Teach-in on #Adjunct Faculty, 4/20/2012 @GreenRiverCC

…moderated by #KeithHoeller and Kathryn Re…featuring Frank Cosco and Jack Longmate.

The teach-in addresses multiple inequities built into the two faculty system and possible solutions. 

from the blog archives: #adjunct Links & Commentary from #KeithHoeller

…originally published Sunday, April 20, 2014. This trial post for a series that never materialized has been among the blog's most popular posts, 2,300 visits and climbing. The post was so labor intensive and time consuming to edit that I never got around to another. Shorter posts would have been a better choice too.  Rather than the promised shorter posts, I have not been posting at all. How much shorter can a post get? Although not always clearly indicated, commentary accompanying links is, unless otherwise noted, either Keith's commentary originally posted to the adj-l list and republished here with Keith's permission or quoting him directly from the original article. Should the series resume, I'll make that clearer when I revise the format.

#adjunct Links & Commentary from #KeithHoeller

…Issue #1 blogging materials and words from and on behalf of legendary (but social media averse) adjunct activist, Keith Hoeller. This project is still in Beta, so expect changes. I edited the auto-blogged Diigo bookmarks to tidy up format, added the vintage image of a 1907 classroom, and rearranged the order to lead with the NY Times OpEd, related links and commentary, including a copy of Keith's unpublished letter to the editor, plus a link to the published response letters. 

#LaborDay special from the @precariousfac archives: "Salt of the Earth" (1954) + links

Salt of the Earth (1954) is an American drama film written by MichaelWilson, 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.

2015 in Review: Beyond the Ivory Silo™

 …in links and lists, leaning to education, social justice and technology but not exclusively so. If you have a 2015 list or year in review post to add, post your (non-spam) link plus brief description in comments.  

This post is not about adjunct issues per se. Consider it context -- and a harbinger of posts beyond the Ivory Silo™. Mainstream media, although present, does not dominate. A 2016 trends and intentions post will follow, on this blog... or another

 Reasons to Celebrate: Key Progressive Gains in 2015 | Common Dreams | Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community

 Gene V Glass: Education in Two Worlds: Public Education 2015: The Year in Review

 2015 Year in Review: Grassroots Resistance Points the Way Forward | Portside

 2015: A Year in Review | The Baffler

#NAWD endnotes…resuming regular blogging #afterNAWD

…and the intense experience of participation and immersion in social and digital media surrounding what was an epic event. Everything else, including this blog. went on hiatus or minimal maintenance, depending on how involved it was with event support and coverage. Stories and posts are still coming in. The National Adjunct Walkout Day Tumbler is still open and accepting submissions.

In addition to processing submissions. I'm still sorting and organizing -- literally -- hundreds of NAWD related links on OneTab, bookmarking permanent link bundles and individual links to Diigo. The last bundle bookmarked is dated January 30, 2014, which should give you some idea just how far behind I am processing those links. It's an easy guess falling behind bookmarking coincided with starting the Tumblr and social media traffic picking up. Links saved to OneTab but not bookmarked to Diigo are current.


There's more ~ we are all still processing the experience and thinking on post NAWD directions. I've got all those links -- a independent history -- that I want to organize into events, resources, media (multiple categories), blog posts, videos, Storifys, graphics -- even by region --- and all public. But that could take a while, and it's time to pick up the threads on other projects (including blogging more regularly). For now, I need to save the bundles to permanent public pages and bookmark them.

Here's just a small sample of the link bounty,

On the Teach-In, teaching #NAWD & some history

…a revisited and only moderately updated 2011 newsletter article that, given distribution and placement, I should have blogged here in the first place. So now, thanks to #NAWD and revived Teach-In interest, I'm getting to it. Defend Public Education emerged in 2009, grew, peaked in 2011 and then seemed to fade into Occupy ~ now in eclipse as well. The teach-in / walkout connection is clearer now. 

Not all walkouts are strikes, nor are all labor related. Social injustice, not labor, is the real connection. Students are among likeliest out-walkers. Google walkout and you get more students than unions. Considering workplace inequities, labor practices are a natural target. The last major U.S. walkout was by students in Wisconsin in 2011. 

By way of the sit-in (which also connects to occupy), there's a clear walkout/teach-in connection. I'm somewhat puzzled by the paucity of meaningful online material on both but chalk it up to Eli Pariser's filter bubble. We are not encouraged to remember these connections. Somewhat more history follows below. For the complete newsletter, see the link at the bottom of the post. A more extensive collection of resource links is being bundled and will appear later -- but still in time for teaching-in later this month.

March 2011 was a month of action, in part planned by Defend Public Education and other groups as a coordinated series of actions supporting public education continuing and expanding on those of October 7, 2010 and March 4, 2010. This round, Wisconsin upped the ante. March actions, spreading into April and beyond, moved from previously planned to reactions supporting a broader cause. The massive attack on collective bargaining, public services workers, and public services was not limited to public education. Proposed legislation called for cutting public services drastically and, as part of budgetary package, dismantling or severely restricting collective bargaining.

