Happy New Year from New Faculty Majority!

2012 was an important transitional year for us, and 2013 promises even more progress. (Watch your email inbox for the launch of our new e-newsletter, and stay connected daily through our blog and extensive social media.)

Our January 2012 Summit firmly established NFM on the national stage, identifying us as the leading organization working to secure academic excellence through faculty equity and launching new national leaders and projects, like Josh Boldt and The Adjunct Project. Our work this year has concentrated on educating the public and policymakers within and outside of higher education on the state of faculty working conditions in higher education and the need for reform.

Right Leaders of Wrong & other ed-revs

…as told in tweets by @Jessifer (Hybrid Pedagogy) on Storify. Jesse Stommel (IRL) writes...

A short conversation on Twitter about the oncoming revolution in Higher Education. 

It started innocently enough with a few sentences I threw out to the Twitterverse in the weekly hours on a Thursday. Had been thinking about friends and colleagues that are brilliant teachers and wondering why they keep getting pushed out of academia. And why some of them have come to the conclusion that academia is not hospitable to them. It's a weird contradiction -- that in many institutions of higher learning, the folks most passionate about teaching and learning often get overlooked or even aggressively pushed out. 

Read the rest at Right Leaders of Wrong (with tweets) by Jessifer on Storify. Want more, related?

A College Christmas Carol

…at Remaking the University, Chris Newfield compares "A Christmas Carol" to current stories of struggling, indebted students. 

Elsewhere, Stephen Downes comments on the NYT article that Newfield references below, "T[he students] need a broader array of social supports, and most of all, a society determined to help them out of poverty, rather than blame them for being in it. But I see no sign higher education as a sector has any real interest in that."  

Here Newfield calls for that to change and tasks senior college officials with working to restore the bankruptcy option...lest Marley's fate await them... 

As Scrooge leaves his counting-house on Christmas Eve, he encounters his cheerful nephew, who tells his Uncle Scrooge that Christmas is one of those "many things from which I might have derived good, [but] by which I have not profited, I dare say."   The good, the nephew continues, is to have the one moment in the year in which "men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys."

Scrooge dismisses this feeling and, with a final dig at his long-suffering clerk, leaves his office, only to be confronted by two amiable gentlemen who are soliciting "some slight provision for the Poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time."

Scrooge asks them, "are there no prisons?" 

universities are vast copy machines

…linkalicious Omivore is back on the #highered beat in time for year end reflections, plus an informal tutorial by example on elegant link annotation. This O covers more than higher ed: its beat is global and eclectic: politics, science, culture. social sciences, economy, geopolitics, arts, law, ethics, and more…

From Boston Review, pomp and exceptional circumstance: Malcolm Harris on how students are forced to prop up the education bubble. What's your preferred way of finding a paper in your field? Scott McLemee looks at a report on the available options. Siva Vaidhyanathan on how universities are vast copy machines — and that’s a good thing. 

Scholars say higher ed leftist bias helped Obama win. Are the liberal arts useful? Samuel Goldman wonders. Blaine Greteman reviews Speaking of Race and Class: The Student Experience at an Elite College by Elizabeth Aries with Richard Berman. Will state colleges become federal universities? Richard Vedder investigates. Students aren’t the only ones cheating — some professors are, too; Uri Simonsohn is out to bust them. 

Robert Dingwall on why open access is good news for neo-Nazis. Questioning Clay Shirky: It's time to start challenging the popular critique of higher education — and the way the views of many academics have been belittled or ignored, writes Aaron Bady. From PhD Comics, Jorge Cham on the fingerprint of stars. A look at 5 mind-blowing academic theories as taught by classic movies.

universities are vast copy machines - bookforum.com / omnivore

The Best CFP You’ll Ever Get: Help Make a Quittas Book/Site

…group blog mama nervosa in the feed reader's "leaving academia" folder is making an offer no post_ac (or would that be xAc? also aka 'quitta') can or should refuse. Leaving has become an increasing more openly faced and realistically discussed option. "Quitting" no longer carries the same, if any stigma, whether alt_ac, lateral or a 180° ... just another option. Leaving academia stories belong in the corpus of adjunct narratives just as much as any other stories we have to tell and share. 

