Author: admin

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    Post-strike grading

    Byadmin

    The UAW strike is over, but considerable fall quarter grading remains unfinished. Senate and Unit-18 faculty are not obliged and cannot be compelled to complete grading that was assigned to readers and graduate student instructors during the fall quarter. The university can hire readers and teaching assistants (including those employed during the fall) to complete the grading with appropriate compensation. Leaders of UC Faculty Associations, UC-AFT, and UAW issued a letter to UCOP Labor Relations calling for central funding of the extra costs associated with completing fall grading. You can read the letter here and below: January 4, 2023 Letitia…

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    Sign On to the Faculty Association Statement Regarding Possible Strike by UAW 2865, UAW 5810 and SRY-UAW

    Byadmin

    Please consider signing on to the Faculty Association Statement Regarding Possible Strike by UAW 2865, UAW 5810 and SRY-UAW: Graduate students, postdocs, and other academic student employees are essential to the teaching and research mission of the University of California, especially as undergraduate enrollments rise. Given the escalating costs of living in California, 48,000 people in the UC system represented by three unions–UAW 2865, UAW 5810, and SRU-UAW–are coordinating their fight for living wages, affordable UC housing, greater support for working parents, sustainable transit benefits, equity for international scholars, and other improvements that would strengthen teaching and research across the…

  • Learn More About Your AFT Benefits

    Byadmin

    The AAUP’s recent affiliation with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) means that together, they now represent more US higher education workers than any other union. The affiliation also means that in addition to being an AAUP member, UCLA-FA members that choose to add AAUP membership are now AFT members as well, with access to a number of new resources and benefits, including counseling, traveling, educational, and insurance programs. The AAUP will be hosting a webinar on October 18 at 4 pm ET/1 pm PT where staff from the AFT membership team will walk members through the benefit program. Register…

  • 2022 Bulletin of the American Association of University Professors

    Byadmin

    The AAUP’s annual Bulletin collects in one place the reports, policy statements, and official AAUP business materials of an academic year—in this case, 2021–22. Most of these documents have already been published on the AAUP website or in Academe, and the parenthetical dates after their titles refer to date of original publication. This year’s Bulletin features a special report on governance, academic freedom, and institutional racism in the UNC system; two academic freedom and tenure investigative reports; a statement on legislative threats to academic freedom; and findings from the 2021–22 Faculty Compensation Survey and the 2022 AAUP Survey of Tenure…

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    Preventing Teaching Faculty from becoming Second Class Citizens

    Byadmin

    An article in today’s Academe Blog by Kris Boudreau and Mark Richman discusses research from The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Becky Supiano about how creating a “teaching track” of faculty can elevate instruction and instruction focussed faculty, but also risks “cementing their second-class citizenship.” The article examines a new tenure track for teaching faculty program at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. “The tenure track institutionalizes the university’s respect for [teaching faculty] well beyond providing a set of formal academic titles and adds the critical component of guaranteed academic freedom that is difficult to secure with anything less than tenure… By extending, supporting,…

  • Education Gag Orders Attack Academic Freedom

    Byadmin

    Academe Blog has posted an article by Jennifer Ruth that describes how red state anti-Critical Race Theory laws are both an impingement of freedom of speech — and so will be challenged on First Amendment grounds — but also are direct attacks on academic freedom. “Despite all its old Cold War fear mongering and all its talk of freedom, the Republican Party now harbors a sizable contingent of politicians who are increasingly willing to use authoritarian tactics to get what they want. The legislative bills banning so-called divisive concepts are the biggest assault on academic freedom this country has ever…

  • Covid-19 Accelerated the Erosion of Academic Governance

    Byadmin

    The Chronicle of Higher Education has coverage of a recent AAUP report about the surge in unilateral decision-making by governing boards and administrations during the Covid-19 era. The full AAUP report is available online and states: “The COVID-19 pandemic has presented the most serious challenges to academic governance in the last fifty years.” And that faculty were forced to choose between participating “in ad hoc governance processes they knew to be flawed in the hope of shaping their outcomes or refusing on principle to participate at all, thereby allowing administrators and board members to move forward without them.”

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    Report from the National AAUP Convention

    Byadmin

    Council of UC Faculty Associations (CUCFA, of which UCLA-FA is the UCLA chapter) President Constance Penley attended the historic National AAUP convention on June 16-18 in Arlington, VA, as the CUCFA delegate, which meant that she had an opportunity to vote on the proposed alliance between the AAUP and the AFT (AFL-CIO) and to fill six open AAUP Council seats. Read her report from the Convention at the CUCFA website.

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    New 2022 AAUP Survey of Tenure Practices

    Byadmin

    Tenure practices vary among institutions, however systematic studies of these practices are rare. The 2022 AAUP Survey of Tenure Practices is the first survey of its kind since 2004. It “offers a snapshot of prevailing tenure practices and policies at four-year institutions with tenure systems. Among the findings, the survey found that tenure is highly prevalent throughout US higher education, with 87 percent of four-year institutions that have a Carnegie Classification of bachelor’s, master’s, or doctoral institution reporting having a tenure system.” Available online.

  • AAUP Amicus with NLRB re: Collective Bargaining Unit of Faculty and Staff

    Byadmin

    AAUP’s summary: “The AAUP’s brief explains that, under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), where the union’s proposed unit is given deference: (1) bargaining units that include faculty and staff employed at institutions of higher education are not categorically barred, provided that faculty members are given a mechanism to express their desires on the issue; (2) AAUP policy statements concerning academic freedom and shared governance do not preclude faculty members from deciding to be included in a unit with staff; and (3) the exclusion of tenured and tenure-track faculty from a proposed bargaining unit comprised of contingent faculty and staff…