Bringing people into public dialogue & public knowledge
What is a digital literacy center & who cares?
No final decisions will be made prior to the 2008 Conference in April, so please let us know your thoughts and insights.
Proposed Mission Statement
Social and Political Justice SIG Mission Statement
We are a coalition of individuals, interest groups, and caucuses, based in the fields of rhetoric and composition, who are committed to promoting social and political fairness, equity, and justice. We seek to create collaborative partnerships between university-based activists and the larger network of activists and organizations taking on this important work.
Within the profession, we work
to develop curricula that are actively anti-racist, anti-sexist, and anti-homophobic and that teach voices not easily heard or too easily ignored in standard or mainstream definitions of literacy in the United States;
to create classrooms that develop critical literacy for informed citizenship, and to promote courses that represent the diverse communities from which we and our students come;
to provide mentoring and support to enable people from groups currently underrepresented in composition to enter, actively participate, gain tenure, and fully benefit from the resources of the profession;
to support the production and circulation of culturally and politically relevant progressive scholarship as well as work to provide publication venues for such work;
to ensure that CCCC establishes and enforces just labor practices and standards for all members of the profession, such as part-time writing instructors and non-tenure stream faculty;
In dialogue with community-based individuals and organizations, we work
to insure that free speech rights are protected within the academy and within the larger political community;
to work with community-organizations dedicated to insuring the social and political rights of all members of a community;
to promote community investment in education, and educational investment in communities;
to be active in the production of a new hegemony based upon political and social justice.
To this end the Political and Social Justice SIG sponsors a yearly forum at CCCC, supports the Rachel Corrie Award, develops and advertises relevant CCCC sessions, supports relevant publications and partnerships, encourages debates at local sites on these issues, and, through on-line resources, archives the progressive work of individuals and organizations involved at CCCC.
All 390 full-time faculty members went on strike Tuesday after rejecting the university’s most recent contract proposal. With classes set to begin August 29, they joined the 400 secretaries, computer programmers, landscapers and other employees who walked off the job last week.
The major hangups in negotiations for the faculty contract are salary and health care premiums, the same issues as for the employees who struck last Tuesday. Youngstown State offered faculty members a 3 percent raise for each of the next three years, and asked faculty members to pay 1.5 percent of their salary for a family health care plan, or 0.75 percent for an individual plan. Previously, university officials said, Youngstown State was the only public university in Ohio that had not asked employees to contribute from their salaries for health insurance.
Officials at the Ohio Education Association, the local affiliate of the National Education Association that represents the professors, said the 9 percent raise over three years is not as fat as it seems. “With the 1.5 percent coming out, it’s really a 1.5 percent raise each year,? said Julia Gergits, a Youngstown State English professor and president of the Youngstown State union.
For full story see: Get In Line for Picket Line"
Union officials quickly attacked N.Y.U.'s plan and vowed to fight the university in any way it could.
In a memo circulated yesterday, N.Y.U.'s provost David McLaughlin, and its excutive vice president, Jacob J. Lew, said that they had proposed that the university stop recognizing the five year old union when its contract expires Aug. 31st.
They said the collective bargaining process had produced benefits for student teaching and research assistants, like better compensation and clearer work rules, but that union grievance had threatened academic freedom. ....
"This is pretty disgusting," said Phillip A. Wheeler, director of United Automobile Workers region that includes New York. "They saw a way to get out of having the union, and they took it. They are disgusting as Wal-Marl."
He said the union, which will continue to operate on campus representing a different group of teachers -- adjuncts, or part-time instructors -- would look for as many was as it could to create problems for the univeisty.
"They will have a fight they regret," Mr. Wheeler said. "Anything and everything we can do, we will. If tehre is a procedure where we can take them to court, we will. We will work to expose them politically. We will lobby against them. We will look at the whole gamut of possibilities. They are not going to treat us in this fashion."
For full story, see Karen W. Areson, New York Times.
]]>Ruth Needleman, Professor of Labor Studies
(rneedle@iun.edu)
Just this week, six employees of the Indiana University Division of Labor Studies were terminated: three faculty among them. The reason given was a budgetary crunch resulting from legislative cuts in our funding and university demands for increasing income annually. As you may know, a Republican governor and Republican control of both houses of the state legislature have
made Indiana a very union unfriendly state. Public sector unions were thrown out of government agencies, a right to work law threatens on the horizon, and now the labor studies program has come under the knife.
