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Higher Education

Northeastern Grad Workers Organize For A Union Despite Harassment

July 27, 2023 Tarang Saluja, Left Voice. , , ,
In a tremendous show of solidarity, union members and community supporters from across the state of Massachusetts and beyond came to support Northeastern University’s graduate student workers (GENU-UAW) in a “Mass Solidarity Rally for our Rights” as they prepare to vote YES for a union from September 19 to September 21. This union vote comes after eight years of obstruction, retaliation, and other forms of union-busting from the administration at Northeastern. It was noted that the Northeastern University Police Department (NUPD) was used to harass students for chalking activity and even specifically intimidated marginalized students in their labs.

Projects To Shift Media Further Rightward Get Kid Glove Treatment

July 22, 2023 Karl Grossman, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. , , ,
Quill is the magazine of the oldest press organization in the United States, the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), which describes itself as having “roughly 6,000 members” and being “the nation’s most broad-based journalism organization.” It features a five-page story  in its current issue (Summer/23) headlined “Refreshing the Pool: Right-Leaning Organizations Keep the Conservative Press Pipeline Flowing.” The piece, touted on Quill‘s cover, is a largely uncritical and superficial look at efforts to push journalism further to the right. It begins with Corey Walker, who “didn’t major in journalism” and only “took one journalism class” at the University of Michigan, but “got more journalism experience and training through Campus Reform and the College Fix, organizations that help students prepare for careers in conservative media.”

Fallout From Supreme Court’s Affirmative Action Decision Has Begun

July 11, 2023 Nadra Nittle, The 19th. , , ,
After the Supreme Court’s ruling last month effectively ending affirmative action in higher education, lawmakers and organizations on both sides of the ideological divide strategized next steps ranging from challenging legacy admissions to barring minority scholarships. In a consolidated decision in two cases — Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. University of North Carolina and Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College — the Supreme Court decided that affirmative action is unconstitutional. Harvard is now under fire for admissions policies that activist groups say disadvantage students of color

Stanford Graduate Workers Unionize

July 9, 2023 Anne Li, The Stanford Daily. , , , ,
In a landslide vote, 94% of Stanford’s graduate worker voters said ‘yes’ to being represented by the Stanford Graduate Workers Union (SGWU), according to an email announcement on Thursday. The final vote count was 1639 to 108, with a turnout rate of just over half. National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) certification of the results will cement the Stanford Graduate Workers Union (SGWU), affiliated with the United Electrical Workers (UE), as the official representative of eligible graduate students in collective bargaining with the University. Now that the University’s graduate workers have unionized, the SGWU’s next steps involve figuring out bargaining priorities and electing a bargaining committee.

Beyond Affirmative Action, Toward Black Unity

July 8, 2023 Austin Cole, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
“Affirmative action” is, at this point, a loaded phrase. Strictly speaking, affirmative action typically refers to sets of policies/procedures that attempt to “even the playing field,” most commonly in education or employment decisions, by stopping present and future discrimination against marginalized or underrepresented groups while making up for past discrimination and injustices. For some in the U.S., affirmative action that considers race is representative of ‘reverse racism’ and political ‘wokeness’ run amok, and for others, it is a major victory that our elders and ancestors struggled for for years.

University Of California Is Escalating Its Crackdown On Dissent

July 5, 2023 Rafael Jaime, In These Times. , , , ,
Just before the Fourth of July weekend, postdoctoral scholar Jessica Ng, graduate student William Schneider, and another graduate student at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), were arrested by campus police on charges of felony vandalism over $400 and conspiracy to commit a crime. They were arrested at their homes (where their personal items were confiscated including keys, phones and at least one computer), taken to San Diego county jails, and held overnight on $20,000 bail each. Their crime? Allegedly writing slogans like ​“Living Wage Now” on a concrete campus building — in washable markers and chalk — during a peaceful protest almost a month earlier.

Fossil-Fuel Lobbyists Work For US Groups Trying To Fight Climate Crisis

July 5, 2023 Oliver Milman, The Guardian. , , , ,
More than 1,500 lobbyists in the US are working on behalf of fossil-fuel companies while at the same time representing hundreds of liberal-run cities, universities, technology companies and environmental groups that say they are tackling the climate crisis, the Guardian can reveal. Lobbyists for oil, gas and coal interests are also employed by a vast sweep of institutions, ranging from the city governments of Los Angeles, Chicago and Philadelphia; tech giants such as Apple and Google; more than 150 universities; some of the country’s leading environmental groups – and even ski resorts seeing their snow melted by global heating.

US Supreme Court Strikes Down Student Debt Relief

July 1, 2023 People's Dispatch. , , ,
On June 30, the US Supreme Court struck down President Joe Biden’s student debt relief program, which had been held up in the courts for several months due to right-wing legal challenges. The six ultra-conservative justices which make up the majority of the court ruled against the program, while the three centrist justices voted to uphold it. The Court ruled that Biden had overstepped his authority when he announced a sweeping student debt relief program on August 24, 2022. The program would have zeroed out the debts of 20 million people. Biden issued an executive action in August to forgive the debts of student loan borrowers by up to USD 20,000.