The Best CFP You’ll Ever Get: Help Us Make a Book/Site for Other Quittas

Me and a couple other post-ac bloggers are going to make a website and e-book for people leaving academia. Because career advice isn’t enough. Because the demand for real stories and practical help is so high. The domain is purchased and outlines are drafted:  now we need your help.

Me, JC @ From Grad School to Happiness, Jet from Ruminations, and Currer from Project Reinvention are pulling together:

• a website with practical, peer-to-peer advice for leaving academia on every topic from emotional issues to getting food stamps to revamping your resume
• an e-book of essays exploring personal stories of leaving academia (a “bath tub book,” as one commenter put it)

The Year in Ed-Tech

…via @AudreyWatters, Hack Education Weekly Newsletter, No. 30: The Year in Ed-Tech. This is just the opening salvo for "the year in education" posts, and, like it or not, most will be about ed tech, elearning, platforms, innovations (disruptive and otherwise). Do try to get up to speed, at least minimally. 

Don't be like the jock in your class who does not do the reading because he hates lit. Picking  up 2nd hand opinions from higher ed media or a single recommended blog doesn't count either. That's doing it Cliff Notes style. Yes, read them but read more too. The alternative reminds me of those conservative "better dead than red" high school debaters in the 50s who argued so zealously against recognizing Red China. They either grew up or became neocons. Which are are you?

Following the Hack Education blog, newsletter or twitter stream is a  good start. Audrey writes, 

’Tis the season for the flurries of blog posts listing “The Best,” “The Top,” "The Most Important," and “Our Favorite” stories (and apps and photos and movies and songs and so on) of 2012. '

I’ve done my part (for which I do apologize, as I really hate list posts), finally wrapping up this week my annual review of the year's major trends in education technology.

My Top 10: (business, MOOCs, platforms, politics, flipping, learning to code, learning analytics, open education resources, and more)

Read it at Hack Education Weekly Newsletter, No. 30

another view on the “future” of higher education

…Year's end is, traditionally, a time of reflection, taking stock and then thinking ahead, making predictions, resolutions. Needless to say, these are stock themes in blogging the Janus season, higher ed not excepted. So unless someone throws me a must blog bomb, re-blogging selected posts and, in the case of overflow, ad hoc link collections from the feed reader's bounty will be my holiday break. Time, energy and especially inclination permitting, I'll probably fit in my own reflections and 2013 wish list somewhere along the way here or elsewhere. This view is from orgtheory by fabiorojas

Average folks and higher education researchers have conflicting views of academia. Average folks believe that most college teachers are tenured professors and that most students are residential students who play ultimate Frisbee on the quad. Higher education researchers have a different view. We know that most teachers are actually part time adjuncts and graduate students. Residential college is for the top of the pool. Most students are part time commuters or community college students. The mistake that people make is that the most visible forms of higher education (e.g., elite research universities and liberal arts schools) are the most common.

This split between folk wisdom and what the experts know is evident in David Purcell’s comment:

a global artistic collaboration

…file under ideas for #adjunct action…public art with cause applications…do we have causes? You betcha…where to start? #FAIR_PAY! #dueprocess #ACA fallout, #RTW & organizing, UI & "reasonable assurance," mutual support networks (expect to hear more from the Homeless Adjunct and #newfac social on this one)...more. What are your actions, ideas, suggestions? Please share

The vintage Photo-Automat Booth has transcended into a social networking artistry of global proportions. Upload your portrait and state your personal story or social cause, if you’re caring and inclined towards humanity.

Receive your photo as a black and white poster. Paste it anywhere for the world to see. It is then documented throughout their website, Facebook, and your own community to see. INSIDE OUT is turning into a global artistic phenomena, which has already covered seven continents.

yourself an academic

…it's been a while since we rolled out Omnivore's succulent & succinctly annotated links for a virtual visit to the Reading Room, which I've noticed that it is not the most popular NewFac chez Facebook item, hence dropping the tag from the title. I don't doubt that those who do click through will be pleasantly surprised, even delighted. 

A new issue of Academe is out, including Thomas P. Miller on the academy as a public works project; and Marc Bousquet on how we are all Roman porn stars now: Are we fighting the good fight through our service or just creating a spectacle of super-exploitation? The university as welfare state: Paula Marantz Cohen on why you should want kooks teaching your kids. 

