#MLKDay2016 Digital #SocialJustice Memorial

…the day online, in memorable social media memes, the dominant genre, articles, blog posts and videos. Tomorrow, let's all not go back to business as usual. Pay extra attention to the quotes and articles that make you uncomfortable or go against the grain of your personal ideology or world view. As Paul Thomas writes, 

One commitment is to resist the whitewashing of Martin Luther King Jr. as a passive radical. So here, I offer some readings, varied and important, but pathways to honoring the radical MLK and to resisting the lingering dream deferred.

This meme is a favorite because it resonates personally and on many levels:

…and many thoughtful articles and blog posts 

Labor Organizing as a Civil Right

 …an idea and article worth revisiting: a 2012 Dissent Magazine article by Century Foundation senior fellow Richard D. Kahlenberg and labor/employment discrimination attorney Moshe Z. Marvit, also authors of Why Labor Organizing Should Be a Civil Right: Rebuilding a Middle-Class Democracy by Enhancing Worker Voice. 

The "union organizing as a civil right" concept, implicit in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, appeared in 2008, reported by David Sirota in the Nation and elsewhere as "labor attorney Tom Geoghegan's 6 little words". Although widely cited at the time and still remembered by many, nobody took the idea and ran with it. Or so I thought until discovering the Dissent link in "The problem with Thomas Piketty: Capital destroys right-wing lies, but there’s one solution it forgets"  (Salon) by Thomas Franks, author of What's The Matter With Kansas and Baffler founding editor. That solution would be unions and reforming labor laws:

#PrecariousFaculty Network Links (weekly)

…labor history (1998 Syracuse U strike, pictured: Ben Shahn mural at SU), strikes, adjunct unions, organizing, censorship, social media, academic freedom, adjunct blog posts, Labor Notes Conference, unpaid academic labor, retirement, higher inequalities, two-tier system, adjunct response to NYT Op-Ed

#PrecariousFaculty Network Links (weekly)

…from Union Book, ZCommunications, the New Left Project, ETFO Voice, Association of Governing Boards, MRSC, CounterPunch, Facebook, NYU, Google Docs, Iinternational Student Movement, Jacobin Magazine, Haymarket Books,

•   Precarious Work - UnionBook ~ "Precarious Work Affects Us All" is a global union campaign to stop the rise in precarious employment and regain power and justice for working people. On this campaign page you will find links to campaign materials, background information and details on what trade unions around the world are doing to mobilise against precarious work. Globalisation is not just about how things are made, bought and sold. It's also about people. Transnational companies want cheap and flexible workers. So they have shifted from secure to insecure employment - making all jobs more "precarious". from International Metal Workers, Union Book. Tags: workplace, precarity, precarious workers, globalization, PFR, video

• An Interview With Staughton Lynd About the Labor Movement in ZCommunications »

Reading Room: Omnivore on #HigherEd

....From Touchstone, man up, lady down: Perry L. Glanzer on the demise of ladies and gentlemen in higher education. From Christianity Today, the missing factor in higher education: A cover story on how Christian universities are unique, and how they can stay that way....Findings that run against the grain of assumptions: the essays in Military Culture and Education are a collective effort to “bridge the gap between the academy and the military”.... 


Read the complete collection at Omnivore

Joe Berry's COCAL Updates 21Feb12

Email joeberry@igc.org, to subscribe to regular updates in brief and links by email. More about Joe Berry, COCAL, publications, links.

1. Another book of interest: "Wayne Lanter has published a book on our strike and jailing of faculty at Belleville Area College in 1980.  We are now known as Southwestern Illinois College. The title is Defending the Citadel: A Personal Narrative, available from Barnes & Noble, Amazon and others. Could you give it a plug? In solidarity, Leo Welch"

2. More on American U adjuncts union victory

• Adjuncts at American U vote to unionize, Chronicle
• American University faculty vote to join SEIU, SEIU Blog
• AU Adjuncts Vote to Unionize, Washington City Paper
• AU Adjunct Faculty Vote to Unionize, WaPo

3. More on East-West University struggle for recognition and a contract and against firings (and about the NFM Summit), NEA Education Votes

4. Very good summary article (in New Unionism) on job satisfaction among workers and the research on it. Nothing shocking to us contingent faculty activists, but confirms stuff we need to remember in order to organize and motivate our colleagues to fight for better conditions for us and students. Also shows how we are not so different from other workers but are very different from top managers (CEO's) in our motivations.

