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This is the third in a series of CUCFA’s FAQ’s about the UAW strike. The first set of FAQs is available here. The second set is available here. Q1: Who will be responsible for the grading when the strike is resolved? A1: If a settlement is reached before the end of the current quarter/semester, your existing ASE may be able to complete the grading, but only if it fits within their contractual workload limits. If a resolution is not reached until the next quarter/semester, an agreement about grading may be part of the settlement between UC and UAW. If not,…

Dear Colleagues, On Thursday, December 1, Senate faculty received a potentially misleading email from the President’s Office of the University of California, titled “Regarding Faculty Rights and Responsibilities,” and signed by Provost and Executive Vice President of Academic Affairs Michael Brown. This communication fails to distinguish between being on strike and declining to pick up struck labor. It is the case that the university may dock pay for any faculty on strike, although it is unclear precisely how they would enforce that policy. Faculty pay can only be docked for the period during which they choose to strike, not for…

Dear colleagues, We have entered the second week of the UAW multi-unit strike. CUCFA is inspired by our fellow academic workers represented by UAW, who are fighting to create a UC where everyone can live with dignity in the place they work. We reaffirm our message to President Drake sent on November 11, 2022, with over 1,400 Senate faculty signatures, that urged him to direct his staff to engage in good faith bargaining. We join 100 UC departments, programs, and committees that publicly expressed their support for striking academic workers. They have written letters of solidarity, with some committing not…

Hank Reichman — professor emeritus of history at California State University, East Bay; former AAUP vice-president and president of the AAUP Foundation; and from 2012-2021 Chair of AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure — has just published a new book: Understanding Academic Freedom. Hank describes the book: My purpose in writing Understanding was to provide a concise (the book is just 205 pages minus notes and index) and accessible introduction to the concept of academic freedom as practiced and preached in the U.S. (mostly by the AAUP) and an overview of both historic and contemporary challenges to it….

More than 50 faculty members in the life sciences at the University of Georgia have declared their intent to require masks in their classrooms, even though doing so is a violation of the University System of Georgia’s rules. More details at the Academe Blog. Ironically, it is those who most loudly and thoughtlessly lay claim to some twisted notion of individual “freedom” who would use the power of the state and university administration to constrict the academic freedom of the faculty to teach in safety. That scientists are taking the lead in standing up to this ill-advised policy is potentially…

Volume 12 of the Journal of Academic Freedom is available online. The theme of the volume this year is “Practices of Academic Freedom in Times of Austerity.” Here is a portion of an introduction to the volume from its co-editors, Rachel Ida Buff and S. Ani Mukherji: Our call for papers asked potential contributors to consider the relation of academic freedom struggles to broader movements and to envision the university in the larger context of the world and its historical processes. We focused on concrete practices, gathering examples as material for reflection and encouragements for further experiments in transformative change—change…

The AAUP has conducted surveys for its Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession and is now publishing some results on their Academe Blog. Earlier we had linked to their first post from that data, which examines the impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on faculty salaries and benefits for both tenure-line and non-tenure-track faculty. Their second post based on that report is now up and it explores contingency and administrative growth. “The steady rise of contingent faculty appointments and the growth of administration in higher education present a significant threat to academic freedom and shared governance.”

The AAUP has conducted surveys for its Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession and is now publishing some results on their Academe Blog. Their first post based on the report examines the impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on faculty salaries and benefits for both tenure-line and non-tenure-track faculty. “Key findings include: 55 percent of institutions implemented salary freezes or reductions. 28 percent of institutions eliminated or reduced some form of fringe benefits. Almost 5 percent of institutions terminated the appointments of at least some full-time tenure-line faculty members. Almost 20 percent terminated the appointments of or…