Even though a faculty budgetary committee developed an alternative budget that would require no faculty layoffs, the Director went ahead and implemented his budgetary proposal, closing down the South Bend office,laying off two tenure track faculty, Paul Mishler and Cathy Mulder, and faculty member Rae Sovereign, who has just completed her Master’s Degree as required by her contract.
Indiana University is a public university with a clear mission to serve constituencies in the state, especially under-served constituencies like adult working people. Increasingly public universities are functioning like private ones, forcing every unit to generate income above expenses, and setting budgets every year higher than the previous year’s income. It works like gain-sharing has worked in many workplaces—forcing workers to become ever more productive every year in order to meet the rising standard.
And why wouldn’t universities feel the same pressure of corporate competitiveness and privatization? Not only were tenure-track faculty terminated, but part-time, temporary and less credentialed employees were kept. The decision on whom the ax would fall did not follow IU policy; it ignored seniority, credentials and faculty governance. Welcome to Wal Mart University!
We are asking you for letters of support for maintaining our regional offices that serve working people where they live and work, in this case, the South Bend office. We are asking for support to reverse the arbitrary and discriminatory termination of Rae Sovereign, Paul Mishler and Cathy Mulder, three of our top faculty. Finally we ask for your support in opposing hiring and firing procedures that violate university academic policy, and that promote contingent, part-time jobs over fully-funded, skilled jobs. We cannot let WalMart become the model for universities as well.
Please send your letters in support of the Division of Labor Studies at Indiana University, to Executive Vice Chancellor & Dean of Faculties William M. Plater, IUPUI, Administration Building 108, 355 North Lansing Street, Indianapolis, Indiana 46202-2896. You may also e-mail him at wplater@iupui.edu. Please send me a copy, and also William Schneider, IUPUI AAUP, whschneider@iupui.edu.
On Monday April 18, 2005, at the University of California-Santa Cruz, the city police engaged in a brutal suppression of students' right to assemble, their freedom of speech, and their basic human rights. University of California-Santa Cruz students had organized Tent University Santa Cruz, a week long encampment in coordination with the Tent State Universities at University of Missouri-Kansas City and Rutgers University-New Brunswick, to support the full funding of higher education and oppose the Iraq War. As UCSC students peacefully set up tents on their own campus for the night police rioted, violently dispersing several hundred campers, arresting near twenty, and injuring dozens. These injuries included but were not limited to bruises, dislocated shoulders and one student who had been attacked so severely he was rendered unconscious.
Tent State University of New Brunswick, NJ, condemns the barbaric and authoritarian disregard for the health, safety, and well-being of UCSC students and calls for the immediate recognition of the rights of UCSC students as well as a halt to any and all oppressive actions of the University and city administrators and police. We stand in coast-to-coast solidarity with our brothers and sisters at Tent University-Santa Cruz.
For More Information Contact:
Amanda Troeder
www.tentstate.com
info@tentstate.com
With mid-term and final exams just around the corner, institutes of higher earning across America continue to earn straight A's when it comes to cultivating diversity of race, skin color, ethnicity and gender. However, according to recent studies by both the New York Times and the Washington Times, most of them deserve an F- when it comes to promoting thought diversity or providing for students' academic freedom.
Survey after survey confirms that campus faculties are increasingly polarized politically. One study of voter registrations for 1,000 professors found that professors registered in one party outnumber professors in the other major party seven to one. Another study found a ratio of nine to one. At one university in Pennsylvania, the ratio was an unbelievable 27 to one.
If the Washington Post or New York Times were to look at the faculty of Pennsylvania's state-owned and state-related schools, how much diversity of thought would they find? Based on the following testimony from students at Penn State and elsewhere, one might begin to wonder:
* * "My professor interrupted his lecture.following the presidential election to read a [radio talk show] hoax that made the false accusation that the average intelligence of 'blue' states was higher than that of 'red' states. After passing this list off as factual and making jokes about 'rednecks' and 'uneducated hicks,' he got profane and concluded by saying 'Thanks for messing [expletive deleted] up my country.'"
* * "I had to watch Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9-11 in science class. What does that have to do with science?"
