The right is on the march — but not without resistance
As higher education hires more adjuncts, it also relies on them more. Colleges and universities can’t fulfill their teaching mission without them — which gives part-timers more power, if they choose to use it.
A key government official declared that players are actually employees, but the league is still avoiding worker protections – just like gig economy companies around the nation.
Austerity policy-making over the past 50 years has been racialized, withering services in public agencies ranging from K-12 schooling to hospitals to higher education. Matters of race must be made more visible, placed at the center of policy-making.
During the Great Depression, local, state, and federal policymakers refused to cut and invested. Doesn't the present moment call for similar visionary action for public institutions like CUNY and the people they educate for generations to come?
The plight of academic adjuncts, those Ph.D's working full-time at low wages, no benefits and little job security, viewed not just as prototypical exploited gig workers and units of flexibility but also as an advanced contingent of union activists.
The 33 wealthy parents charged in the recent college admissions scandal chose to participate in an organized criminal conspiracy to get their kids into elite schools. It was much cheaper than the “legal” bribes and scams used by others of their ilk.
Last year, student protests at some HCBUs aimed to highlight inadequacies in the way sexual assault and rape cases are handled. Students at HCBUs tend to under report sexual violence and they’re often not included in national conversations about it.
“If the Professor Watchlist were a research paper, I’d give it an F,” says Peter Dreier.
Newly armed with the right to collective bargaining, teaching assistants, graduate assistants, and research assistants at private universities are organizing to join the ranks of the unionized.
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