Higher Education

Yale Agrees To First Graduate Union Election In Three Decades

November 2, 2022 Megan Vaz and Miranda Wollen, Yale Daily News. Organize! Higher Education, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs, Yale University

Yale will recognize a union election for graduate workers for the first time in history, marking another significant step forward in Local 33’s three decades of organizing efforts. The move, announced on Oct. 28 by University Provost Scott Strobel, came days after Local 33 leaders submitted an election petition to the National Labor Relations Board in Hartford. The petition was backed by authorization cards signed by over 75 percent of the graduate and professional school workers with full time or part-time jobs. In accordance with federal labor law, Yale was granted two weeks to respond to the petition and begin negotiating election parameters with Local 33 and the NLRB. “The petition serves as a formal request for a union election that will be conducted and overseen by the NLRB Regional Director to ensure a fair, inclusive, and democratic election,” Strobel wrote in his statement.

Professor Resigns Over Partnership With Oil And Gas

November 1, 2022 Stella Levantesi, DeSmog. Resist! Higher Education, Italy, Oil and Gas, Workers Rights and Jobs

An Italian social scientist and professor, Marco Grasso, has resigned from his post as director of a research unit at Università degli Studi Milano-Bicocca (UNIMIB) in Milan, Italy, over the academic institution’s partnership with oil and gas major Eni, DeSmog can exclusively report. In February this year, UNIMIB and Eni signed a five-year “Joint Research Agreement,” (JRA) in which the university and the fossil fuel company pledged to collaborate on “research projects of common interest” related to the energy transition, according to an Eni press release. In a video promoting the partnership, the company’s CEO Claudio DeScalzi said it would be “crucial for the [energy] transition but also the transformation of Eni.”

‘I Don’t Want To Work Two Jobs’: College Of William And Mary Workers

October 27, 2022 Michael Sainato, The Real News Network. Organize! Higher Education, Labor Movement, Unions, worker's rights and job

Dining workers across the US were hit hard by the pandemic. Layoffs, staff shortages that have put immense pressure on workers (increasing workloads and creating long lines), requests by some schools for faculty and staff to volunteer to assist in dining halls—all of this has created nearly impossible working conditions. For all their sacrifices and best efforts, however, as working conditions have continued to deteriorate, pay and benefits have stagnated. As a result, some workers in this industry are attempting to unionize to improve these conditions and push universities to treat (and compensate) their workers better. For about five years, Ivory Merritt, a mother of three, has worked for dining services contractor Sodexo at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, a public research university that, founded in 1693, is the second oldest institution of higher education in the US.

Hours Into The Job, Rishi Sunak Is Already Facing New Strikes

October 25, 2022 Steve Topple, The Canary. Resist! Higher Education, Rishi Sunak, Strike, United Kingdom (UK)

Spare a thought for new PM Rishi Sunak – or don’t, if you’d prefer. Either way, he’s only hours into the job of prime minster and already facing a new wave of strike action. This time, it’s coming from the University and College Union (UCU). However, we already know Sunak’s views on strikes – and they don’t bode well for workers. UCU members have been striking across 2022 over pay and conditions. As Bywire News previously reported, the industrial action earlier in the year: centred around universities inflicting a 25% real-terms cut to staff pay since 2009. But UCU members have also been striking over their pensions. The pension fund that runs higher education staff’s retirement pots put in a cut of around 35% to members’ final pay-outs. So, tens of thousands of staff at dozens of universities repeatedly walked out in the first part of the year. But there was a catch. Because the UCU initially couldn’t reach the legal threshold for industrial action nationally, members did ballots at individual universities. So the action wasn’t totally coordinated. However, that’s just changed.

Johns Hopkins University Graduate Students Organize For A Living Wage

October 21, 2022 Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network. Organize! Higher Education, Johns Hopkins, Student Activism, Worker Rights and Jobs

The life of a graduate student looks much closer to that of an average worker than many universities care to admit. After completing core courses, most students at this level devote the equivalent of full time working hours or more towards research. Levels of compensation and protections vary across the country, but many graduate students are simply handed paltry stipends that hardly cover their needs, and ultimately amount to pathetic hourly wages. At Johns Hopkins University, many graduate students are producing much-needed research on the COVID-19 pandemic. These students produce vast profits for the university, but don’t even receive a living wage for their innovative and lucrative research. TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez interviews Johns Hopkins graduate students.

