Rutgers unions, representing instructors in different professional positions, won by modeling the kind of solidarity that university workers need to fight back against the privatization and corporatization of public higher education.
-
SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
4/17/2023
Rutgers Unions Suspend Strike after Big Gains
Although unions representing graduate workers, lecturers, and full-time faculty must approve them, a framework for agreement has been reached that would deliver significant gains in wages and other demands.
-
4/9/2023
If Universities are a Culture War Battleground, it's Time for University Workers to Fight Together
by Jeff Kolnick
"If higher education loses out in the culture wars, so too will American democracy. Our only hope is to enter the fray with our own culture in mind, and to insist on respect. If we stay on the sideline, we will lose."
-
SOURCE: Public Seminar
3/29/2023
A Faculty Union Can Fight for More than Money
by J. Faith Almiron
"What exactly does the university offer to students who take on enormous, as-yet unforgivable debts—without reliable teachers?"
-
SOURCE: TeenVogue
3/22/2023
Graduate Student Strikes Fight Back Against Decades of Austerity, Seek to Revive Opportunity
Participants in these actions explain that the goal isn't only pay and benefits for graduate student workers, but returning public higher education to a state of accessibility for millions of students and opportunity for millions of workers after decades of budget cuts and privatization.
-
SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
3/17/2023
Why are Universities so Disrespectful of their Organized Workers?
by Maximillian Alvarez
From teaching assistants to cafeteria workers, labor exploitation and union busting are the shady underside of the modern university, according to three scholars active in the academic labor movement.
-
SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
3/14/2023
Is the Loss of Collegiality about Manners or Workloads?
by Paula Marantz Cohen
If the campus conversation is a lost art for both professors and students, a big part of the solution must be restoring the time – and security – to talk.
-
SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
3/10/2023
Rearranging Deck Chairs at AHA?
by Jacob Bruggeman
"If professional history is history, it isn’t due to academic politics — it’s because of the sharp contraction and possible collapse of the job market." What are the profession's ostensible leaders going to do about it?
-
3/9/2023
North Dakota Prof: Tenure Reform Bill is About Silencing Whistleblowers
by Eric Grabowsky
A professor says that, aside from academic freedom implications, a bill proposed to reduce tenure protections is aimed at intimidating critics of the university system's management.
-
SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
3/1/2023
Academic Workers Looking to History for Organizing Strategies in Antiunion States
The United Public Workers of America were pioneers in organizing academic workers across professional and occupational lines, until being red-baited.
-
3/5/2023
Another Casualty of the Academic Job Market? The Relatable Professor
by Elizabeth Stice
As the academic job market demands a degree of excellence and achievement in young scholars that was unknown for earlier generations of faculty, are the shrinking ranks of the faculty being filled with professors who struggle to relate to their students?
-
SOURCE: CNN
2/16/2023
Temple Revives Old-Time Union Busting against Grad Students
by Heather Ann Thompson
Temple's decision to revoke the tuition remission of striking grad students (and threaten their ability to complete degrees) is the kind of hardball tactic that bodes ill for workers in every workplace in America, and a reminder of the need to understand the country's labor history.
-
SOURCE: Academe
2/6/2023
The End of Tenure and the Transformation of Higher Ed
by Marc Stein
The decline in "tenure density"—the proportion of faculty in tenured or tenure-track jobs—is a dire threat to American higher education.
-
SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
2/1/2023
We've Reached the Execution Stage of the Profession's Demise
by Jacques Berlinerblau
"The decisions which ravaged the future for coming generations of Ph.D.s were made not just by consultants and suits, but by those with Ph.D.s and likely a few peer-reviewed publications. This was scholar-on-scholar violence."
-
SOURCE: Los Angeles Review of Books
1/21/2023
Julia Schleck on The Function of the University Today
by Michael Meranze
Julia Schleck's work ties the idea of academic freedom to the social role of the university and its internal labor practices, which threatens scholars with attacks from inside and outside the campus.
News
- How Tina Turner Escaped Abuse and Reclaimed her Name
- The Biden Administration Wants to Undo the Damage of Urban Highways. It Won't be Simple
- AAUP: Fight Tooth and Nail Against Florida's Higher Ed Agenda Because Your State is Next
- Texas GOP's Ten Commandments School Bill Fails
- Former Alabama Governors: We Regret Overseeing Executions
- Jeff Sharlet on the Intersectional Erotics of Fascism
- Scholars Stage Teach-in on Racism in DeSantis's Back Yard
- Paul Watanabe, Historian and Manzanar Survivor, Makes Sure History Isn't Forgotten
- Massachusetts-Based Historians: Book Bans in Florida Affect Us, Too
- Deborah Lipstadt's Work Abroad as Antisemitism Envoy Complicated by Definitional Dispute