In March we watched the actions on TV, followed it live online, web streamed and tweeted, and participated when and where possible. Protest manifested in petitions, rallies, marches, demonstrations, and teach-ins, with one California campus holding a "ramen-in."

(Update Notes)
The best covered and recorded, at least in terms of what has lasted, yields results to searches, 2011 Teach-In would have to be the April 5, 2011, National Teach-In on Debt, Austerity, Corporate Greed and What Can Be Done. Like the Defend Public Education page (which would have made a splendid model for NAWD), the event website is gone. The FB Event page infested with spam and bad links. Teach-In coverage remains on The Guardian and elsewhere as well as on a full set of YouTube videos. And now here too.

(back to the original article)

on the #precariousfaculty network & around the #adjunct/iverse

I just finished watching Ivory Tower online but should watch it again when I am not multi-tasking. It's definitely on the recommended list. Yesterday, when CNN aired the documentary, my viewing plan was watching skimpy clips and reading reviews. I don't often wish for cable or TV: don't miss the latter; never had the former so can't really miss it. This morning David Millroy's post to the CPFA list about watching Ivory Tower sent me looking for longer clips. Lo and behold...seek and ye shall find. Sometimes.

As for the rest of today (besides not taking all afternoon finishing and posting this), a PD "in the the News" on #HigherEd set up yesterday to have at the ready, awaits my attention. "News," being what it is, dates sitting in draft and will need updating ...the longer it waits, the more updating. 

Briefly noted and recommended, plus links to recent posts in the network

#NAWD links from the #BigRedA is for #Adjunct

…is the Big Red A giving National Adjunct Walkout Day a thumbs up, hitchhiking or getting ready to walk? I've been collecting links and tweets for a Storify (that I'd better get to before it goes as jumbo out of hand as the COCAL XI Storify) and am also working on a handful of related posts (including but not limited to a history of the Big Red A, Why February ~ another history, and the Adjunct alphabet game). The links are to a) tide you over until then, and b) remind you to check out, follow, share and, most especially, join conversation on any one or all of the main Walkout Day locations (discussion board, Facebook page, Event page, Twitter stream and hashtag) below

 National Adjunct Walkout Day Discussion Board

 National Adjunct Walkout Day on Facebook

 National Adjunct Walkout Day EventFacebook

 National Adjunct (@NationalAdjunct) | Twitter

 #NAWD - Twitter Search 

More #NAWD Links

Monday #Adjunct Notes…Happy Birthday #AdjunctJustice

The Daily Notes idea I proposed last Friday, got lost over the weekend. I'm not ready to say that it's not working out and will try again. Maybe it's just not for weekends. There's not really a plan but if there were, "post more often" would be the short version. More content (posts) leads to more visits, develops the blog as a network hub and (hopefully) encourages checking out features (blogrolls, pages, news feed ticker, archives, video bar, widgets for Twitter, Facebook and blog feeds ~ and morw). We really do have a lot of comment even without posts.

Like frosting like on a birthday cupcake, bringing us to ~

...a happy announcement and call for a digital party. Yesterday +Ana Maria Fores Tamayo's Adjunct Justice (on Tumblr) turned one year old (you might not have noticed from just the post title) Celebrate by visiting the blog and following. PS plans are afoot to add a comment feature too because we all know how much Ana enjoys conversations with visitors to the Adjunct Justice Facebook page.

Friday #adjunct notes—news links comments—whatever

…not in any particular order, not by importance, chronology, category or other ~ just as they flit by or come to mind. The operating idea is to turn out a quick update post. Morning would have been nice but we missed that window. Don't think of it as regular item either unless you see it appearing multiple days in a row. How hard can it be to snag a few from the morning flow to start the day with? Not pick, not select.

More than a hashtag, Marc Bousquet's #mlademocracy is now an organization with a url, a forum and a FAQ…taking memberships, inviting organizations to affiliate and offering badges. As much as the the MLA (and other organizations associated with higher education) might benefit from more democracy, the scope of this one may be limited. #mlatakeover seemed a more forthright tag.

Adjunctiverse reblogged Bryan Alexander's latest, "How to adjunctivize your university." It's on the blogrolls too. ICYMI here it is again. You won't like what it says but should not be surprised by it either. Halloween approaches: call it a #FridayFright4Faculty post ~ for adjunct and tenured alike.

Public Service Loan Forgiveness ~ a reminder about the call to comment on the legislation that controls PSLF, IBR, Direct Student Loans and more.  Federal Register page calling for comments on the William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan program is a good place to start. November 5 is the deadline for comments and documents ~ find more details and a submit button here

October is National #Bullying Prevention Month

…not the only item on the PF blogging agenda, which includes National Adjunct Walkout Day, Adjunct Chat's PD project, #ccourses ~ among other topics. Since this is Bullying Prevention/Awareness Month, I did not want to delay opening a long planned academic bullying series post. Although most of the months' designated websites emphasize schools, bullying and mobbing ~ as many of us know all too well ~ is very real in academic workplace too.

