academic labor 
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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SOURCE: YouTube
1/19/2022
"Hello Internet": Barry Mehler Responds to Reaction to His Course Intro Video
The Michigan professor defends a controversial course intro video that resulted in his suspension, saying his purpose was to provoke thought and make students aware of the risks and dangers of in-person instruction.
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SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
1/14/2022
Michigan Professor's Intro Video Stunt Leads to Suspension (content: language)
Historian of Science Barry Mehler was suspended by Ferris State (Mich.) University after releasing a welcome video for his spring course that took what could be described as a bold and provocative approach to protesting the college's mandatory in-person teaching.
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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."
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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."
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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.
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12/5/2021
Universities Operating Like Businesses Seems Inevitable. Can They Choose Better Businesses to Follow?
by Elizabeth Stice
"If universities behaving more like businesses is the future, we must then aim to imitate sustainable businesses which understand and utilize their unique advantages."
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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.
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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?
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SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
11/9/2021
UC Churns Through a Quarter of its Lecturers a Year. Like Me.
by Diane Mendoza Nevárez
"When UC treats lecturers as gig workers, they deny students access to the mentorship crucial for student retention and success."
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SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
10/18/2021
My University's Policies Undermined the Lessons I Was Trained to Teach, so I Quit
by Cornelia Lambert
"I could use our own university system as a case study in how political power often wins out over scientific knowledge. This would be a powerful lesson, one students would be unlikely to forget. But did I want to be part of that?"
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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."
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SOURCE: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
10/4/2021
Georgia State Professor Files Complaint over Denied Request to Teach Remotely
“I would like to be at a place where my administration cares about my health, my basic fundamental health, and is not willing to put my life at risk for a Board of Regents political policy,” historian Dan Immergluck said.
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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.
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SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
9/23/2021
Academic Tenure: In Desperate Need of Reform or of Defenders?
by Steve Mintz
Tenure's defenders need to link the protection not only to the interests of the select few faculty who enjoy its protections but to the broader trajectory of academic institutions.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
9/22/2021
With Students Back on Campus, Faculty Push Back Against COVID Policies They Consider Inadequate
"Many are enjoying seeing students back on campus. But for others those scenes are fraught."
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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."
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