How The University Works

The day’s breaking occupation news is the New York City General Assembly’s statement, together with mass events developing in 66 cities over the next few days. How cool is it that the statement is bigger news than rumors of Radiohead joining them for an impromptu concert? Heck, it’s pushed the Amazon tablet and the […]

On Saturday afternoon, using the illegal crowd-control tactic called kettling, police riot squads swept the sidewalks near Union Square with orange construction nets. In the same way that ocean trawlers capture indiscriminately, officers penned hundreds of peacefully marching Occupy Wall Street protesters together with bystanders, pedestrians, reporters, and neighborhood residents. Witnesses called police targeting of […]

a guest post by Zach Schwartz-Weinstein
Zuccotti Park in the Lower Manhattan financial district has been occupied by a politically diverse group for the last three days, with participation of up to several thousand at a time. Protesters have renamed the space “Liberty Park,” to brand it as an American counterpoint to Cairo’s Tahrir (“Liberation”) […]

On Saturday September 17th, movement organizers hope to funnel 20,000 protestors into Manhattan’s financial district, set up kitchens and tents, and occupy Wall Street for the next several months. Proclaiming we are the 99 percent, many of the 7,500 persons who have indicated an intention to participate are the highly educated working […]

Peace is not the absence of tension but the presence of justice. Without justice there will be no peace. –Martin Luther King, Jr.
May 17 is the 57th anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education, and educators across the country are on the march once again.
At 1 pm EST you can catch the live broadcast […]

Yesterday’s U.S. launch of the ASUS Transformer tablet with a detachable clamshell keyboard sold out in minutes on every major online retailer (hours if you were clever and out-thought the tech crowd by actually showing up in the flesh).
Why so popular? ‘Cause Asus clued in to the fact that we produce content with our computers, […]

Twenty years of schoolin’
And they put you on the day shift
Look out kid
They keep it all hid
–Bob Dylan, Subterranean Homesick Blues
On March 22, a prominent group of education bloggers agreed to provide statements loosely organized on the theme of “why faculty like me support unions.” Unexpectedly Stanley Fish, a career-long opponent of faculty unionism, […]

Most Chronicle readers probably aren’t among the 3 million or so that Neilsen can measure watching the Spartacus prequel miniseries Gods of the Arena, which premiered in January at the number one position among cable shows in its time slot. Episode 5 plays Friday, 2/18 (Starz, but the best way to catch up is in […]

You don’t know the name Elbert F. Tellem, but you will. Just last week, as the acting Director of National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) District 2, Tellem issued a potentially historic decision green-lighting contingent-faculty unionization at Catholic-affiliated Manhattan College. In the process, he threaded his way through some of the most dishonest law in […]

By my count of positions discussed on the essential Academic Jobs Wiki: Seven of forty-three positions in French with “interviews scheduled” were interviewing by Skype and bypassing the MLA convention in Los Angeles this week. (More fools them: The rains are ending and the forecast is lovely.) Five of the seven were tenure track positions. […]

What’s worse than a fat lip? How about a one-term presidency? The post-Thanksgiving White House news was all about Reynaldo Deceraga, whose elbow connected with the Presidential face during a basketball game. But those twelve stitches are nothing compared to the potentially career-ending injuries caused by another of Obama’s hoopsters, Education Secretary Arne Duncan.
There were […]

Just when you thought that everyone was going to buy a CB radio/pet rock/mood ring/Betamax/eight-track, you had the courage of your convictions and held off. Good for you.You probably also haven’t yet tied your mobile media consumption to either Apple or Amazon. Double good for you–waiting a year has paid off. Now you can […]

“Waiting For Superman (WFS) portrays our schools as undemanding; Race to Nowhere says the opposite — that we are killing our kids, figuratively and sometimes literally,” observes John Merrow of PBS. “Hours of homework produce unbearable stress; stress produces cheating, cramming to pass tests and then forgetting everything; that false learning then means remediation when […]

Keynote, “Boundaries of Literature.” UNC-Chapel Hill, September 29-30.
Keynote, SEIU 500 Annual Forum, Washington DC,  November 19.
AAUP National Council, Washington DC, November 20-21.
Panelist, “New Tools, Hard Times: Social Networking and the Academic Crisis.” MLA Annual Convention, Los Angeles, January 6.
Chair and respondent, “Deprofessionalized?” MLA Committee on Teaching as a Profession. Los Angeles, January 7.
Featured Speaker, “The […]

An interesting piece in last week’s Chronicle, Goodbye to those Overpaid Professors in their Cushy Jobs, attempts a possibly premature farewell to a stereotype, the enduring myth that “college professors lead easy lives.”  According to reporter Ben Gose, once-rampant complaints about the imaginary prof on a three-day workweek are now hard to find.
Nonetheless he notes […]

I wouldn’t buy the iPad for me, but I’d certainly consider buying something like it for my son. Infants acquire the ability to point around ten months of age. With touch-screen interfaces, shortly thereafter most can interact with literacy programs designed for much older children.
About this time last year, when Emile was fourteen months old, […]

