Office Hours Higher Ed

Faculty Lounge Episode: CSU Strike and Faculty for Justice in Palestine

Welcome to Office Hours, a podcast about campus politics in the end times. We’re back after a brief hiatus for winter break!
Today’s episode is a Faculty Lounge episode, where we are checking in on some current news in higher ed. We’ll be discussing the brand new faculty strike in the Cal State system and pro-Palestine faculty and staff organizing.
Links relevant to the discussion:
 
 ‘They can afford fair compensation’: faculty at largest US public college system strike for equitable salaries | California | The Guardian
 
Cal State faculty just got a 5% raise. Here's why they're upset
 
Cal State tuition to increase 34% over next five years - CalMatters
 
Strike - California Faculty Association.
 
Howard Bunsis Fall 2023 Assembly Presentation on CSU Budget
 
Penn Faculty for Justice in Palestine | Announcement statement of Palestinian solidarity chapter formation | The Daily Pennsylvanian
 
Palestinian Artist Samia Halaby Slams Indiana University for Canceling Exhibit over Her Support for Gaza | Democracy Now!

Organizing In A Climate of Fear: Pro-Palestine Campus Organizers Speak Out

For today’s podcast we’re sharing interviews with two student activists involved in Palestine solidarity organizing on their campuses. Instead of our usual format where we bring all of our guests together for a discussion, today we’re bringing you two interviews back to back. Our guests focus on the ongoing repression that activists are facing at their universities. As our listeners may know, anti-Palestinian repression on campuses is intensifying. At the time of this recording Rutgers has just suspended its SJP chapter and the DOE is launching an investigation into organizing on multiple campuses. 
 
Guests:
Our first guest is Jannine Masoud, a law student at Rutgers University, member of the National Lawyers Guild, and Palestine solidarity activist for over a decade.
Our second guest is going by “X”, and is a law student and student organizer at UCLA School of Law. 
Also, a note on our interview with X: due to the intense climate of harassment and doxxing of pro-Palestine organizers, X has asked that their voice be distorted in order to protect their identity. So if you’re wondering why the audio sounds a little strange - that’s why.
 
Faculty, staff, and student listeners: support your campus SJP or Palestine solidarity group! Pressure your union to sign on to labor calls for a ceasefire now. Demand that administrators protect students from harassment. Demand that your union protect academic workers from retaliation.
If you are a faculty member (which they define to include any campus worker who supports student learning), consider joining the newly formed Faculty for Justice in Palestine. 
 
Relevant links:
Palestinian Freedom, Antisemitism Accusations, and Civil Rights Law - LPE Project
Rutgers-New Brunswick suspends pro-Palestine student group – NBC10 Philadelphia
Penn president resigns after antisemitism criticism | AP News
SJP Statement 12_13_23.pdf
Rutgers Faculty For Justice in Palestine Releases Statement

Fighting For a Free Palestine On Our Campuses: Faculty Lounge Episode

In this episode, David and Laura recap the unprecedented wave of pro-Palestine organizing happening on U.S. college campuses over the past few weeks. We also discuss the repression these movements are facing from campus administrators and pro-Israel organizations (who have a long history of targeting campus anti-Zionist organizing). We talk about the role of universities in social movements, where this movement might be headed, and what we'd like to see happen in the coming weeks. We also reflect on the tendency of the pundit class to dismiss youth organizing and infantilize young people who are leading the way in the fight for Palestinian liberation.
Some articles mentioned in our discussion:
Appalling: Columbia University suspends JVP and SJP student chapters
The Shift: Brandeis becomes first school to ban Students for Justice in Palestine on campus – Mondoweiss
20 arrested during protest at Brown University | WPRI.com
CUNY stands with Palestine liberation, despite what the chancellor says – Mondoweiss
CUNY faculty and staff: We reject the Palestine Exception to free speech at CUNY – Mondoweiss
Student Protests for Gaza Targeted by Pro-Israel Groups for Alleged Civil Rights Violations
Israel’s War on American Student Activists | The Nation
Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of Florida v. Raymond Rodrigues | American Civil Liberties Union
Columbia University Apartheid Divest: Who we are
Cops, Colleges, and Counterinsurgency: An Interview with Dylan Rodriguez
 