October is National Bullying Prevention Month, in which schools and organizations work together to stop bullying and cyber-bullying through activities, outreach and education. The month not only tries to raise awareness of bullying in schools, but also works to raise awareness of workplace bullying.

So is bullying in online groups and volunteer organizations. Building and maintaining trust is central to both organizing and preventing online bullying. Whether serendipity or morphic resonance, today's #ccourses' webinar is about building trust online and off. That will probably be the next post in the series. Reading Room will feature related links this month, and I hope to get to at least some of the bullying and related posts in drafts

October is National Bullying Prevention Month, CSEA Local 1000 AFSCME, AFL-CIO...and now for a video and more links, with a focus on workplace and academic bullying and mobbing to reinforce group think and as a retaliation tool

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

#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

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.

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).    

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.

digital bouquet: florilegium #adjunct/orium

In medieval Latin  a florilegium (plural florilegia) was a compilation of excerpts from other writings. The word is from the Latin flos (flower) and legere (to gather): literally a gathering of flowers, or passages collected from a larger work, each illustrating specific topic or themes. "The florilegium is one of the earliest recorded examples of remix culture — a Medieval textual Tumblr" ~ Brainpickings ~  and "a metaphor for networked knowledge and combinatorial creativity"

Florilegium © Robert Amesbury

A fine name indeed for  miscellany posts of snippets from a variety of links. The genre frees me from the obligation to comment but does not prevent me from doing so. It also frees me from organizing the digital bouquet. A time saver. I'm always on the lookout for easy to assemble (but still interesting) models for posts. 

Adjunct outsourcing: remains a topic of interest, although spilled pixels alone seem unlikely to change either admin or EduStaff's wicked, wicked ways: Discussions continue on recent IHE outsourcing article with 36 comments on article and more elsewhere. One IHE comment pointed readers this 2013 Cronker. Don't laugh too much, at least not in total disbelief. According to Topsy, 229 tweets, although follow up conversations sans tags would not be fully tracked. There was at least one public G+ thread ~ still ongoing and probably the best one. 

from the newsletter beat, featuring @DemChron

…on Central American Immigrants, Indonesian Presidents, Federal Employment and more in this week's Democracy Chronicles newsletter. As blogger, social media content curator/editor and Precarity Faculty Network coordinator, I subscribe to many weekly and daily email newsletters in addition to following social media and blog feeds. I don't -- can't -- blog all the newsletters but do try share as many as possible on social media and introduce you to selected newsletters by blogging samples. 

Editor/publisher since 2011, New School University graduate Adrian Tawfik, writes an editorial column, regularly publishes articles about adjunct issues and actively welcomes new contributors. Democracy Chronicles, is the product of a network of democracy activists  Contact DemChron to join them.

Sunday Matinee: "Degrees of Shame"

Today is another movie day on the blog ~ BYOP(opcorn). Leading up to #cocalXI ~ or #altCOCAL, even both, depending on your inclinations (but that's another post), the current Sunday Matinee series focuses on Barbara Wolf's films about adjunct academic labor, which have been closely associated with COCAL since the first Campus Equity Week in 2001, where Degrees of Shame: Part-time Faculty: Migrant Workers of the Information Economy was shown in Chicago (and became a CEW staple). The afterword to A Simple Matter of Justice was taped at COCAL IV in San Jose, CA. In the picture to the the right, Barbara Wolf is handing out flyers in Chicago.

See also Barbara Wolf's bio and other posts in the series. Barring the unforeseen, next Sunday's Matinee will be that very San Jose afterword and more links, of course...now, Degrees of Shame

#NCC #Adjuncts United: Mary-Faith Cerasoli donation page…

by Nassau professor Stefan Krompier, who has posted a personal appeal for Mary-Faith, friend, colleague and homeless teacher. He explains:

In the fall of 2011 Mary-Faith possessed a Temporary Teaching License and was teaching full time. At this point in time the New York State Education Department informed her that that she needed to obtain a Permanent License in order to continue teaching in a NYS Public School.  

She followed the Departments written instructions and completed the two specific courses in adolescent pedagogy necessary to obtain her permanent teaching license. However, because these courses were recommended in error and not the specific two courses she needed, Mary-Faith no longer had a teaching license, a job, or the ability to get a teaching job in a NYS Public School. 

Her advanced degree and extensive teaching experience enabled Mary-Faith to secure employment at four different colleges as an Adjunct Instructor. She worked six days a week and was able to support herself. Personal health issues, her mother’s worsening dementia, her lack of a full-time teaching position and the on-again-off-again nature of adjunct work has depleted her savings to the point where she is now homeless. Her night time hours are split sleeping in her car and when lucky on the couch in a friend’s house.

More information at NCC Adjuncts United: Mary-Faith Cerasoli Donation Page