Joe Berry's COCAL Updates, May29

... featuring news & links on #ContingentFaculty & #organizing #AcademicLabor in #highered. To subscribe to regular Updates, email joeberry@igc.org.  More about Joe Berry.  Updates are also archived at chicagococal.org. Follow COCAL International on Facebook 

Updates in brief and links

Around the Adjunctiverse...

Adjunct fired at Texas A&M (Daily Mail, UK), a public university, as indirect result of objecting to cross displayed on top of university building (e.g. files complaint with ACLU that leads to removal of crosses and subsequent email threats that administration does not act on but reacts by taking away her fall courses for speaking out), as recently reported in Crosses, Threats and an Adjunct by Scott Jaschik (Inside HigherEd). See also Seth Kahn's impressive letter to San Antonio Texas A&M administration (Adjunct Project). Breaking update: she is now in communication with The Fire, which took an immediate interest in the case.

Raritan Valley CC (NJ) adjunct union to protest at trustees meeting lack of progress in negotiations for contract.

Duquesne, Pittsburgh, adjunct union (USW) to have NLRB representational election in June-July, by mail; post by USW organizer on organizing adjuncts, at the Adjunct Project. FYI, organizer also interviewed for 'Junct Rebellion film.

Kalamazoo CC (MI) adjuncts vote overwhelmingly for union rep by AFT local

NBC story to focus on #adjunct profs' struggles

Karen Kelsky ~ #NewFac12 Summiteer, pro-adjunct convert, formerly tenured admin, now deftly consulting on the Byzantine ways of the academic job market ~ just posted this call on The Professor Is In and the open Facebook group, Con Job: Stories of Adjunct and Contingent Faculty

Urgent request. NBC Nightly News is still interested in covering the Ph.D. Poverty topic, but are shifting their angle. This AM I got this email: "Since we last spoke, I have done some more research and it looks like the percentage of PhDs on food stamps doesn’t really hold that much weight in the grand scheme of things. I want to change the story angle a little bit and just focus on part-time and adjunct professors and the struggles that they endure. I was wondering if I could talk to you on the phone and ask you where I could find some good solid evidence focusing on adjunct professors and their financial troubles and job security." 

A mitzvah: pass it on!

What a nifty, elegant idea. Do a mitzvah, pass it on. That is the heart of building both solidarity and networks. Historiann's "A mitzvah: pass it on!" was already sitting in drafts waiting for a short lead-in and exhortation to go out pretty much intact. Then I read Josh Boldt's Copy & Paste post about aggregating posts and plans for an Adjunct Project media board. They are not quite the same but headed in the same direction.  Now to weave them together like a complex essay prompt. Josh adds adjunct -specific context to what Historiann is working up to proposing when she writes ...

Monday Miscellany

... catch-up & preview touching on sundry topics from activism (#JunctTour & #AdjunctProject) to #CFHE's recent "gathering," blogging, links, Digital Identities & professional development. Briefly, I hope... 


#JunctTour (follow the hashtag) through Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan (Detroit) tops my personal list even if highered media has not seen fit to give it due notice. I take that omission as a sign of their information deficit about the adjunctiverse, not mine. Filming partner and cinematographer, Chris LaBree (from the wilds of New Jersey), is video blogging the road trip, regular posts on 2255 Films. The Homeless Adjunct's road trip is and will be the ongoing lead on New Fac @ Facebook through May 26. 'Junct Rebellion's adjunct road trip has a Facebook Event page. 


The #AdjunctProject has made web site changes, is aggregating media references to the Project and also added a job board and forums to its site. Go check them out for yourself. I'd write more but am already having a hard time with "brief." Josh is going distributed networks: this deserves a post of its own... and will get one.