Wednesday miscellany⁓what I'm #reading…#ccourses #NassuaAFA #adjunct #labor #moocs & more

…yesterday was to have been a post day but turned into Disconnectivity Day for area telephones and internet via their fiberoptic cables. I would have missed #AdjunctChat but with the experimental all day "facilitated by us" format, I was able to make part of it and brought up +Laura Gibbs' idea about an instructor Learning Commons hub that she introduced on #ccourses. It keeps growing too.

As for blogging, today it is then ⁓ and a jumble at that. With the draft pile is growing, I should finish off a few before starting another post (potential draft for the pile). Meh. I'm still in recovery mode from yesterday's stress and in the meantime...

I've been reading...

Sunday Matinee Extra Feature! @DemocracyNow #ClimateMarch

Can't be there in NYC, missed the livestream? Catch the People's Climate March now

People's #ClimateMarch Sunday Matinee: #FrackOff & Disruption

#FrackOff  (video of September 20 livestreamed event) features activists Shelley A. Young, Kandi Mosset, Elle Maija Tailfeathers, and Ellen Gabriel who will discuss high-profile media campaigns by indigenous groups in Canada and the United States that protest the oil and fracking industries and the ongoing governmental violations of Tribal sovereignty and treaty rights.  

Sponsored by the School of Media Studies and co-organized in collaboration with Idle No More and Frack Action, a leading New York-based organization working for a statewide ban on fracking as a part of Climate Action Week at The New School. The New School demonstrates our commitment to climate action and our solidarity with people converging on New York City for the historic People’s Climate March on September 21 with a week-long series of events focused on climate change. 

❝@MLASubcon 2015 Vancouver BC…#adjunct/GS friendly MLA alternative/supplement

Please consider organizing a panel, or submitting an idea for a paper, collaborative research project, strategy session, or other contribution to the subconference ~ CFP online here and here.

2013 MLA Subconference Closing session, Chicago

There may be some funding for participants! (and if you can contribute 5 or 10 $$, that would really help someone attend who might not make it there without some travel funding!  Thanks to all.

The organizers of the MLA Subconference are committed to using a large portion of our funds to provide partial travel grants to participants and attendees who need the support. We have decided to make this an ongoing and expanding goal each year, and are currently working out the logistics.

More information on the MLA Subconference website, to be continually updated

shout out to #adjunct #trailblazers: @AndrewR_Physics #EMUFT @3rdLWW

…there are more "adjunct trail blazers" to shout out...and we will try to do just that. To mention just a few, both Annette M. Rodriguez' #WeAreNNMC (also dba @Alacranita) and the UA Convergence campaigns are models for aspiring adjunct activist groups Covered extensively, they deserve separate overview posts…time/energy permitting, they will get them.

In the meantime, the precarious faculty network would like The three in the title recently hit my digital field of vision windshield recently: here's a quick shout out plus links for you to follow and support them. PS there's a video at the end...for dessert.

• Andrew Robinson faces obstacles and a long fight as the first Carleton University contract instructor to try to convert to a FT position per Clause 27.3 of the Collective Agreement. Since applying, administration has isolated him from the department by threatening a TT line. Andrew writes, ❝If I can establish a precedent, then others will be able to follow at our university, but I expect max resistance.❞ He will persevere. We can support him by following and commenting on his blog (also on our blogroll) and @AndrewR_Physics on Twitter

who needs a liberal education?

Eric Hartman (Kansas State) and Antoinette Hertel (St. Joseph’s): Clearer Thinkers, Better People? Unpacking Assumptions in Liberal Education. Who needs a liberal education? Gilbert Meilaender on why we should stop pretending that the liberal arts are important frosting on the cake of an education that is in fact designed for other purposes. 

An excerpt from Beyond the University: Why Liberal Education Matters by Michael Roth. Why Scott Samuelson teaches Plato to plumbers: Liberal arts and the humanities aren't just for the elite. The humanities aren't obscure, arcane or irrelevant — they awaken our souls, influence how we think about inequality, and help us adapt to a changing world. 

re-blogged from who needs a liberal education? - bookforum.com / omnivore ~ head on over and read the rest there

Sunday Matinee Sampler: #adjunct videos & music + @doctorow on computing

… short videos from the precarious faculty playlist on YouTube and Cory Doctorow on general computing issues relevant to anyone spending time on a personal computer or even just using computerized devices to read, listen to music, get directions, etc...if not now then someday soon.

Adjunct videos are selected with an eye to worthies that merit more eyeballs and reruns of oldies, seen by many but not recently. Bill Lipkin gave me the idea for this when he recently shared the first selection, unawares that it was not a new release, and then wondered how he missed it. Missing videos (and more) on the tubz is easy. Sunday Matinees are ideal for catching up with them, as we did with Barbara Wolf's A Simple Matter of Justice series.

What's it like being an adjunct college professor? Published by Professor Staff, January 30, 2014

Keeping calm, regrouping

A good chunk of today went to making the best of an inadvertent ending, but the effort also folded into shaping/ reorganization for Connected Courses  (more here). Instead of "developing networked, open courses that embody the principles of connected learning and the values of the open web," I want to develop my motley collection of blogs, social media, curation/aggregation pages, whatever, into an open information network that incorporates the principles of connected learning and the values of the open web ~ not a course but still for learning.

