Sunday Matinee: #Bullying & Mobbing

Opening with Developmental psychologist Gordon Neufeld discussing the bully syndrome in order to understand how bullies are made and unmade

Global #HigherEd Newsletters & Links

…a news and articles mixture with some academic labor, although not necessarily casual. Aside from CASA (ICYMI "A home online for casual, adjunct, sessional staff and their allies in Australian higher education"), O Canada (above), and a few others, resources on global casuals are less developed. Due to the combined influence of CASA, COCAL XI -- and perhaps even occasional posts on the topic here and on Precarity Dispatches, there's more interest in learning more about our counterparts in other countries. The National Mobilization for Equity steering committee expressed interest in developing  a "Global Contingency" (or something like that) page. I'm working on it. 

Last Thursday's blog post was the Times Higher Education newsletter; this morning, a Fneeq-CSN post on PF Network-Facebook. The coincidence, reminded me that THE, Guardian Higher Education, University Affairs, and Educational International newsletters had all arrived recently.

following the money⁓one tiny question…maybe a few answers

…Ana Spiro started this with a not so tiny question on the adj-l listserv, one so often asked — punctuated by a reaction we all share;

How many schools are spending untold amounts on athletics and cheating the adjuncts who credential /educate the students? The money is there (spent on presidents, various non instructional staff, construction and landscaping and other projects—not teachers, books and learning!) 

Infuriating!

Who hasn't read about the mind-boggling excesses and studies, looked at graphs and other visualizations? We get (digital) front row seat following campaigns like UA Convergence complete with press coverage, protests, a petition and first rate street theater. Our adjunct heroes!

But what about others? Anna's question draws us away from both overarching (and overwhelming) big picture and the stunning exemplary tale. How can we learn about what lies in between — not big picture stats and charts but individual examples  —  and make use of our own as well as UA has?

Take a course prep break: tour the #bestHEbuildings w/@michaelcollins

 

…a unplanned change of pace. Another post, short but informative, was in the works when I stumbled, over this, enchanted by the images. Serendipity struck. It will still be there tomorrow or whenever. Annotated link collections, back to class posts about syllabi, talking to students, etc, and other reflections on issues current and impending can wait too. These are the settings we once fantasized for our higher ed live. Take an escapist break before getting back to reality...best not to dwell on how much the new buildings cost.

Let the storifying begin!

Sunday Night at the Movies…Double Feature: Rashoman & His Girl Friday

…a drama and a comedy...watch both or whichever you are in the mood for.  Rashomon needs no introduction but I will anyway (below, reposted from Open Culture). I don't really need to tell you which is which, do I? Any subtext you care to extract from my choices is up to you. 

If you need a dose of the serious and informative, try an annotated links double header: much more than the immigration debate and about Ferguson ~ both from the Book Forum blog, Omnivore. 

Recently added to our blogroll: 

• author/poet/teacher/whatever Nathaniel C Oliver ("I Just Don't Want to Die an Adjunct"); 
• writer, teacher, mom, Midwesterner Buddhist Sonya Huber (Shadow Syllabus); \
• the name says it all ~ Bad Ass Teachers (The Death of Michael Brown, Teachers, and Racism: 10 Things Every Badass Teacher Needs To Understand), 
• Dr Michelle Kassorla (Refusing the Adjunct Route)
• former NMSU adjunct Carolyn Baker's Speaking Truth to Power

“Come on, Homer,” Marge Simpson once said to her husband before one of the cartoon family’s trips abroad, “Japan will be fun! You liked Rashomon.” Homer’s sullen reply: “That’s not how I remember it.”

Open letter, call to action & #petition from @fightfortheftr

…aka Fight for the Future (#FFTF) that is, on some but not all levels, as relevant for #adjunct & all other activist voices as for those in Ferguson MO. Although FFTF's immediate action call is about police militarization, a primary purpose of the organization is to keep the internet accessible to all as a public forum for free speech. 

As counterpoint, reminder and perhaps cautionary tale, @DearSplenda / Jackie Shine's "media history and #Ferguson" Storify reacts to media driven, "View of #Ferguson Thrust Michael Brown Shooting to National Attention" (NYT, David Carr, 8/17/14). The surrounding and expanding story is not about us but does hold important lessons: it's also up to us to hold onto that forum and our voices.

Dear Fight for the Future supporter,

For the past several nights I’ve been glued to the Internet watching livestreams and social media coming out of Ferguson, MO. It’s been heart wrenching, but has also reminded me why I care so much about Internet freedom: it allows for free speech and discussion like never before.

I’m sure you’ve seen the videos and photos: cops firing tear gas and concussion grenades into residential neighborhoods, threatening and arresting journalists at gunpoint, and brutally suppressing protesters standing with their hands in the air chanting, “Hands up! Don’t shoot!”[1][2]

The images are frightening. But even more frightening is the reality that this type of crackdown could become commonplace, thanks to millions of dollars of Federal funding that incentivize police forces to resemble an invading army. It has to stop.