Anti-War Activists Protest Harvard Kennedy School Professor With Ties To Defense Contractor

October 5, 2022 Miles J. Herszenhorn, The Crimson. Resist! Harvard, Higher Education, Massachusetts, Weapons Maker

Over a dozen anti-war activists staged a protest against Harvard Kennedy School professor Meghan L. O’Sullivan Tuesday morning, disrupting a class she was teaching to first-year master’s of public policy students. The protesters denounced O’Sullivan’s affiliation with Raytheon Technologies, a weapons manufacturing firm, and her role in the Bush administration during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. O’Sullivan served as deputy national security advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan in the Bush administration prior to joining the Harvard Kennedy School. She currently sits on Raytheon’s board of directors. The protestors, most of whom were not affiliated with Harvard, burst into the classroom chanting “Meghan O’Sullivan, you can’t hide, we can see your war crimes” and “When missiles fly, people die, and O’Sullivan’s profits multiply,” while holding up a banner critical of O’Sullivan in front of the class.

Supporting Native American Students In Higher Education

September 21, 2022 Kaylee Carter, Last Real Indians. Create! Education, Higher Education, Indigenous Peoples, Multicultural

In 2019, 25% of Native Americans over the age of 25 had an associate degree or higher. When compared to 42% of all those over the age of 25, the gap is evident. Coupled with challenges that many Native higher education students face — including financial instability, the need for support in more ways than one is apparent. From the research done on the matter to the strides made in tuition assistance and how institutions of higher education can go the extra mile in creating a more inclusive academic environment, here’s what you should know. With regard to Native Americans and higher education data, one Forbes article notes that “Only 36.2% of Indigenous students entering four-year institutions of higher education in 2014 completed their degrees in six years, as compared to 60% of all other undergraduate students in the U.S.” While this highlights the fact that the matter isn’t a new issue, understanding the challenges behind low enrolment or graduation can largely be found in financial matters, according to newer research.

Greek Students And Teachers Protest Deployment Of ‘University Police’

September 11, 2022 People's Dispatch. Resist! Greece, Higher Education, Police, Student Activism

On Thursday, September 8, students, teachers and other university workers took out a massive rally in the Constitution Square in Athens protesting the deployment of police on campuses. Activists from the Students Struggle Front (MAS) and Communist Youth of Greece (KNE) were among those who participated in the mobilization. They condemned the conservative New Democracy (ND)-led government’s bid to put the university campuses under police surveillance. The protesters in Athens denounced the deployment of ‘University Police’ at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), Athens University of Economics and Business Administration and National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Protests and marches were also held in Thessaloniki against the presence of riot police at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. The Communist Party of Greece (KKE) expressed solidarity with the students and condemned the deployment of police in universities.

Confronting White Nationalism And the Limits Of The Campus Left

September 9, 2022 It's Going Down. Resist! Arizona, Higher Education, Student Activism, White Nationalism

Tempe, Arizona - Beneath the veneer of liberal civility at Arizona State University (ASU), located in Tempe, lies a long history of the campus welcoming white supremacists and fascists, excused by a hand-wave towards public university inclusivity. Such was the case when the Phoenix Anarchist Federation and the wider community received word that the College Republicans United (CRU), the even more grotesque sibling of the ASU College Republicans, had invited Jared Taylor to speak on campus. Taylor, a noted white supremacist who has gained notoriety as the brains behind the American Renaissance conference, which helped popularize fascist ideas to a broader and often younger audience, is not the first virulent fascist to be hosted by the CRU.

Why I Interrupted A Major Funding Announcement

September 3, 2022 Yves Engler, Palestine Chronicle. Resist! BDS, Canada, Higher Education, Israel, Palestine

On Wednesday, August 31, I interrupted a major funding announcement at McGill to ask the head of the university about her suppression of Palestine solidarity. As she spoke from the Faculty Club’s stage I asked Principal Suzanne Fortier, “Do McGill students have the right to oppose the killing of Palestinian children? Do they have the right to oppose Israeli colonialism and apartheid?” McGill’s principal failed to respond. I then stated that her administration’s threat to cancel the student union’s funding after students voted overwhelmingly for a “Palestine Solidarity Policy” was “anti-democratic and anti-Palestinian”. I added it was “shameful” and made her “complicit in Israeli colonialism and violence”.

