a straight path into academia

…more Omnivore, a selection of briefly annotated links about academia…highly readable equivalent of "Calgon take me away" for higher ed bloggers. Yes, wedo have our own news and plenty of it: from a new adjunct pages; an important new education column that we hope to feature regularly; chapter news; the impending arrival/revival of the NFM Newsletter; a new installment in the saga of Green River intra-union conflicts ~ to the saga's chronicler working on a new article about the New Faculty Majority (presumably our Foundation  as well). All sufficient unto the morrow, a new day...

From the Los Angeles Review of Books, the academy in peril: A symposium on Blow Up the Humanities by Toby Miller (and more).

Atlanta Area Meet & Greet, Jan 25

…for contingent faculty, NFM friends, members & anyone interested in meeting us to learn more). In the neighborhood? Please drop by for a visit this coming Friday, January 25 1:30 - 5:30 pm at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, 265 Peachtree Street NE, Atlanta, Georgia 30303, in the Spring Room (lower level)

New Faculty Majority and the NFM Foundation invite friends and member to attend all or part of a meeting designed to update participants on our activities, introduce NFM to those who are not familiar with its work, and engage in conversation about issues related to the relationship of "adjunct" or "contingent" faculty working conditions and student learning conditions.

Discussion topics will include

Livetweeting 4th #CFHE Gathering, Sacto CA

…more to come, plus a Storify, more images (which I had to delete as they did not display well with quick copy/paste ~ taking tweet links with them). Check agenda for afternoon speakers. With any luck, we may get a peek at the new website

Maria Maisto ‏@MariaMaistoNFM

#cfhe Cmnt by @garyrhoades: do not 4get that tuition is not only obstacle. Must remember STRUCTURAL obstacle of disinvestmt. Tuition /= cost

Maria Maisto ‏@MariaMaistoNFM

#cfhe @NewFacMajority 's Judy Olson: we need 2 take long view - free hi ed. Joe Berry: our job is 2 inspire stus, others to ID w/ wkng class

3mMaria Maisto ‏@MariaMaistoNFM

#cfhe Comments: PIF lots unintended consequences: pits diff income levels against each other, will lead 2 more casualization of labor force

Steve Hicks ‏@APSCUFSteve

#cfhe PIF generates much discussion, much on unintended consequences. The room desperately wants a way to provide affordable HEd @ltaiz

8mMaria Maisto ‏@MariaMaistoNFM

#cfhe - Comment: PIF cannot be evaluated without input from Latino, AfAm communities, low income communities.@NewFacMajority

8mGary Rhoades ‏@garyrhoades

#CFHE John Halcon on pay it forward. We shld poll our communities about these issues. @CFA_News

Maria Maisto ‏@MariaMaistoNFM

#cfhe JBurbank response: PIF reduces barriers 2 access. Challenges exist, can be addressed. More disc. Impt, lively discussion taking place

1. 
   

Demand justice for Aaron Swartz

…via @DemandProgress, a new addition for #PetitionJunction. Say thank you for Creative Commons, blocking SOPA/PIPA, developing RSS, advocating for a free and open internet, and more. Besides, most of us have more than just a passing acquaintance with abuses of power. Here's Larry Lessig's message:

Click here to join Demand Progress and me in demanding justice for our friend Aaron Swartz. 

We spent Tuesday burying and mourning our friend Aaron. We're sad, we're tired, we're frustrated -- and we're angry at a system that let this happen to Aaron.  Now we want to set upon honoring his life's work and helping to make sure that such a travesty is never repeated.

We and Aaron's friends and family have been in touch with lawmakers to ask for help, and several of them -- who've worked with Aaron and Demand Progress on SOPA and other issues -- are beginning to take action.  We're asking them to help rein in a criminal justice system run amok. Authorities are encouraged to bring frivolous charges and hold decades of jail time over the heads of people who are accused of committing victimless crimes.

Only Contingent Faculty to be Affected

…a new study from #newfac house anthro, specializing in the study of NOTTSPASMS investigates this group's troubled and all too often invisible relationship with main stream media. Excerpts below. Alan Valerick writes, 

Cool picture of Roy from here. What if we all wore 

shades like that, all the time  even at night teaching \

off-campus? Would they notice us?

I've done a study. It shows that most higher ed faculty jobs are stressful because 1) most of them are adjunct or contingent and therefore low-paid, low benefit, and insecure, and 2) because most of what is ever written about adcons (Ed note: alternate synonym for NOTTSPASMS. See above link) is stupid or, if not stupid, just sort of “too bad and tough luck.” 

And now, I've done the study for you and you may now put my study up against what Huffington Post calls "A controversial new survey from CareerCast" that "insists college professors have the least stressful job in America."

So, that's stressful.

You know, perhaps it's because of more pressing problems—that pesky time-in-seat aspect of the credit hour, for example—but, whatever the cause, it's clear that some of our pals in "journalism," or whatever it's called, are having problems with higher education reality....