 

5. Review of new book (in New Unionism), Passing the Buck: Corporate Restructuring and the Casualisation of Employment, on casualized labor (like us) internationally

Reading Room: Steve' Street's columns

Originally published March 21 2010, updated to correct bad links but worth republishing as current to bring it to your attention again... and mine as well for not following up on my exhortation to bring back the Reading Room series, which has only two other posts, "What are Universities for?" and "A Proposal to American Labor" (unless I retro-tag likely candidates among past posts).


Here's what I wrote introducing the first Reading Room post:

Remember the reading tradition in US union history? Reading Rooms in hiring halls. Samuel Gompers' cigar rollers voting to have a member on the clock read great books to them as they worked. Why not an online reading room right here

The call for suggestions still stands. Who and what are your choices? Cary Nelson, Keith Hoeller, Marc Bosquet.... all obvious choices. Let's include the less obvious as well. Accompanying links always appreciated. Post as comment or email me at vanessa.vaile@newfacultymajority.info

Thanks to NFM Board Member and Research Chair, Ross Borden, for list and heads up. Let's bring back the Reading Room and post more link lists. Suggestions welcome...

Steve Street: Select Bibliography 2008-2010

• “The Fog” (12 August 2010), Inside Higher Ed 
• "Wouldn't a New Progressive Era Require Faculty Equity?" (Fall 2009), Thought & Action (see Table of Contents under Special Focus). In pdf format 
• “Sticks and Stones, or Titles and Truth?" (23 Sept 2009), Chronicle of Higher Education 
• "The Silence of the Grads" (5 June 2009), Chronicle of Higher Education
• "Let's Talk Equity — Later" (14 Jan 2009), Chronicle of Higher Education: 
• "Mad About Numbers" (11 Dec 2008), Chronicle of Higher Education
• "Don't Be Kind to Adjuncts" (24 Oct 2008), Chronicle of Higher Education h
• "Don't Pit Tenure against Contingent Faculty Rights" (May-June 2008) Academe
• " A Cheeky Plea for Faculty Unity" (14 May 2008), Part-Time Thoughts, Adjunct Nation

The Reading Room: What are universities for?

From Polygraph, Nina Power on Jacques Ranciere and the politics of contemporary education; and a review of Marc Bousquet's How the University Works (and a roundtable). Why rank doctoral departments? The E-Book Sector: In for-profit higher education, traditional textbooks are disappearing. A review of Seeing the Light: Religious Colleges in Twenty-First-Century America by Samuel Schuman. More and more on Ben Wildavsky's The Great Brain Race. The World’s Honors College: NYU Abu Dhabi admits a standout first class, as unprecedented experiment in student and faculty mobility gets underway (and more). FromStandpoint, what are universities for? Humanities scholars should celebrate and preserve the lack of a clear hierarchy for journals in their disciplines. A look at the temporal rhythm of academic life in a globalizing era. A review of Campus Hate Speech on Trial by Timothy C. Shiell. We must stop the avalanche of low-quality research: A national effort is needed to eliminate the vast volume of worthless findings generated by academe. The rise of the global university: For the first time, a single world society is within reach — and higher education is a central driver. Revolutionary U: Edu-factory is a new group trying to revolutionize higher education. Curing Socratophobia: Thaddeus J. Kozinski on teaching the Great Books. FromThe Chronicle, Gary Y. Okihiro on the future of ethnic studies: The discipline is under assault from within as well as from without; and who gets to define ethnic studies? Here's one way to sober the debate: Ask if white studies violates Arizona's new law. What happened to studying? You won’t hear this from the admissions office, but college students are cracking the books less and less. Tenure, RIP: What the vanishing status means for the future of education.

"What are universities for?" is a collection of higher ed links from around the world collated/annotated by and reposted from Omnivore, the Book Forum blog, both glorious feasts for the reading and book addicted.