A Modest Proposal for the Reform of Academe

…found searching archives for something else & now reblogging a 2010 repost from The Faster Times, attributing belatedly, apologizing profusely, linking thrice for good measure, bookmarking & adding the college section to reader. The section is not large but choice, especially for those taken with the quirky. Incidentally, "modest proposal" is a popular reform title, especially for higher ed. A series? Not all meet Swiftian standard: this one does. I will definitely do this more often…

College section blogger, medievalist ~ fencer Ken Mondschein (PhD Fordham + studies at BU, SUNY Buffalo, Harvard) writes...

Most every commentator on academe has mentioned the sorry state of higher education: A decades-long oversupply of Ph.Ds, an undersupply of jobs, and the use of cheap adjunct labor for everything from teaching intro writing classes to supervising theses to cleaning the president's office. Despite the fact that tenure-track jobs are rarer than hen's teeth, that venerated institution has come under attack, as well. Critics charge that tenure gives professors license to be unproductive layabouts or maniac wingnuts, but there's not a damn thing anyone can do about it unless said tenure-possessor burns down the administration building or runs naked through freshman orientation. 

But I am not here to kvetch: I am here to offer solutions. It seems to me that all of these symptoms of current malaise of higher education could be solved in one sweeping stroke, were we only to reintroduce dueling to the academy.

Dear Corporation

…timely & relevant poem by Adam Fell…not all poems go to Poets & Writers Picnic, some appear here on occasion. Besides, Adam teaches at Edgewood College, Madison WI, one of us. Poetry, music, art, etc make a  fine break from the ongoing madness of news, calls to action, movement rhetoric. Remember Gregor. If we don't take spiritual nourishment. We could wake up one morning transformed into giant cockroaches, bugs, administrators or other vermin. 

Dear Corporation,  by Adam Fell I don't know how to say how I feel politely, or poetically, or without the jugular and collapse of the immediate heart, so tonight, I won't say anything at all. Just stare out the window at our stunned little writhe. Hold back the strongest urge to knock out a few of the capitol's most critical walls, replace its fiber optic cables with lightning bugs, replace the investment bankers all with bunker busters. I lock eyes with the capitol's bright and empty rooms and admit that, sometimes, deep in my affluent, American cells, I miss my body carved to projectile. I miss trebuchet shoulders and knuckles flaked to arrowheads, miss my hands massive and molded from molten to the bolts of ballistas. I miss blackjack and cudgel and quarterstaff and flintlock. I miss pummel and pike and I am not proud of this. I know it's not a healthy feeling. I try to un-arm, to un-cock. I try to practice my breathing. I try The Master Cleanse, The Stationary Bike, The Bikram Sweat, The Contortion Stretch, The Vegan Meatloaf, The Nightly, Scorching Bath, The Leafy Greens and Venom Television, The Self-Mutilation of a Winter's Run, but we can only cleanse our bodies so much before we realize it's not our bodies that need detoxing. Copyright © 2012 by Adam Fell. Used with permission of the author. About this poem: This poem is from Dear Corporation, forthcoming from H_NGM_N Books in 2013.  Poetry by FellI Am Not a Pioneer December 12, 2012 Adam Fell is the author of I Am Not a Pioneer (H_NGM_N Books 2011). He lives in Madison, Wisconsin where he teaches at Edgewood College. Related Poems Dear Empire [these are your temples] by Oliver de la Paz Dear Lonely Animal, by Oni Buchanan Dear Migraine, by Gail Mazur Poem-A-Day started as a National Poetry Month program in 2006, delivering daily poems from newly-published poetry titles. Due to popular demand, Poem-A-Day became a year-round program in 2010, featuring original, never-before-published poems by contemporary poets on weekdays, and classic poems on weekends. Browse the Poem-A-Day archive for selections since 2010.

MLA2012 elections: Vote #Adjunct

Use it! Be heard!