University Of North Dakota Finds Dozens Of Native American Remains

September 1, 2022 Dan Gunderson, MPR News. Create! Higher Education, Indigenous Rights, North Dakota, Repatriation

The University of North Dakota has started the process of returning Native American ancestors and artifacts to their tribal homes. Repatriation is required under the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, enacted by Congress in 1990. UND president Andrew Armacost said the university is still investigating why the remains were not previously returned to tribes. He said they were likely collected by university faculty from the 1940s to the 1980s, and it is unclear how the university used the remains. “How and why ancestors and sacred items remain on our campus is a mystery that we will have to answer in the course of our work,” he said. “Our intent of sharing this news today is to apologize to tribal nations across North America.”

ROTC Redux: A Bete Noire Of The Anti-War Movement Is In The News

August 25, 2022 Steve Early and Suzanne Gordon, Popular Resistance. Educate! Higher Education, Militarization, ROTC, Student Activism

Fifty years ago, no symbol of university complicity with the military angered more students than the on-campus presence of the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC). The manpower requirements of the Vietnam era could not be met by conscription, draft-driven enlistments, and the graduating classes of military service academies alone. The Department of Defense also needed commissioned officers trained in DOD-funded Military Science Departments at private and state universities. Anti-ROTC campaigning became a major focus of the campus-based movement against the Vietnam War. Critics demanded everything from stripping ROTC courses of academic credit to, more popularly, kicking the program off campus.

Inside Lockheed Martin’s Sweeping Recruitment On College Campuses

August 13, 2022 Indigo Olivier, In These Times. Educate! Higher Education, Jobs, Lockheed Martin, Military Industrial Complex

To a casual observer, the Black Hawk and Sikorsky S-76 helicopters may have seemed incongruous landing next to the student union on the University of Connecticut’s pastoral green campus, but this particular Thursday in September 2018 was Lockheed Martin Day, and the aircraft were the main attraction. A small group of students stood nearby, signs in hand, protesting Lockheed’s presence and informing others about a recent massacre. Weeks earlier, 40 children had been killed when a Saudi-led coalition air strike dropped a 500-pound bomb on a school bus in northern Yemen. A CNN investigation found that Lockheed — the world’s largest weapons manufacturer — had sold the precision-guided munition to Saudi Arabia a year prior in a $110 billion arms deal brokered under former President Donald Trump.

Reparations Are Being Discussed But Will Direct Payments Follow?

August 6, 2022 Ezekiel J. Walker, The Black Wall Street Times. Create! Education, Higher Education, Reparations, Systemic Racism

According to ABC News, during the colonial era the wealth of universities, in the form of endowments and benefactors, was inextricably tied to the slave trade, numerous university presidents owned enslaved people and famous alumni such as John C. Calhoun championed the cause of slavery. Enslaved people were owned by universities and worked on campuses until the abolition of slavery. Now, students at those institutions are organizing efforts to focus on erecting monuments, taxing endowments, PILOT programs, creating divestment campaigns and offering alternative campus tours that highlight the university’s history of slavery. Students are also pushing schools to identify and support descendants of people enslaved by the universities.

UPenn Teamsters Defeat Two-Tier

July 23, 2022 Liana Kallman and Alexandra Bradbury, Labor Notes. Organize! Higher Education, Pennsylvania, Teamsters, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - Teamsters Local 115 members at the University of Pennsylvania are celebrating a contract victory that eliminates two-tier pay for housekeepers, over the resistance of their own union officials. “In my 31 years here, this is the best contract I’ve seen,” said member Theresa Wible. “We haven’t seen raises like this since the ’80s, and I’ve never seen our union hall this packed.” The 550 campus Teamsters are mostly housekeepers, and 250 of them had been stuck on a permanent bottom tier. The five-year contract, ratified June 29, puts every Teamster at Ivy League UPenn on a progression to top pay. This year the first tier is making $25.12 an hour and the second tier is at $20.90, but by the end of the contract every housekeeper will get $28.68.

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