Technology should be used to amplify people’s voices, not silence them. As an organization that advocates for tech in the public interest, we felt we have a real role to play to make this stop. 

Right now Congress is considering legislation that would demilitarize local police forces. Click here to tell your lawmakers to cut funding for the weapons of war used to suppress free speech.

Sunday Night at @UStream: #NatGat3 Recap: #Occupy’s 3rd National Gathering « @InterOcc

…another late Sunday Matinee but I'm keeping the tag for filing purposes. This comes from the InterOccupy newsletter, online following and subscribing information below. The collective weight of Gaza (dominating higher education discourse via the "Salaita Affair," drawing HE's academic and tenure discussions into the public sphere ~ when silos collide), the child refugees of the "border crisis," and now #Ferguson, make both light hearted  film and adjunct polemic seem equally inappropriate. Although we are all waste by-products of globalization., these marginalized are far more disposable and at risk than we are. 

PS please note the prescient emphasis on policing and police terror, as well as Palestine, voice and voicelessness...

Together We Rose!  Occupy's Third National Gathering

July 31-August 3 in Sacramento -- just ahead of COCAL XI in NYC, the Occupy movement came together for reflection, learning, planning, sharing—and yes, marching!  Despite drought and heat of 100°+, Occupiers from up and down the West Coast, as well as other areas of the country (and a few from elsewhere on the globe) shared 5 days of activism and discussion.

Watch the General Assemblies and more on these stream channels:

❝@TimesHigherEd Newsletter—UK & global #highered news views reviews

…another weekly HE newsletter. It could be early but I don't see anything here on COCAL XI, which has already been covered in Australia by CASA,which suggests (to me at least) that #auscasuals & allies may be more truly global minded than THE.  More at random than on any schedule, I try to blog a variety of education newsletters ~ a rotating sampler. Education International (EI-IE, @eduint) is another. Several University Affairs/Affaires universitaires bloggers are already on the PF blogrolls ~ more about UA/AU (just subscribed to the email newsletter too). Recommendations invited... 

As for domestic mainstream #highered media, it's already covered. Most readers already follow IHE and CHE, multiple share story links all over social media. When I remember, IHE's weekly newsletter and podcast go either straight to Precarious Faculty-Facebook or there via Precarity Dispatches. CHE's Academe is email, no link for easy online blogging and sharing, although sometimes I will. 

Times Higher Ed FEATURED CONTENT

American Anxieties…not just for #adjunct faculty

…COCAL XI and NatGat2014 exuberance not withstanding, malaise and a sense of foreboding abound, face us around every corenr. The feeling is neither exclusively American nor academic, adj-l listserv fretting to the contrary. Just listen to the world news. We --- and our institutions -- are embedded in the world and of it…more than just August doldrums. So here's a bit of a wallow before getting on with coping, rising up and doing. 

From Aspeers, a special issue on American anxieties. Kathleen Geier on inequality, the flavor of the month. David Atkins on the four basic American reactions to record inequality....The over-policing of America: Chase Madar on how police overkill has entered the DNA of social policy. Have we all turned into a bunch of wusses? Kevin Michael Klipfel wonders. From The American Interest, John Allen Gay on the crumbling cultural foundations of American democracy: Democracy rests on a complex set of values — and many of those values are fading.

Is modern culture making us crazier? Martha Stout on the science behind America's deepening disturbance....Why the doom and gloom, America? Today’s crises are no worse than many in U.S. history. Jonathan Chait writes in defense of American optimism.

Read the complete american anxieties at bookforum.com's omnivore.  PS posts on conference, gathering and more are waiting in the wings...and the listserv is posting

Sunday Matinee: Edward Said, The Last Interview, 2003 « @InternetArchive

…late again. With Palestine and Salaita so much in international and higher education news, Edward Said comes to mind now. In addition to sharing Cairo, there are a few once removed connection ~ the talismanic "friend of a friend." The film, a series of interviews, is long—very much worth the time watching—but you might want to take a break or watch in more than one sitting.

Following the video are links about Edward Said, professional, literary and political. Finally, I embedded my as yet less than organized collection of "Salaita Affair" links (40+).

• About Edward Said, Center for Palestine Studies, Middle East Institute, Columbia

There can be no true humanism whose scope is limited to extolling patriotically the virtues of our culture, our language, our monuments. Humanism is the exertion of one's faculties in language in order to understand, reinterpret, and grapple with the products of language in history, other languages and other histories. In my understanding of its relevance today, humanism is not a way of consolidating and affirming what 'we' have always known and felt, but rather a means of questioning, upsetting, and reformulating so much of what is presented to us as commodified, packaged, uncontroversial, and uncritically codified certainties (28).    

