Departments

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academic labor

  • 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. 

  • SOURCE: Academe
    5/4/2021

    Visions against Politics

    by Eileen Boris and Annelise Orleck

    Historians Eileen Boris and Annelise Orleck are the guest editors of the spring edition of the AAUP's magazine focusing on the need for a New Deal for Higher Education. This is their introductory essay. 

  • SOURCE: Madison.com
    4/17/2021

    Two Madison Profs Make 'Collegeland' Podcast About University Life

    Historians Nan Enstad and Lisa Levenstein have produced a podcast that tells the stories of college campuses as places of learning, work, and socialization, seeking to counter both right-wing demonization of campus liberalism and the rose-colored view of university PR. 

  • SOURCE: Salem News
    3/24/2021

    SSU Faculty Retrenchment Plan Accidentally Released

    Salem (MA) State University's General Counsel disputed that a spreadsheet accidentally relased in response to a records request and circulated by a faculty member constitutes a plan to terminate faculty positions for budgetary reasons. Faculty argue that it is consistent with pressure they face to accept furloughs and doubt administration assurances that retrenchment is off the table.

  • SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
    3/18/2021

    When Academic Bullies Claim the Mantle of Free Speech

    by Jennifer Ruth

    It's past time to look at controversies over "woke" campus culture by considering the frequency with which faculty harassment follows from the exposure of alleged left-wing excess in the outrage-driven news media.