Intending to delete a duplicated back-up blog on Tumblr, I instead deleted my main account along with associated blogs ~ adjunct, local, personal, special interest~ some more active than others. From the now extinct dashboard, I managed Precarity Dispatches, Adjunct Stories, COCAL Updates and recently re-purposed Equity in Diversity (still finding its way). The last two are gone for good, as explained elsewhere.

Panic beckoned until I remembered that 1-2 (not sure which) had originated on and still be on another account (tl;dr) ... if I could remember the account name, which email address created under and find the password, all of  which I eventually managed. Since this was more like an emergency restart to keep on going than a "new beginning," could I call it an "old beginning"?

The inventory is uneven, incomplete ~ in progress. Nor are all either exclusively "precarity centric" or with an advocacy focus but all are interest related. 

What does #NetNeutrality have to do with #adjunct & other precarious worker activists?

…yes, today is the day…a good day to take on corporate interests, stand up for open, connected learning and keep the internet open and affordable for activism and the activist networks using it to connect activists, build grassroots networks, coordinate actions and inform/educate the public. I hope that answers the why question

As adapted from Fight for the Future's September 4, 2014, Battle for the Internet letter:

The Internet Slowdown, the net neutrality protest planned for today September 10th is taking off. As of September 4, a dozen of the world’s largest websites announced that they’re joining in a big way. Sites you know and use like Etsy, Kickstarter, Wordpress, Vimeo, Mozilla, Namecheap, Foursquare, imgur, and reddit (and surely more by now). Will you join too?

Everyone has a role in the Internet Slowdown. Click here to find out what YOU can do

Evan Greer at Fight for the Future wrote

Sunday Matinee: Blog Talk…hanging out w/#ccourses' Blog Brothers

…Click, Link and Embed, better known as Jim "EduPunk" Groom, Alan "CogDog" Levine, and Howard "Exploring mind amplifiers since 1964" Rheingold.

So what is this about anyway? Sure, there a Sunday film (maybe two), but my main purpose is to entice sign up for fun, blogging, connecting courses and with other educators. The Connected Course starts September 15, but the Pre-Course  (what the video is about) is now. Sign-up; register your blog (start one) and twitter handle; check out the blog flow on the main page -- visit/comment on a few; check out the look around

Connected Courses is a collaborative network of faculty in higher education developing online, open courses that embody the principles of connected learning and the values of the open web. 

Our goal is to build an inclusive and expansive network of teachers, students, and educational offerings that makes high quality, meaningful, and socially connected learning available to everyone.

#highered news as contemporary intellectual history—Meranze's Latest

…re-posted from Remaking the University. Back when Michael Meranze (history, UCLA) blogged a weekly links post, I often reblogged it. He still blogs regularly, but Latest Links is now a feature on the sidebar with no rss feed. Links encompass the education spectrum but from a California perspective, welcome and sometimes short in national higher ed coverage. 

PS Don't miss his latest, "The New Brutalism in Higher Ed" (9/4/14), building on LRB editor Marina Warners' Diary column in London Review of Books. Read both. Meranze, master of the killer close, brings the "new brutalism" of UK higher ed back to our own shores:

Warner began her account by describing the visit of a friend from California who noticed that the library (from the 1960s) had been built in the style of the "new brutalism" (Think of most old UC or CSU buildings). But as Warner herself notes, "new brutalism in academia was taking on another meaning."  Although it has happened with ruthless ideological will in England, it is not an alien story to the US.  Indeed, what has happened over the last few years under David Cameron is really just a fast-forward version of what has been going on in the US more slowly and in less centralized fashion. We are in the midst of our own new brutalism.  Although not as centrally directed we have been witnessing it for years: the recent intrusions by governing boards at the Universities of Illinois, Kansas, and Virginia; the shuttering of small language departments; the dramatic rise in tuition at public universities; increasing student/faculty ratios; ever growing reliance on adjuncts; cuts in Federal support for scholarly research; and our own, albeit less developed, auditing system.  In England, the transition occurred with such speed as to catch most people off-guard (despite the efforts of individuals like Stefan Collini, Andrew McGettigan, or the Campaign for the Public University).  But we have no excuse.This is the time to master the details to be able to oppose the systems being put into place on campuses across the country. [emphasis added]

Michael Meranze's Latest Links

From the 2010 archives: Glass ceiling & tiered employment: not just for #adjuncts

…blogged five years ago on this day in 2010. Change where are thou? I just added 'irony' to the tags. Ruccio still rules...

Glass ceiling & tiered employment: not just for adjuncts

via David Ruccio's occasional links & commentary

#LaborDay Movie: "Salt of the Earth" (1954)

Salt of the Earth (1954) is an American drama film written by Michael Wilson, directed by Herbert J. Biberman, and produced by Paul Jarrico. All had been blacklisted by the Hollywood establishment due to their alleged involvement in communist politics. (Image: Library of Congress. March 14, 1954 premier at the only theater in the the city that would show it)

The film is one of the first pictures to advance the feminist social and political point of view. Its plot centers on a long and difficult strike, based on the 1951 strike against the Empire Zinc Company in Grant County, New Mexico. In the film, the company is identified as "Delaware Zinc," and the setting is "Zinctown, New Mexico." The film shows how the miners, the company, and the police react during the strike. In neorealist style, the producers and director used actual miners and their families as actors in the film. The film was called subversive and blacklisted because the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers sponsored it and many blacklisted Hollywood professionals helped produce it.