#ProtestU is Global—@AmerQuarterly on angry Latin American #students

 Student frustration over the neoliberal assault on higher education is not just a U.S. or even North American (e.g. tri-national COCAL) phenomenon..According to New Americas Quarterly, "Latin America's students are angry—and getting angrier." The International Students Movement connects students on both sides of the pond. Casualized academic labor is moving in this direction too but still has a long way to way to go. 

Millions of students have taken to the streets across Latin America in recent years in protests that reflect an unprecedentedly broad mobilization of popular opinion.

Reading Room: #futurelabor when #robots take our jobs

…could be worse than the #adjunct kind we have now. An even more recent Pew report, The Future of Jobs, is referenced in Will Oremus' Slate piece, The New Luddites.. The subtitle "What if technological innovation is a job-killer after all?" is straight from PEW. Jonathon Rees has busy setting up and migrating content to More or Less Bunk's new domain, getting ready for the Colorado AAUP Conference meeting in Durango and prepping a class digital history project to chase MOOCs (he'll be back). Somebody's got to pick up the slack on the bot beat, so here goes ~ with more than a little help from Ominvore's robots/jobs post

From the Journal of Evolution and Technology, a special section on technological unemployment and the basic income guarantee, including Riccardo Campa (Jagiellonian): Technological Growth and Unemployment: A Global Scenario Analysis; John Danaher (Keele): Sex Work, Technological Unemployment and the Basic Income Guarantee; and Gary E. Marchant, Yvonne A. Stevens and James M. Hennessy (ASU): Technology, Unemployment and Policy Options: Navigating the Transition to a Better World. 

links & tweeps for #COCALXI opening sessions

I'm still working on the Twitter list for following online…in the meantime check out the few I have below and on Facebook. Following #COCALXI on twitter is still the best way to keep up. 

Plenary panelists like +Sylvain Marois may be too busy to tweet. So far, the most active tweeps are +Krista Eliot, +Lee Kottner, @AFTHigherEd and @SylviaJMarques. @AAUP and Margot Young for @cupepse have joined the conversation. Chronicle Vitae columnist +Sydni Dunn is less active but will no doubt be posting articles. Either tweets from Interest Group sessions are thinner or missing identifying tags.

Back channel tweets and email are harder to track, but we welcome those too ~ anon if preferred. DM @VCVaile or @precariousfac or email vanessa.87036@gmail.com. A few disconcerting accounts of rumor mongering are emerging too but on hold awaiting confirmation.

Sunday Matinee: Horse Feathers

the pre-COCAL XI video series opened with a double feature: the powerful introduction to BarbaraWolf's video-book, A Simple Matter of Justice, and Bonzo Goes to College. How else to end the series with than the Marx Brothers' college movie, Horse Feathers?

I could, maybe should, begin or end with some appropriately serious about both COCAL, the conference and #altCOCAL. They can wait. Just posting Sean's #altCOCAL/#altPSC update and a COCAL Updates double header should more than suffice.

After the movie you can check out the COCAL links or not ~ if you are still in a college movie mood, there's Boston.com's 50 Best College Movies for ideas (if nothing else you might get some insights on where the public gets its ideas about what college, students and profs are like. A definite let down after Horse Feathers. BC's Top 20 - Readers Picks is better but still wanting. If you can stand it, there's even a list of "all college movies". Larry Crowne (Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts) is the only adjunct movie I know of.

Now let the horse feathers fly...

Petitions, Legislation, @NatGat2014, all the COCALs & Mike Rose's blog

Just a reminder about the petition page on Uniting in Diversity for Equity. There is also a resources page for helping child refugees. It's time to add a Projects page to the pages menu update list. 

Legislation: (woot woot) ICYMI Sen Durbin (IL) introduces S.2712 to amend section 455(m) of the Higher Education Act of 1965 in order to allow adjunct faculty members to qualify for public service loan forgiveness

In the Sacto area? It's National Gathering 2014 time. Contact: natgat2014@interoccupy.net. Info at NATGAT2014 Hub. Follow @NATGAT2014 #Natgat2014. See ONG Rebelmouse and the Occupy National Gathering Facebook Page. 

Bonus: looking for a natgat image, I found Wave of Action: "Be the Change! Join the #WaveOfAction organizing network to collaborate & co-create with change-makers worldwide." 

…the COCALs are coming…the COCALs are coming…COCAL XI (August 4-6, John Jay College/CUNY) and #altCOCAL (Wednesday August 6, Graduate Center/CUNY) that is…both in NYC

Mike Rose's Blog is our latest blogroll addition so you can follow right here on this blog. Here's more about Mike Rose and his blog ICYMI or never taught basic writing: