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Higher Education

Solidarity Propelled Union Drive At The Country’s Richest University

June 13, 2023 Dusty Christensen, In These Times. , , , ,
Boston, Massachusetts - In February, after five years of organizing under the radar, members of the nascent Harvard Academic Workers officially went public with their intent to unionize. The road to going public wasn’t always straightaway. In January, as the group of non-tenure-track teaching and research employees moved closer to announcing their drive, union member Kara Fulton and her fellow organizers were having as many feelings of discouragement as they were elation. ​“It felt like we were kind of working on our own,” she said. But then, later in January, other workers from across the Harvard campus and other Boston-area unions put fuel to their fire at a quickly organized roundtable event.

University Of Washington Postdocs And Research Scientists Go On Strike

June 10, 2023 Mantak Singh, Fightback News. , , , ,
Seattle, WA - On June 7, postdoctorates and research scientists and engineers (RSEs) at the University of Washington Seattle, members of the UAW 4121 went on strike. Over 700 workers, students and community members turned out to picket lines in support. While postdoctorates and RSEs have separate bargaining committees, they are united in their fight for a strong contract. In December 2021, RSEs submitted a union certification petition, and they are still fighting to achieve a strong agreement. The certification process faced a significant delay of over six months when the University of Washington administration contested the inclusion of more than 300 individuals in the bargaining unit.

Attacks On Student Loan Forgiveness Threaten Millions In The US

June 3, 2023 Natalia Marques, People's Dispatch. , , ,
US Senators from the Republican and Democrat parties pushed to quickly approve the bipartisan debt ceiling deal on Thursday night, June 1. Republicans, led by Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, successfully negotiated severe cuts on government spending in a way that will hurt workers the most out of any class: by kicking millions off of food and health benefits, cutting the IRS making it easier for the wealthy to evade taxes, and officially putting an end date to the current freeze on student loan payments. Senate leaders pushed this bill through to ostensibly to avoid a government default.

Campus Cops Intimidate Graduate Workers In Ann Arbor, Michigan

June 3, 2023 Left Voice. , , , ,
On Sunday, May 21, 2023, at 6:30pm, DPSS police officer John Buehler (#167) approached a graduate student in GEO (AFT Local 3550) at their home. Buehler knocked on the door and the student answered, and the cop proceeded to attempt to intimidate the student as they stood in the doorway. Buehler threatened to file a report with the Washtenaw County prosecutor’s office regarding a previous picket action, advised the student to “reach out to Student Legal Services,” and left his business card. On Monday, May 22, 2023, at 10:00am, another graduate student with GEO received an email from the same cop, John Buehler, making similar demands of this student.

The US Supreme Court Seems Ready To Gut Affirmative Action

May 27, 2023 Brandon Tensley, Capital B. , , ,
This summer, the U.S. Supreme Court’s Republican-appointed majority is anticipated to end affirmative action, which for decades has sought to remedy a bruising legacy of discrimination against marginalized groups, including Black Americans. Nearly 10 years ago, Students for Fair Admissions, an organization headed by Edward Blum, a stockbroker turned conservative legal strategist, filed lawsuits against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, claiming that their undergraduate admissions practices are racially discriminatory. The lower courts sided with the defendants, but the high court in the coming weeks is expected to say that schools are barred from considering race when reviewing applications.

The Tampa 5 Are Facing Ten-Plus Years In Jail

May 21, 2023 Freedom Road Socialist Organization, Fight Back News!. , , ,
Tampa, Florida – Florida state prosecutor Justin Diaz it trying to put the Tampa 5 in prison. The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) members, arrested at a campus protest against the racist agenda of Governor Ron DeSantis, each face a trumped-up felony charge, alleging “battery on a police officer,” carrying five years of jail time. When the activists rejected a plea deal requiring them to apologize for doing the right thing, the prosecutor added on more felony charges. This means that three of the activists are facing more than ten years behind bars. In addition, the activists face ten misdemeanor charges.

Howard Students Protest Biden

May 21, 2023 Howard University Students, Workers World. , , ,
We are exhausted by the lack of resources we had as Howard Students, struggling to keep up with increasing tuition rates and inadequate housing options, amidst the corporatization of our board of trustees, and the fight to renew student, faculty and community voting representation within it, let alone the ongoing gentrification of D.C. at large, to which Howard University and its affiliates are a party. We maintain countless grievances and will not sit silently and allow them to go unrecognized, especially in light of campaign season. On today, May 13, 2023, our graduation day and the 38th anniversary of the MOVE bombing, we choose to advocate. When there is no justice, there should be no peace.