SCOTUS’s Latest Attack On Affirmative Action

July 1, 2023 Monica Moorehead, Workers World. , , ,
The Supreme Court of the United States confirmed once again what an utterly reactionary, rightwing institution it is by striking down the right to use affirmative action in college admissions. The 6-3 ruling, issued June 29, stems from two cases – Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard University and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina – which claim that whites and Asians are victims of “reverse discrimination.” What this vote means is that “race-conscious admissions policies,” can no longer be used to assure that working class students of color, especially if they are Black and Brown, will have access to colleges and universities, whose exorbitant tuition fees have put millions into a lifetime of debt.

Indigenous Activists Respond To Gutting Of Affirmative Action

June 30, 2023 Jean-Luc Pierite and Mahtowin Munro, Popular Resistance. , , , ,
Boston, MA - Indigenous activists in Boston reaffirm their commitment to overcome historic barriers to higher education for students in light of today’s ruling delivered by the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) that guts Affirmative Action in college admissions at institutions of higher education across the country. The Indigenous activists demand the passage of two bills in the state legislature specifically addressing Native issues in public education. Today’s SCOTUS ruling overturns a longstanding precedent that had previously benefited Black, Indigenous, and Latine students in higher education due to a demonstrable historic lack of opportunities for those students.

Organizing For Better Wages Across Sectors At Swarthmore College

June 27, 2023 Solidarity At Swat, Left Voice. , , , ,
Solidarity at Swat started after a Swarthmore College alum, John Braxton ‘70, spoke on campus at an event organized by members of Swarthmore’s Young Democratic Socialists of America and suggested that we find a material issue that unites people on campus. Staff wages were previously raised to a  $15 minimum, but student wages were not raised alongside this and remained quite low. We started advocating for a student-worker minimum wage of $15. At that time, we rhetorically showed support for staff wage increases and made the case that a raise in student wages would also induce an increase in staff wages.

Decolonizing Knowledge Means Supporting The Academic Boycott

June 26, 2023 Julia Elyachar, Mondoweiss. , , , , ,
It is a week since the vote in the American Anthropological Association membership to boycott Israeli institutions went live. What happened during that week? Sedil Naghniyeh, a fifteen-year-old from Jenin, died on Wednesday of a gunshot wound to her head. Israeli soldiers shot her on Monday, June 19, while she was standing in her front yard. Six others died and tens were wounded during that same attack on Jenin. On that day, hundreds of Israeli Jewish settlers descended on the Palestinian village of Turmus Ayya, just north of Ramallah. As per a Ha’aretz editorial, the scene is familiar: “cars are torched, windows are smashed, flames rise from among the houses…police and army let the attacks happen, as they have for decades.”

CUNY Shuts Down Social Justice Center Over Pro-Palestine Exhibit

June 26, 2023 Left Voice. , , , , ,
Faculty and staff at the Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC) in New York City have issued a statement (posted below) decrying the proposed closure of the school’s newly established Social Justice and Equity Centers (SJEC). The SJEC, which was founded only last year with a mission to offer programs, events, workshops, and training for and about historically marginalized and oppressed groups at the college, is planned to be closed on June 30. Although the administration told the Centers’ workers that they were being shut down because of a lack of funding, it’s highly unusual for a college to found a new center like this only to close it less than a year later.

How Students Jumpstarted A Bold New Campaign For Debt Abolition

June 22, 2023 Eric Stoner, Waging Nonviolence. , , ,
The historic movement victory to forgive student debt won last summer is under relentless attack. At the beginning of June, the Senate passed a bill blocking President Biden’s debt cancellation plan, which he subsequently vetoed. However, the plan remains on hold as the Supreme Court considers dubious challenges to it. Another blow came with the signing of the bipartisan debt ceiling deal that will restart student loan payments at the end of August. In response to these ongoing threats, students are once again taking action — rallying outside the Supreme Court in February and organizing a sit-in at House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s office on Capitol Hill in May.

Colonial Universities Grab Land For Profit, War, And Medical Apartheid

June 19, 2023 Map Liberation. , , ,
Universities on Turtle Island, as la paperson writes, “are land-grabbing, land-transmogrifying, land-capitalizing machines.” Indigenous land theft, and profits from slavery, enabled these universities to be built in the first place – and they still collect profits from stolen lands.[1] With this accumulated capital, major US universities have become colonial real estate agents. Harvard University, notably, owns land all over the world – from vineyards in Washington state to farmlands in Brazil, South Africa, New Zealand, and Romania.[2] Harvard’s land-grabbing machine has harmed Indigenous communities, poisoning their water and crops in Brazil, and denying access to burial sites and pasture land in South Africa.
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