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An Ode to Academic Joy

Robert Jensen Common Dreams
Rather than pontificate on academic freedom, important though it is right now, I want to reflect on academic joy, about what can be so exciting about the life of the mind—even in the modern university.

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How Contingent Faculty Organizing Can Succeed in Higher Education

Steve Early New Politics
They are highly educated, poorly paid, absent union backing and part of the metastasizing precariat. They are also organizing. Two veterans of the contingent college adjunct’s struggle ably tell the story, as reviewed by a veteran labor militant.

Students And COVID-19: We Are Struggling, Here’s The Help We Need

Lesly Ayala UCLA Labor Center
someone using laptop computer A recent survey on workers and learners in Los Angeles County by the UCLA Labor Center found that “52% have been laid off, terminated, or furloughed from their jobs due to the pandemic.” It is very hard to study with many insecurities in your life.

Spare CUNY, and Save the Education our Heroes Deserve

Jeanne Theoharis, Alan Aja and Joseph Entin City Limits
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?

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Serfs of Academe

Charles Petersen The New York Review of Books
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.
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