Joe Berry's COCAL Updates 31March12

COCAL Updates in brief & links 

 

Note: Call for Papers (also as attached pdf) for COCAL X, August 10-12, Mexico City. Follow COCAL International on Facebook.  Email joeberry@igc.org, to subscribe to regular updates in brief and links by email. More about Joe Berry.   

Mundo Precario

• Adjunct faculty prop up Higher Ed, seek rights, Pittsburg Tribune  
• John Warner introduces Adjunct Heroes feature on The Education Oronte Churm blog, Inside HigherEd  
• Panel at Left Forum in NYC, sponsored by Dissent Magazine and Verso Books, on organizing the precarious workers. Also includes some info on Excluded Workers Congress, which contingent faculty movement should be relating to. [I was at the panel and it was hot. JB] 

Actions

• Huge student strikes in Quebec (demos of over 200,000)
• U of IL, Chicago union agrees to sever FT and PT units to get recognition, Chronicle 
• Bergen CC, New Jersey, adjuncts unionize 
• Duquesne U (Pittsburgh, PA) adjuncts starting to organize with United Steel Workers (USW), more local coverage here, here and here as well as in The Chronicle 
• WOWSA--thanks to Michael Winter for sending this along. Just fyi —  A federal court on Friday struck down key parts of Gov. Scott Walker's controversial collective bargaining legislation, ruling that the state cannot prevent public employee unions from collecting dues and cannot require they recertify annually. 
• Legislative victory for adjuncts in Colorado, report posted by Colorado AAUP activist Don Eron to Contingent Faculty List, re-posted by the New Faculty Majority blog and The Adjunct Project

Whither U?

• The crisis in the public university by Michael Burawoy, UC Berkeley, in SSRC's Academia and the Public Sphere Initiative
• Good article on the two threads of higher ed and the Occupy movement, Eva Swidler in Zcommunications  
• American U (DC) student blogs about why students should support professors attempts to unionize, NFM member Ethan Miller in HuffPo 
• For-profits on stage, AAUP's Academe blog 

Dr. Stacey Patton, staff reporter for The Chronicle of Higher Education, is "working on a piece about adjuncts who are on food stamps or some other form of government assistance." She notes especially "And please let them know that I can handle their identities in an anonymous way if they don't want to be identified." 

She would like to hear from people by Wednesday, April 4, at the latest and can be reached by e-mail at Stacey.Patton@chronicle.com 

Email joeberry@igc.org, to subscribe to regular updates in brief and links by email. More about Joe Berry.