#highered newsy stuff 'n such

…a fistful of higher ed news links for Jan14. Last iteration forwarded the IHE's Daily News Updates, so this one forwards the Chronicle's Academe Today (scroll down). The timing, however, skirts the intolerable. What would Aaron Swartz say about the pay wall? 

The list keeps growing. Some listed below are also featured on the #NewFac Web 2.0 blogroll, left sidebar. We may move the list to a separate page, alphabetized, and return to shorter "HE newsies" posts. 

Even so, we're still on the lookout for more higher ed newsletters, preferably online, sans pay wall. 

• Guardian Higher Education Network publishes a weekly newsletter, available by email and online.

• Inside HigherEd publishes a Daily News Update and, at the end of the week, a Weekly News Update. Both are available by email subscription and rss subscription (this takes some of the load off your inbox)

NLRB issues another complaint against @EWUChicago

…we call for a letter writing campaign & your support for United Adjunct Association at EWU and Curtis Keyes, our Chicago board member, chapter organizer and determined organizer... blogged about here for his determined struggle, first to organize EWU adjunct faculty and since then to gain EWU's acceptance of the union. Yet again, EWU is trying to get NRLB rulings to recognize the union and not place continual obstacles in their way. Here's the latest, NRLB complaint (attached below). Curtis writes, 

Dear Sisters and Brothers,

You'll find the latest NLRB complaint against East-West University in the attachment. We go back to Labor Board court on Feb 4. The East-West struggle is truly a battle for contingent faculty rights. I'm doing my best to hold on and keep fighting. Happy 2013 to all!

Bro. Curtis

#HigherEd news roundup: IHE, CHE dailies & more

Higher Ed news ~ old style

…when there are a lot of adjunct (or NOTTSPASMS) relevant stories in one day, I blog an entire higher ed newsletter or share one with web address directly on the NewFac FB page. I don't every day though, but you can subscribe to IHE's Daily Updates by email or on rss. The Chronicle's version, Academe Today, is by email subscription only. 

Both cover pretty much same ground but it's useful to check both because they won't necessarily cover the same stories with the same perspective or depth. The fair and balanced way to cover both will be to alternate adapting email forward of one while highlighting stories of interest in the other, So that is what I am doing: selected Academe Today stories followed by the Daily Updates news letter. One leads, the other get more space: flipped the next time.

...at least until I work out something less time consuming that includes other sources. Posts of particular interest are highlighted (but not be the same as what you would pick). I'm on Mountain time: don't look for early editions.

What if the Adjuncts Shrugged?

…it was by all accounts, a glorious convention & weekend across the #adjunct/iverse. William Pannapacker's "dispatches from the MLA" captures the glow and puts events into a broader context…a welcome antidote to a "bad fairy at the christening" rash of "least stressful job" clones that sprung up on the intertubes like cyber toadstools, stressing out proffies & adjuncts alike…but that's another story. This one belongs to us, from all the relevant sessions, a knockout Presidential Forum, MLA President Michel Bérubé’s address, the Adjunct Project/ Chronicle collaboration, site makeover and relaunch,and finally, icing on the cake, the Delegate Assembly passing the Adjunct Motion (against de-professionalization and exploitation) 115-1. 

Michael Bérubé’s address at this year’s Modern Language Association convention was one of a handful of times that I felt some real solidarity in the profession against the exploitation of the majority of our students and colleagues.

Obamacare, hours, strange math & unintended consequences

…as Bill Lipkin reflects on them, writing,

 

I would never have dreamed that the Affordable Healthcare Act (Obama care) would cause a hardship on adjuncts and other contingent faculty. This is supposed to help those who cannot afford health care get some basic coverage. But the 'unintended consequences' of this Act can be very detrimental to us. Yes, adjuncts stand to suffer from this Act. Why? Because when it goes into effect in January, 2014 it carries with it a stipulation that if an employer does not supply health care to employees working 30 hours or more a week they have to pay a penalty.

#MLA13 #S112

…a significant event & busy day for #adjunct/ency today, and not just MLA & AHA...As for the other stories, you'll just have to wait for them. Tomorrow has another major, don't miss adjunct relevant session too. Meanwhile, catch up with general higher ed news with the Inside HigherEd Daily Newsletter.

For now, it's all about, #S112 The Presidential Forum: Avenues of Access: Non-Tenure-Track Faculty Members and American Higher Education, Thursday, 3 January, 5:15–7:00 p.m., Constitution Ballroom, Sheraton.

Session Description: 

This session will discuss and review recent efforts to address the working conditions of faculty members off the tenure track and will ask what those working conditions mean for the future of American higher education. If, as the New Faculty Majority slogan has it, faculty working conditions are student learning conditions, then how should we seek to improve those conditions without devaluing the work that non-tenure-track faculty members do?

Here's an #S112 Storify (long but could have been longer). Special thanks to virtuoso tweeps, Brian Croxall, Roger Whitsun and Lee Bessette for making this Storify possible and packed with  tweetalicious goodness.