Students and Faculty Organizing Against the Right in Florida

In this episode we speak with faculty and student organizers from three Florida campuses.  
In Florida, Republicans are attacking higher education on several fronts. In late October, Ron DeSantis and the chancellor of Florida’s State University system ordered college presidents to deactivate Students for Justice in Palestine on their campuses. This continues a longer trend, which our guests address, a trend of right wing attacks on trans students and on disciplines that the right sees as too woke, such as ethnic studies and gender studies. These attacks also undermine labor rights for faculty. Despite the intensity of these attacks and the radical right’s gains, our guests see opportunities for mass politicization and cross-coalitional solidarity.
Our interviewees provide an overview of the right wing attacks on higher education in Florida over the last year, and put them into a larger national context of higher ed privatization. Then we get into the different campaigns taking place on each campus, and break down some of the challenges of coalition building, overcoming student and faculty apathy, and attempting to fight for a more militant faculty union.
Our interviewees:
Katie is a Visiting Teaching Faculty at Florida International University and is the Membership Chair of the faculty union, UFF-FIU. She also organizes with Free FIU.
Robert Cassanello is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Central Florida, president of the faculty union, UFF-UCF, and the faculty advisor for YDSA at UCF.
Allan Frasheri is an undergraduate at the University of Florida, a co-chair of YDSA at UF, and an organizer with Free UF.
Links:
Florida Is Worth Fighting For: A Report on YDSA Organizing at Florida International University | Reform & Revolution
FIU community protests HB999 and administration complacency - PantherNOW
https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/fiu-faculty-union-to-protest-stop-woke-act-15606486
Find us on social media: Instagram @officehourshighered Twitter @officehoursed

ChatGPT And Us: Faculty Lounge Edition

This week David and Laura are flying solo for a "Faculty Lounge" episode. Our topic: ChatGPT and Us. How do we respond to ChatGPT as academic workers with a radical critique of higher ed? Using recent think pieces by Corey Robin and Steven Salaita as jumping-off points, we reflect on the lack of a collective labor politics in most writing on ChatGPT; the positionality of our working-class students and their alienation from the learning experience; ChatGPT as an extension of the neoliberalization of higher ed; and why we identify with "cheaters."
Please note: we are including two groups of links below: one on ChatGPT and one providing links to educational resources on Gaza and Palestine.
 
Links on ChatGPT:
Steven Salaita, "Yet Another Think-Piece on ChatGPT"
Corey Robin, "How ChatGPT Changed My Plans For the Fall"
JILL R. EHNENN AND CAROLYN BETENSKY, "ChatGPT and Academic Labor"
 
Resources for Teaching on Gaza During an Attempted Genocide:
https://teachpalestine.org/- a project of the Middle East Children's Alliance. Many useful links for educators such as:
    https://teachpalestine.org/resources/videos/- docs and films useful for the classroom
    https://teachpalestine.org/resources/books-for-educators/ - books for educators
https://palestinett.org/ - "The Palestine Teaching Trunk" - teaching materials designed for high school, but could be used in higher ed as well
visualizingpalestine.org/ -interactive posters that use statistics and other data to illustrate aspects of Palestinian life under Israeli rule.
 
Listeners: Please share your thoughts on ChatGPT with us! You can find us on Instagram @officehourshighered or on Twitter @officehoursed. 
Fellow Educators: If you have more resources on teaching Palestine, the history of colonialism in the Middle East, and the history of anti-colonial movements - let us know and we will gladly share them. 
 

Centering Disability Justice in Academic Labor Organizing: The Case of the UC Grad Worker Strike

In this episode we speak with Mary Jirmanus Saba, Dana Ernst, and Sarah Abusaa. Mary, Dana and Sarah are grad student workers and union organizers with United Auto Workers 2865. In their union, Mary, Dana and Sarah organize for disability justice and their work highlights the intersectional nature of labor struggles.
As listeners to this podcast might know, in fall 2022, graduate student workers in the University of California system went on strike. Our guests played a role in writing the language for two contract articles dealing with workplace conditions: an Access Needs article that would have reduced barriers to access for workers, and a Public Health and Safety Article. The strike won wage increases, and this quickly became the dominant story. Unfortunately, the Access Needs and Public Health and Safety articles were not included in the final contract. As we learn from our guests, the union leadership didn’t take these rank-and-file demands seriously, and then tried to coopt the disability justice lens.
We begin the interview by asking Mary, Dana and Sarah to discuss the ableist barriers graduate student workers face when attempting to get their access needs met. We then ask them to discuss how Covid-related health and safety activism aligned with disability justice organizing as the strike approached. From there we get into the strike, covering the joy of building power and the heartbreak of being silenced by union leadership.
Interviewee Bios:
Mary Jirmanus Saba is a geographer, filmmaker, mother and member of the Peoples CDC.
Sarah Abusaa is an ecologist, epidemiologist, organizer, and current grad student. 
Dana Ernst is an oral historian and multimodal anthropologist, member of the Justice Coalition, and current grad student.
Links discussed in the interview:
University of California Workers Center Disability Justice in Union Organizing by Mary Jirmanus Saba
UCLA Community Members Stage Sit-In To Demand Hybrid Learning Options
Draft Language of Access Needs Article
Disability Justice Articles FAQs
UC Justice Coalition Substack
UC Justice Coalition Linktree
 
