Departments

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academic labor

  • SOURCE: Against the Current
    8/15/2022

    Faculty Need Labor Organizing, Not Shared Governance

    by Eva Cherniavsky

    "Beyond the walls of the academy, where the default vision of the college professor is (still) that of an over-educated, privileged elite reveling in the outrageous luxury of career-long job security, no one at all is much concerned with the erosion of faculty power. Yet they should be."

  • SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
    8/4/2022

    Putting the Tenure Debate in Historical Perspective

    by Adam Sitze

    Academic tenure has much in common with the historial practice of lifetime appointments for judges. Why are academics reluctant to embrace the comparison? 

  • SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
    4/25/2022

    The Decline of Tenure is the Greatest Threat to Higher Education

    by Marc Stein

    While states like Texas threaten tenure politically, in California the instititution is under attack by austerity and attrition; either way, higher education itself is threatened by the abandonment of employment security. 

  • SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
    2/10/2022

    When Professors Close Ranks

    by Claire Bond Potter

    If administrations can't be counted on to support student victims of sexual harassment, faculty need to be prepared to defend students and help them defend themselves by whatever means necessary. 

  • SOURCE: Insurrect: Radical Thinking in Early American Studies
    2/10/2022

    Notes from a Grad School Survivor

    by Kellen Heniford

    This week's revelations of sexual harassment and institutional complicity at Harvard are striking a chord with women academics because they're not surprising. The author discusses her own experiences and the power dynamics stacked against students and survivors.

  • SOURCE: The Nation
    1/18/2022

    Columbia Has Lost Its Way

    The university's negotiations with its graduate student workers' union show an institution organized around the values of a corporation. 

  • SOURCE: Contingent
    1/1/2021

    Strange Beasts of Columbia

    by Eduardo Vergara Torres

    "According to the administration, the typical Columbia student worker must be an eyeless, toothless, infertile male creature bred on the cold shores of New England, who is about to inherit a fortune amassed by generations of well-educated ancestors."

  • SOURCE: Elle
    12/15/2021

    The Secret Lives Of Adjunct Professors

    by Gila Berryman

    "What kind of role model was I? I was a Black woman teaching working-class Black and brown students the importance of learning to write clearly so they could get a good job, yet I couldn’t support myself on my own salary."

  • SOURCE: The New Republic
    12/14/2021

    The 20-Year Fight to Unionize Grad Student Workers

    by Rebecca Nathanson

    "The 3,000-person strike at Columbia University is the largest active strike in the U.S. and marks a decades-long struggle to recognize grad-student labor," as Rebecca Nathanson explains. 

  • SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
    11/29/2021

    A New Force in American Labor: Academics

    A member referendum in the United Auto Workers could make the union more amenable to direct democracy, and potentially make academic workers a major power bloc in the union. 

  • SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
    11/8/2021

    I'll Retire if My University Pledges to Replace Me

    by Jonathan Zimmerman

    Can senior professors contribute to solving the academic jobs crisis by tying their retirement to pledges by universities to replace them with tenure-track faculty? 

  • 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.