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UCLA AAUP, in cooperation with the UCLA Faculty Association and CUCFA (Council of UC Faculty Associations), has sent the following letter to President Napolitano asking her to begin Spring quarter 2020 two weeks late, on April 13. March 16, 2020 TO:       President Janet Napolitano FROM: Council of UC Faculty Associations We write to ask you to delay the start of spring quarter by two weeks, to begin on April 13 rather than March 30. We came to this solution following an intensive discussion among our members about the challenges of moving to remote teaching, at least through the spring quarter,…

UC Santa Cruz graduate student workers are trying to negotiate with UCSC for fair wages for their critical work in teaching students. University officials, negotiators, and the Office of the President have been adversarial and punitive, not recognizing the importance of these young teachers to the teaching mission of the UCSC and the larger UC system or the need for a COLA to support the rising living costs faces by these teachers. Without quality teachers there can be no quality teaching. Without a COLA, there can be no quality teachers. Please join me in supporting these teachers in their quest…

To the UC Community: At the UCSC General Assembly on February 21, COLA wildcat strikers voted overwhelmingly to continue to withhold Fall grades beyond Janet Napolitano’s midnight deadline. At least 85 UCSC graduate student workers, and very likely more, have refused to submit to Napolitano and INC Kletzer’s threat to revoke Spring appointments and block future ones. Nearly 20% of these workers are international graduate students, who now face the risk of de facto deportation. We feel the collective strength of our fellow workers’ commitment to act decisively in solidarity. We know of pledges to withhold winter grades and commence…

Lecturers at UCLA and across the UC system contribute to our students’ learning and overall college experience, as well as to the teaching excellence of this University.  Lecturers (also known as non-senate or contingent faculty) teach at least one-third of undergraduate credit hours, and contribute significantly to their departments and generally to the  vitality of the campus. AAUP supports lecturers and their union, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), in their current efforts to improve: (1) salaries and benefits reflective of expertise and cost of living; (2) timely notification of hiring and course assignments; (3) full-time, year-long, multi-year appointments; (4)…

  The recent mass shooting of seventeen students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, has refocused efforts to stem the epidemic of gun violence plaguing the nation. This time the effort has been initiated and led by the surviving students, supported by their teachers, parents, and students across the country. The American Association of University Professors salutes these brave and eloquent young people. Gun violence is not a problem limited to high schools. Colleges and universities have been sites of mass shootings since 1966, when sixteen people died and thirty-one were injured at the University of Texas…

Universities have become increasingly corporatized, and the significant expansion of university administration has seriously eroded faculty authority to control or make effective recommendations about university policy. That is one of the central arguments in an amicus brief submitted by the AAUP urging the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit to uphold the National Labor Relation Board’s determination that non-tenure-track faculty at the University of Southern California are not managerial employees and are therefore eligible to unionize under the National Labor Relations Act. This case arose when Service Employees International Union filed a petition to represent  non-tenure-track full-time and…

OPEN LETTER TO AAUP MEMBERS: Free speech on campuses has become a focus of contentious debate and increased media scrutiny. Campus communities—including administrators, faculty, and students—generally embrace the concept of free speech yet lack a clear consensus about its limits. The AAUP invites proposals for presentations at our June 14–17 annual conference that offer nuanced articulations of the concept of free speech in the context of higher education. Submissions are due by January 14. Presentations might explore competing claims about who has free speech rights and how far they extend; free speech and its relation to academic freedom; the politicization of free speech…

National Security, the Assault on Science, and Academic Freedom Assault on Science and Academic Freedom Threatens the Public Good and International Stature of US  Washington, DC—A new report, National Security, the Assault on Science, and Academic Freedom, released by the AAUP details troubling threats to academic freedom in the physical and natural sciences that have been exacerbated by the Trump administration’s hostility to science. International scientific exchange and, especially, the charging of innocent Chinese or Chinese American scientists with espionage in the name of national security is one focus of the report. The second is climate science, an area that has been…