I am the seed ground. I am a prairie that will stand
for much plowing. Terrible storms pass over me.
I forget. The best of me is sucked out and wasted.
I forget. Everything but Death comes to me and
makes me work and give up what I have. And I
forget.
It began with […]

January 28-29,“Can Obama Learn? In its First Year, the Administration Fails Education.” Public Lecture and Workshop, Northern Arizona University.
February 11-12 Plenary, “Robots on Campus: Why We’re Panicked by the Machine Grading of Student Writing.” Networks and Enclaves: Open Access and Work in the 21st Century. University of California, Irvine.
June 11 Keynote, “System Crash: Risk, […]

Follow the Berkeley standoff via microblog. Also see this video of a unionized campus worker addressing several hundred UCSC students during the third day of the current occupation. Best updates on California occupations here; best strike and breaking media from UPTE; and all other UC news at Newfield et al’s place here.
Update 5pm PST: Berkeley […]

Arrests of 52 students at UC Davis and others at UCLA ended 1-day occupations at both places, and at San Francisco State, but a new occupation has begun at Berkeley, where the occupiers report that police beat and pepper-sprayed students to re-take the building’s first floor. Students appear to hold the second floor at this […]

Everywhere you look, students and faculty are hitting the streets–digital music in their ears, cell phone cameras in hand, uploading their manifestos from occupied dean’s offices.
It turns out civil disobedience doesn’t have to be boring.
The membership of the grad student union at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign just overwhelmingly authorized their leadership to call a […]

The 2000 students sitting in at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts ignited occupations at a handful of neighboring buildings and campuses, then leapt across Austria and into Germany (where already last summer a quarter million students, faculty, teachers, and parents struck to fight various sleazy American-model* initiatives being pushed by the aptly-named “Bologna Process”).
Californians […]

This is the text of an email blast sent out by AAUP to 370,000 faculty, announcing the release of a draft report on conversion to tenure, co-authored by me, and featuring several examples of different ways that different institutions have moved to stabilize their faculty. We’ve already received over 150 comments, most positive and most […]

Is your administration using “the economy” as an excuse to extort more work for less pay from an already over-burdened faculty?
Buying Howard Bunsis a plane ticket to your campus might be the best investment you can make right now.
Bunsis, a Michigan professor of accounting and treasurer of the AAUP, has been tracking administrator claims of […]

In response to the massive re-orientation of education toward job training, privatization and the standardization of curricular outcomes mandated by the Bologna Process, students across Europe have been turning out by the thousands. This past June, as many as 250,000 students, parents, schoolteachers, college faculty and staff coordinated a week-long education strike in 90 cities […]

In lower Manhattan, students demonstrate in solidarity with protesters at UC Santa Cruz.
The Occupy California group peacefully ended their weeklong occupation of a UCSC facility last Thursday, but announced that they left “in order to escalate” their confrontation with the state and campus authorities.
During the event, messages of solidarity poured in from Britain, South […]

Courtesy of AAUP’s new video series, Voices of the AAUP, you can catch me on tape for a change. In the short piece I respond to questions about faculty democracy and work-life balance.
More entertaining video is provided by the Ad-hoc Post-Tenure UnderAppreciated Band, and more important thoughts are shared by faculty serving contingently, for […]

October 16. Plenary, Labor in Higher Education conference, sponsored by APSCUF/PSEA.  Harrisburg, Pa.
October 28, 29. Public lecture, University of Kansas Hall Center for the Humanities, (lecture Wednesday, discussion and workshop Thursday).
November 5.  Panel. Graduate Student Sustainability? American Studies Association Annual Meeting, Washington, DC.
November 22-29 Global Learning Visiting Fellow, School of Business and Management, St. Mary […]

I am the seed ground. I am a prairie that will stand
for much plowing. Terrible storms pass over me.
I forget. The best of me is sucked out and wasted.
I forget. Everything but Death comes to me and
makes me work and give up what I have. And I
forget.
Sometimes I growl, shake myself and spatter a few […]

“The Adjuncts” by Chloe Smolarski, City University of New York, CUNY Contingents Unite
Academic freedom is the subject of three major conferences and at least two substantial journal issues this season, and they’ll all get a fair amount of ink and electrons when Ward Churchill’s lawsuit against the University of Colorado commences next month […]

There are several new confirmed appearances for the spring. Some of these events are free and open to the public.  With the exception of possible appearances in Southern California (Occidental College and/or Cal State San Marcos), I think I’m pretty much as booked as I can handle until very late in 2009.
“Social Media and […]

These are the CONFIRMED appearances as of October; I’ll revise these as the additional plans firm up.
Keynote Address. “Labor in Higher Education.” Sponsored by the Association for Pennsylvania State College and University Faculty. Slippery Rock, PA: October 2009.
Featured Speaker, Cultural Studies Association Annual Meeting. Kansas City: April 16-18, 2009.
Featured Speaker, Initiative on Labor and Culture […]

