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Higher Education

Students Of The Strikes

September 16, 2023 Emily Hilliard, Dissent Magazine. , , ,
On Monday, August 21, hundreds of students at West Virginia University, the state’s flagship land-grant institution, walked out of their classrooms to protest the massive gutting of their university by its administration. Students wore red T-shirts and red bandanas around their necks, carried homemade signs with messages like “Stop the Gee-llotine” (a reference to WVU President E. Gordon Gee), played protest songs on fiddles and guitars, chanted “STOP THE CUTS!” and shouted impassioned speeches into megaphones. At issue was the administration’s proposal to fire 16 percent of the faculty and cut 9 percent of its undergraduate majors and twenty graduate programs in response to a projected $45 million shortfall over the next two years.

Academia Is In Crisis, And It’s Time For A Change

September 7, 2023 Raura Doreste, Left Voice. , , ,
Postdoctoral researchers at New York City’s Mount Sinai hospital voted by 91 percent to authorize a strike. Left Voice interviewed Andrea Joseph, a first-year Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences and member of the SPOC-UAW Bargaining Committee. Andrea spoke about how the negotiations are developing with the Mount Sinai administration, what the postdocs demands’ are for a strong contract, and what changes they expect to see from the administration. This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

Virginia Tech Graduate Students And Staff Launch Labor Unions

September 5, 2023 Lisa Rowan, Cardinal News. , , , ,
Two unions are going public Tuesday at Virginia Tech, with a shared goal of creating a better working environment for graduate students, faculty and staff at the state university. It’s an effort that has been in the works for three years, as the groups have quietly recruited members while, across the country, campus labor unions have gained attention. On Tuesday, members of the United Campus Workers of Virginia Tech (UCW-VT) and the Virginia Tech Graduate Labor Union (VT GLU) will team up in a rally on the Blacksburg campus. They hope going public will attract new members and draw attention to their efforts to press university administrators for improvements for campus workers at all levels.

‘Angry, Terrified, And Excited’: Adjunct On New Semester Amid Contract Talks

September 2, 2023 A CUNY Adjunct Faculty Member, Left Voice. , , , ,
As a CUNY adjunct starting this semester without a contract, I am filled with anger, terror, and excitement — a mix of reactions I’ll try to explain here. My anger predates our current contract struggle. Having taught at various CUNY campuses over the past six years, I’m furious about adjuncts’ working conditions and the resulting student learning conditions. As underpaid, expendable, and often invisible employees, adjuncts, who teach the majority of classes at the university, often find out our schedules mere days — or even hours — before the semester begins, and we are therefore forced to throw together syllabuses and assignments at the last minute.

The US Says No To Affirmative Action—Until It’s Time For War

August 29, 2023 Kinjo Kiema, In These Times. , , , ,
In late June, the Right won a decades-long fight to overturn affirmative action when the Supreme Court ruled, in Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College, that considering race in college admissions violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. The case that ultimately landed before the court’s 6-3 right-wing majority was brought by Students for Fair Admissions, a conservative group that for years has challenged the admissions policies of schools like Harvard and the University of North Carolina. Across the country, conservatives cheered.

UPenn Residence Advisers Will Have Union Election Despite Opposition

August 25, 2023 Abraham Gutman, The Philadelphia Inquirer. , , , ,
University of Pennsylvania students who work as residence hall assistants will hold a unionization vote this fall, the National Labor Relations Board decided this week. The decision rejects Penn’s claim that students aren’t employees and don’t have the right to form a union. About 220 student workers filed paperwork with the NLRB in March to join the Office and Professional Employees International Union Local 153, which represents students in universities around the region. If the effort is successful, the union would be the first of its kind in the Philadelphia area. Students at other universities have formed unions in recent years following a 2016 NLRB ruling that allowed Columbia University graduate students to unionize.