…Vote MLA Online: Deadline Dec10 for second vice president, Executive Council, Delegate Assembly, and division and discussion group executive committees. Members, check the website

Disclosures: New Faculty Majority president Maria Maisto is standing for the Executive Council (and would be the first adjunct to become a member). For my own part, as Board member, social media coordinator by default and activist by choice, I not only have an obvious interest in Maria's candidacy but am likely to be posting about it. Retired, I am neither a candidate for any position nor even an MLA member. (Occasionally, I do think about re-upping ~ this would have been one)

I don't know who else is standing or for what but would welcome from hearing from adjunct candidates and posting information about them. Come by the New Faculty Majority Coalition page on Facebook and introduce yourself. The same goes for candidates in other professional associations. It's not not campaigning: it's making information public as a public service. To reiterate the appeal of Karen Madison, Committee on Contingent Labor in the Profession member, to adj-l, the Contingent Academics Mailing List:

Please encourage folks to Vote Adjunct in the MLA Elections. I did. I went through each candidate and found that there are many who distinguish themselves as having a focus on adjunct issues or as wanting to further adjunct labor rights--as well as candidates who are adjuncts themselves. 

MLA needs adjuncts on the committees desperately if we hope to have a fair representation of the ratio of NTT to TT stream faculty in the ranks.

The following candidates have expressed an interest in issues affecting non-tenure track faculty or are actually non-tenure track faculty. One candidate is recognized as a potentially strong ally.

How to Attack & Destroy #HigherEd Labor Evil: The Secret revealed

…introducing #NewFac BoD member Alan Trevithick via his account of the incredible @SEIU500CAL #academiclabor Forum. Howzzat for multitasking?

Read this post, commit it to memory, and destroy, OK? Top secret!

Cadmo kills his dragon:
we will kill ours too

A trio of strong speakers, in remarks moderated by New Faculty Majority President Maria Maisto, opened up with powerful views about education. Speakers railed against the current intolerable conditions of the majority faculty, preached on the need for alliances between adcons and other communities—both more and less exploited—and robustly defended higher ed's true character as a public right and a public good--the only context in which the rights and working conditions of adjunct and contingent faculty will be genuinely addressed. 

It was wonderful.

Calling on the Main Stream Media to Wake Up

…MI aka migrantintellectual is back & calling out the mainstream media, writing them an open letter that actually got answered.  The adjunctiverse is truly going media mad, not just social & don't need no stinky higher ed media that nobody but pointy heads see. Wait, answered, you say? Yes indeed. OK so not by CNN but still a major network. The TV van and crew will be pulling into a certain NH drive. MI will be performance ready and waiting...stay tuned. By way of backstory, he writes...

To the CNN News Desk and Piers Morgan:

I write with your investigative team in mind as well as hosts like Piers Morgan who can raise awareness of the next bubble that’s going to burst within the next year: higher education.

I left teaching in January 2012 after completing a very successful eight year run at River Valley Community College (Claremont, NH)

More @SEIU500CAL #AcademicLabor Forum

…Panel 2 – Professor Staff Organizes – addressing contingent faculty working conditions, student impacts, and education policy.

• Esther Merves, Research Director, New Faculty Majority: New Faculty Majority Back to School Survey, Results and Uses
• Dan Maxey, Dean's Fellow in Urban Education Policy,  Pullias Center for Higher Education, University of Southern California: Contingent Faculty Working Conditions and Student Success
• Michael Best, SEIU, and Thomas Vadakkeveetil, Strayer University: The 
• For-profit Education Industry – Organizing for Reform

Marisa Allison@marisaallison

Having an amazing time at SEIU's coalition of Academic Labor Forum. #academiclabor

9:06am · 1 Dec 12 ·

@SEIU500CAL #AcademicLabor Forum, Panel I

…see complete conference schedule here. 

Caste and Classes – linking our struggle for the rights of contingent faculty to the larger struggle to maintain a middle class, ensure access to quality education for all, and save the dignity of work for everyone from professors to janitors.

• Gary Rhoades, Professor and Director, Center for the Study of Higher Education College of Education University of Arizona
• Pablo Eisenberg, Senior Fellow, Georgetown Public Policy Institute
• Wayne Langley, Director, Higher Education Division, SEIU Local 615

People are starting to arrive to the #academiclabor conference! It's going to be an exciting day!
— Ethan Miller (@Habohead59) December 1, 2012