 
 

Summer Break Episode and End of the Year Grades

Office Hours is taking the summer off! We've handed in our grades and logged out of our work emails until the fall! We'll be back in September with more episodes covering campus politics in the end times.
In this last episode, David and Laura give passing and failing grades to the best and worst of the last academic year. Spoiler: SCOTUS and college presidents are going to need to take the class again!
Some links based on our discussion:
https://facultyfirstresponders.com/
https://itsgoingdown.org/a-communique-from-the-liberated-dining-halls-of-so-called-santa-cruz/
https://civileats.com/2022/12/16/op-ed-amid-academic-strikes-uc-students-liberated-their-cafeterias/
https://debtcollective.org/
 

Confronting Faculty Sexual Harassment: Lessons From Feminist Organizing at UC Santa Cruz

**Content Warning** for discussion of sexual harassment and assault. We do not include any graphic or detailed descriptions, but they are discussed in general terms throughout the episode.
 
Today’s episode looks a little different from our usual format. Laura talks with a good friend from UC Santa Cruz, K, about our participation in an organizing campaign against faculty sexual harassment and assault that ultimately led to the firing of a tenured professor. 
 
Between 2017 and 2019, students and allies at UC Santa Cruz organized to bring attention to what they called a pattern of sexual harassment perpetrated by History of Consciousness professor Gopal Balakrishnan.
 
In this discussion, we reconstruct the timeline of events that ultimately led to Balakrishnan’s firing in 2019. We also talk about our experiences with the Title IX office at UC Santa Cruz, why we believe Title IX was so unhelpful, our experiences with feminist and leftist faculty, the importance of "gossip" as feminist knowledge sharing, and the emotional labor that goes into organizing against sexual harassment and sexual assault. Ultimately, our conclusion is that feminist organizing and direct action are needed to challenge sexual harassment and sexual assault within academia.
 
Relevant links for more info on the Balakrishnan case:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nidhisubbaraman/gopal-balakrishnan-sexual-harassment-investigation
 
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nidhisubbaraman/gopal-balakrishnan-fired-santa-cruz
 
Links for info on two other professors referenced in the interview (associated with New Left Review):
https://stanforddaily.com/2017/11/16/harassment-assault-allegations-against-moretti-span-three-campuses/
https://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-ucla-sexual-misconduct-piterberg-20180318-story.html
 
You can find us on Instagram @officehourshighered and Twitter @officehoursed.
 

New York Liberation School with Conor Tomás Reed

In this episode we talk with Conor Tomás Reed, an organizer and educator with a new book called New York Liberation School: Study and Movement for the People’s University, out this month with Common Notions Press. The book is a people’s history of CUNY, the City University of New York. It follows students and faculty as they created new forms of radical education, including the formation of Black, Puerto Rican, and Women's Studies at CUNY. It is also a reflection on the notion of “liberation schools” and the challenges and possibilities of engaging in radical teaching and learning within the bounds of the university. 
In our interview, we focus in particular on the years between 1969 and 1976, when CUNY saw a wave of student strikes and mobilizations, followed by administrative repression and counterinsurgency. Topics covered include the construction of “counter institutions” within and beyond the university, coalition building in movements, student writing as a form of political expression, and the possibilities for organizing in the university today.
 
Details on our book giveaway:
We will be giving away copies of Conor’s book on Twitter and Instagram. The first five followers to share our post will receive a free copy of New York Liberation School.
Check our Twitter and Instagram for details:
We are on Instagram @officehourshighered and on Twitter @officehoursed.

Seattle University Adjunct Unionization Campaign with Larry Cushnie

In this episode we discuss an adjunct unionization campaign that took place at Seattle University, a private Jesuit college in Seattle. The campaign began in 2013 and won a majority vote to unionize with SEIU, but the Seattle U administration sued to stall the vote count. Then, when the votes finally got counted, the admin refused to recognize the union and threatened to take the case up to the Supreme Court. Facing an uphill battle in the courts and the incoming Trump administration’s hostility to labor rights, the union leadership decided to end the campaign. Today, Seattle University’s adjuncts remain without a union. 
We talk with one of the key organizers in the campaign, a former Seattle University adjunct instructor named Larry Cushnie. Larry’s interview sheds light on the challenges that adjunct unionization drives face today and provides valuable lessons for organizers.
Larry's Bio:
Larry Cushnie is a parent and educator teaching politics and cannabis studies at South Seattle College.  In between classes, you can find him wrangling twins, collecting music, and doing crossword puzzles.