Students Push Back Against Planned Program And Faculty Cuts

August 21, 2023 Leah Willingham and John Raby, My San Antonio. , , ,
Morgantown, West Virginia - West Virginia University students staged a walkout Monday to protest the proposed elimination of academic programs and show support for faculty and staff whose jobs are being targeted as the university addresses a $45 million budget shortfall. Separate midday rallies were organized by the West Virginia United Students' Union, which encouraged protesters to wear red. Organizers said they want to halt the university's planned reductions, seek an independent audit of its finances and reduced WVU's administrative spending.

‘Blue Dogs’ Get Money From Sallie Mae After Opposing Student Debt Relief

August 19, 2023 Dan Neumann, Maine Beacon. , , ,
The Blue Dog Coalition, a group of corporate House Democrats led by Rep. Jared Golden, received the maximum donation from student lending giant Sallie Mae after the Second District congressman voted earlier this year against Pres. Joe Biden’s plan to cancel $430 billion in federal student debt. The disclosure comes as student loan payments are set to resume after a three-year pause during the COVID-19 pandemic. Golden was one of two Democrats to vote in May with House Republicans for a resolution blocking the Biden administration’s plan for a one-time cancellation of up to $20,000 in federal student loan debt for borrowers who qualified.

Ireland: Students Protest Housing Crisis Ahead Of New Academic Year

August 18, 2023 People's Dispatch. , , , ,
Student-youth groups in Ireland have condemned the housing crisis in the country as they are about to return to their colleges and universities this September for the new academic year. On Wednesday, August 16, the Union of Students in Ireland (USI), along with housing support groups including Threshold, launched a ‘Scam Watch’ campaign against the exploitation of students by landlords and rent sharks. The USI also demanded legislation to control rents and provide affordable housing for students. Political parties like Sinn Fein accuse the coalition government under Fianna Fail, Fine Gael, and the Greens of totally failing the student renters and abandoning them in the grip of the housing crisis.

Cutting The Ties Between Higher Education And The Military

August 3, 2023 Nonviolence Radio Team, Waging Nonviolence. , , ,
This episode of Nonviolence Radio welcomes @hellaJinsella from the UK peace organization, DeMilitarise Education, or dED. Jinsella has been actively working to raise awareness about the ties between higher education and the military. As these relationships have not generally been made public, military funding, and the accompanying environmental degradation the arms industry entails, has been able to thrive within universities without sustained challenge. DeMilitarise Education seeks to bring these connections to light. To this end, it has set up a database which tracks schools’ ties with the military and arms companies to be used as a tool to pressure the universities to break these damaging ties.

Legacy Admissions Are Actually The Opposite Of Affirmative Action

July 31, 2023 Jim Naureckas, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. , , ,
A recent NPR headline (7/24/23) declared: “Affirmative Action for Rich Kids: It’s More Than Just Legacy Admissions.” The accompanying story explained: “Affirmative action for minority kids may now be dead. But a blockbuster new study, released today, finds that, effectively, affirmative action for rich kids is alive and well.” Likewise, a Vox headline (7/25/23) reported that “Affirmative Action for White College Applicants Is Still Here.” A Daily podcast (7/27/23) from the New York Times is headlined “Affirmative Action for the 1 Percent,” explaining “just how much elite colleges admissions in the US systematically favor the rich and the superrich.” New York magazine’s Eric Levitz (7/25/23) wrote about “Why Elite Colleges Do Affirmative Action for the Rich.”

I’ve Taught In Prisons For 15 Years; Here’s What Schools Need To Know

July 29, 2023 Nicholas De Dominic, Scheer Post. , ,
In spring of 2023, I taught a class on memoir at the California Institution for Women, a medium-security facility, in Chino. The course focused on autobiographical writing. Each week, students were asked to draft narratives focused on their life story and its larger social context. In addition to writers-in-custody at the prison, the class enrolled University of Southern California students. Every week, my colleague and I drove 12 USC undergraduates out to the prison to join their incarcerated peers in class. Both populations received college credit for their work. After the class ended, I received a thank-you note from one of our incarcerated students.

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
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