To help faculty understand their rights and guide them with practical advice about how to continue to exercise their academic freedom, the AFT has joined with the American Association of University Professors to create a guide (link is external) for locals to use to educate their members. Informed by faculty experience, it is designed to prepare academics for the possibility of increased attacks on campus. See http://022380.pa.aft.org/files/academic_freedom_faqs_2016_election.pdf

click on the REGISTER HERE link in the left frame.  You need your AFT member # on the AFT member card, NOT your BCCC employee #.

For membership # help, see https://www.aft.org/members/help.cfm or  E-Mail: Membership Department or Phone: 888/238-5646.

Adjuncts Living in Fear:

The cover story of the Dec. 18 issue of the San Diego Reader unveils “academe’s dirty little secret” about the academic staffing crisis. The exploitation of contingent faculty is no secret to AFT members, of course, but the article about the self-censoring pragmatism of highly educated professionals working with no job guarantees from semester to semester is a disturbing read.

Check out the story here

The increasing exploitation of contingent faculty members is one dimension of an employment strategy sometimes called the "two-tiered" or "multitiered" labor system.

This new labor system is firmly established in higher education and constitutes a threat to the teaching profession. If left unchecked, it will undermine the university's status as an institution of higher learning because the overuse of adjuncts and their lowly status and compensation institutionalize disincentives to quality education, threaten academic freedom and shared governance, and disqualify the campus as an exemplar of

Creative Writing Pedagogy in the Two Year College: Lessons Learned and Literature Reviewed, Findings by a 35-year Teacher Abstract: A literature and best practice review and retrospective from 35 years of  applied community college teaching pedagogy looks at the heuristics of  the whole creative writing student as an eager learner and suggests the most efficient practices; prerequisites and classroom universal policies necessary to growth in creative writing ability.  Positive growth in creative writing students’ work in the genre’s is associated with particular student personality

For Faculty Free Speech, the Tide Is Turning

Thomas Sullivan and Lawrence White write about recent developments in academic freedom on college campuses and whether "whether faculty members at public colleges and universities enjoy protection against institutional retaliation for speaking out on matters of internal governance or public concern."  Read it here.

Steven Ward, sociology professor at Western Connecticut State University, sees parallels between today's war on public education and Niccolo's advice in The Prince.  Read it here.