Family time. 
While I’m away, join in on the 65-comment hornets-nest I stirred up over on Brainstorm–in yet another discussion of “job-market theory.” As Chris just commented below, sometimes it’s a bit like watching me and a couple of other rational folks trying to talk to a box of hammers. Rude, self-righteous hammers at that. One dude […]

An award-winning play about organizing grad employees opens May 3 in Philadelphia.
ADMINISTRATOR: Please allow me to introduce myself, I’m a man of wealth and taste. I go by many names. Doctor, Boss, Sir, Chairman, Gentleman, Scholar, Dean, Pillar of the Community, Cheap Bastard, but you can call me the Administrator. –Joe Camhi, “Screw U, […]

As a couple of folks have noticed: I haven’t issued a new video in a while, despite having fifteen or so great interviews backed up on my monster new 750-gig external hard drive.
The videos will begin releasing again in May, about 1 per week. They include great interviews with AAUP past president Jane Buck and […]

Frank Donoghue argues that  professors of the humanities have already “gone too far to rescue themselves.”

This week’s posts are all inspired by the Rethinking the University: Labor, Knowledge, Value conference in Minneapolis April 11-13. In attendance will be plenty of Minnesota folks, like Paula Rabinowitz and Lisa Disch as well as a great […]

If you’re trying to get the book from an online bookseller and seeing an estimated delivery of 1 week, it’s because the first printing of HTUW has sold out. The second printing was due in warehouses April 4, and should be shipping shortly. (The best price–$15.84 to $17.60–is at Barnes and Noble. Ordering directly […]

Friday April 11, 4:30 pm “Extreme Work-Study.” Panel presentation. University of Minnesota. Rethinking the University: Labor, Knowledge, Value. CSOM, room L-110.
Saturday April 12, 12:45 pm. “The Faculty Organize, But Management Enjoys Solidarity.” Keynote Address, 54th Annual Meeting of Michigan Conference AAUP. Marriott Hotel, Eagle Crest Resort, Ypsilanti.
Wednesday April 16, 4- 5:30 pm. “Permanently Temporary: How […]

I don’t know how long this ultra-discounted price will last, but Amazon has just posted the lowest price for the book ($15.84, matching the Barnes & Noble ‘member’ price, and the NYU Press “convention discount.”)
Next month, I begin a series of book-related appearances with April stops in Minnesota, Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, North Carolina and New […]

With the whole first-time dad thing, I’ve been a bit behind on the video project! I have twenty interviews on the external hard drive and another thirty or so scheduled for this spring (I’m taking advantage of my book tour to collect more important testimony than my own). At the rate of one interview […]

With Emile’s arrival, I’ve had to turn down some invitations, but I do have some travel plans for the rest of the year. I’m best able to accept invitations that can be connected to travel to which I’m already committed.
Spring 2008
March 19, Interview with P.D. Lesko, for Adjunct Advocate
March, unscheduled, Interview with Gregory Zobel, […]

If you’re a diehard Amazonian, they’ve once again dropped the price on HTUW, to $17.25. I’m not sure how this is triggered. Perhaps it’s by the book’s rank on a competitor, such as B&N. I am not going to change the list price on all the pages this time–I’d just as soon […]

I’ve had several interesting responses to the health-care question. More on that later, as the primary season heats up.
In the meanwhile, I’ve had a commentator respond to both of my posts so far at Brainstorm, neither really on-topic, both expressing a perfectly understandable anger at the tenured. I’ll just share one of the comments and […]

As of Monday, February 4, How The University Works and yours truly will also be available at the Chronicle of Higher Ed’s Brainstorm, which already features Gina Barreca, Dan Greenberg, Laurie Fendrich, Mark Bauerlein, Stan Katz, Robert Zemsky, and Stephen Joel Trachtenberg.

This should be interesting! For the first week or two over there, I’ll […]

says Andy Smith of his years as a nontenurable instructor at a public institution in the great state of Tennessee, where the board of regents imposes a _maximum_ wage, not a minimum wage on its faculty–of, he says, about $2100 a course. For much of that time, he earned just 1,650 per class. Many […]

I’m putting together the first interview (with Berube) in two installments. In the meanwhile, check out the trailer. The mpeg version is better quality:
Quicktime version (.mov)
Windows version (mpeg-1)

During the week of December 10, I’ll be customizing this space, including links to other folks who care about the same set of issues. Drop me a line at pmbousquet (at) gmail if you want to be included, know someone who you think should be, or if you have any thoughts at all about the […]

The first copies of How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low-Wage Nation should be available at the MLA annual convention–just drop by the NYU booth. Or else you can order it from Barnes and Noble ($17.60) or Amazon ($17.25). I’ll be there, shooting a bunch of video interviews–with Cary Nelson, Jeffrey Williams, […]

Interviews with Jane Buck, Michael Berube, the California Faculty Association leadership, architect of the Free Higher Education platform Adolph Reed, and much, much more.
Check back about December 15!!