Chris Hedges: Sammy Goes To School

May 15, 2023 Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. , , ,
Newark, NJ - We know the story. The absent father who leaves when his son is five-years-old and moves back to Puerto Rico. The single mother, rarely at home because she works long hours to keep her three children fed and pay the rent. The poverty. The crime. The instability. Later, the stepfather who drinks, uses drugs and beats his stepchildren. The child acting up. Dropping out of school. Joining a gang. The robberies. The one that went wrong and left a man dead. Prison. The students I teach in prison have variations of the same story. They are funneled into the maw of the prison-industrial-complex, the largest in the world, and spat out decades later, even more lost and traumatized, to wander the streets like ghosts until most, unequipped to survive on the outside and without support, find themselves back in the old familiar cages.

NYC Mayor Adams Is Met With Boos At CUNY Law School Graduation

May 15, 2023 Michael Gartland, NY Daily News. , , , ,
New York City, New York - Mayor Adams was greeted with boos and turned backs during a CUNY Law School commencement address Friday — a day after City University students and professors protested against budget cuts laid out in the mayor’s most recent spending plan. Friday’s public demonstration, which was reminiscent of NYPD officers turning their backs on former Mayor Bill de Blasio, came as the current mayor was urging graduates to “get on the field and participate about improving the lives of the people of this city.” As he spoke, boos could be heard echoing throughout the auditorium, with dozens of graduates turning their backs.

Rutgers Strike Wins Big But More Is Needed To Change Higher Education

May 14, 2023 Bryan Sacks and Michael Reagan, Labor Notes. , , , ,
After a five-day strike in April, members of the Rutgers faculty, graduate student, librarian, and clinician unions voted 93 percent to accept a new contract which included dramatic gains. The strike was the first in Rutgers’ 253-year history, and remarkable in that all instructional workers walked out, including full-time faculty, grad workers, and adjuncts. Rutgers is the oldest large public university in New Jersey with 67,000 students. The agreement includes big salary gains: 30 percent for the lowest-paid adjuncts in the first year, and 43 percent across the life of the contract, plus 33 percent raises for graduate teaching and research assistants.

The Pentagon Has Been Recolonizing University Campuses

May 13, 2023 Jeremy Kuzmarov, Covert Action Magazine. , , ,
Once upon a time getting a college degree meant reading classic literature and philosophy, learning about history and politics, studying mathematics and science, learning new languages, and debating the great issues of the day in student forums. The billionaire class and Pentagon, however, do not want young people to think critically, or to be worldly and idealistic. They want the university to function as a breeding ground for creation of a docile, technically skilled workforce that they can control, and as a laboratory for the development of new weapons systems and testing ground for those weapons that can help them dominate the world.

Inside The Bold New Push To Get Fossil Fuels Off Campus

May 13, 2023 Nick Engelfried, Waging Nonviolence. , , ,
From late November through early March of this year, visitors to the University of Washington Career Center in Seattle would have found students sitting in a circle on the floor, some doing homework on laptops as they participated in one of the longest-running recent climate protests at the school. Their goal: to convince the UW administration to establish a policy banning fossil fuel companies from coming to campus to recruit students to work for them. “We’re trying to dismantle the fossil fuel industry’s presence at UW and their hold on the larger American public,” said Brett Anton of Institutional Climate Action, or ICA, the Washington state-based student group that organized the sit-in.

People In The US Were Once Promised Affordable Education For All

May 6, 2023 Chris Hedges, The Real News. , , ,
The 1960s were a decade of intellectual and political ferment on college campuses. Anti-war, feminist, and racial justice movements all found a foothold in higher education, with student activists often playing a pivotal role in social movements that extended far beyond the university. A crucial condition for the student radicalism of the time was the affordability of public higher education and the recent dissolution of barriers that prevented students of minoritized backgrounds from attending college. Today, these conditions have all but disappeared. Collectively, college graduates owe some $1.6 trillion in student debt.

Nationwide Demonstrations Denounce Restrictions On Teaching, Book Bans

May 4, 2023 Ileana Najarro and Eesha Pendharkar, Education Week. , , ,
Teach-ins at university campuses, community book drives, read-alouds of banned books on social media, and rallies in front of the College Board headquarters in both New York and Washington, D.C. These were among the activities taking place across the country on Wednesday as part of the Freedom to Learn national day of action spearheaded by the African American Policy Forum, which has been critical of state laws restricting how teachers can discuss race in the classroom. The forum is led by Kimberlé Crenshaw, a law professor and civil rights scholar at Columbia University Law School.

Temple University Strike Offers Lessons For Academic Labor Organizers

May 3, 2023 Vince Quiles, The Real News Network. , , ,
On Jan. 31 of this year, the Temple University Graduate Students’ Association (TUGSA) launched the first strike in their 25-year history. The decision to strike came as a result of years of organizing that largely began in 2020, after Temple’s decision to force in-person classes in the fall of 2020 led to a completely preventable COVID-19 outbreak. Striking for 42 days, graduate student-workers faced cuts to their health insurance, threats to lose tuition remissions, and more. Nevertheless, TUGSA persevered, winning a new contract that raised wages and eliminated Temple’s wage-tier system for graduate student-workers in different departments.
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