Space constraints do not allow me to cite the numerous other and even more egregious incidents of Pennsylvania students being embarrassed, graded down and harassed because of their worldview. Regardless of their philosophy, these students are entitled to the same academic freedom that their professors enjoy. Our educational institutions should strive for a maximum intellectual diversity, rather than subtly attempting to indoctrinate students into a certain way of thinking.
A Students' Academic Bill of Rights already have been adopted in Colorado and Georgia. Nine other states are on the verge of joining them. Such legislation states that all decisions relating to faculty or students should not be based on political or religious beliefs. Curricula, reading lists and even speakers invited on campus must also reflect a diversity of thought.
Here in Pennsylvania, the Speaker of the House has asked me to introduce a resolution to begin conducting statewide hearings to study the academic environment at our state-owned and state-related institutions. Hopefully, the state where the Declaration of Independence was wrought will someday also adopt an academic "declaration of independence.
For the past five years, the PSCC has worked to form a common space where different SIG and Caucus groups can meet to discuss how their different concerns can be wedded into a common agenda. In doing so, the goal has been to foster a sense of communal activism that crosses any particular interest group. The re-election of George Bush and the ascendancy of the Conservative Right has presented a clear challenge for academics committed to progressive coalition politics. “Affirming Action? provides an opportunity for CCCC participants to begin framing an activist agenda for the next four years.
AGENDA
Introduction:
Chair: Jonathan Alexander, University of Cincinnati
Presentation of Rachel Corrie Award
Recepient: Matthew Abrahams
What now? Progressive Academics and Diversity Politics
Scott Lyons, Syracuse University
Akua Duku Anokye, Arizona State University
Respondents/Facilitators
Jonathan Alexander, University of Cincinnati
Damian Baca, Michigan State University
Luisa Rodriguez Connal, Detroit Mercy College
Harriet Malinowitz, Long Island University
James McDonald, Louisiana State University
PSCC Members: Asian/Asian American SIG, Latino SIG, Labor SIG, Lesbian and Gay Professionals Caucus, Native American SIG, Non-Tenure Track SIG, Rhetoricians for Peaach, and the Working Class Culture and Pedagogy SIG
]]>Yesterday's Palo Alto Weekly published a Guest Opinion column by Professor Daniel Klein and student Andrew Western of Santa Clara University, focused on the political registrations of professors at Stanford University and UC Berkeley, a piece I'll call Cardinal blue.
Klein is affiliated with the National Association of Scholars, a group of right-wing and libertarian professors and graduate students whose mission is to promote rational discourse in higher education. Ah, language! I happen to believe very strongly in rational discourse in higher education, especially in my own little corner of it here at De Anza. But looking around the NAS site and Klein's web page, one discovers that "rational discourse" has certain expected outcomes, including reading Shakespeare and Dickens, resisting affirmative action based on race, ethnicity and gender (but apparently not in regard to political affiliation), and generally claiming victim status for those who espouse conservative and libertarian views in the academy.
The Klein and Western opinion piece does not meet my standards of rational discourse, but then I'm just a lowly community college professor. No one cares what my colleagues' political affilations might be. The claim that having large percentages of the professors at an institution sharing the same party registration creates a "one-party system" is nonsensical on its face. What would the party registration of Fortune 500 CEOs look like? And if it was lopsided to Republicans, what would that prove?
An even shakier claim is the conclusion of this piece:
At campuses across the country, the lopsided faculty steer political discussions in a predictable direction -- to the left.
What Klein and Western did is get lists of the names of Stanford and Berkeley faculty and then comb voter registration lists in the nine Bay area counties to match names and identify party affiliation. This is a project that conservative activists have been engaged in around the country for the last year or so. That data tells you nothing about what happens in a classroom, or in a scholar's publications. If Klein does his economics that way--cite one set of data to create the appearance of "rational discourse" and then draw a completely unrelated conclusion to fit his ideological bias--we'd probably end up with an economy where taxes are regulary cut while spending is increased without regard to current and future debt levels. Hardly a position any serious conservative would espouse.
But why just select Stanford and Berkeley? Because they have international reputations? Why not include data from their home institution, Santa Clara University? Or nearby San Jose State University? Or equally nearby Mission College, De Anza College and West Valley College? Or would that be too much work for rational inquiry?
As I noted in BLOG ONE and again in Conservative Attacks on Liberal Professors, there's a concerted and growing effort to discredit university professors in the United States by groups that might be described as conservative or right-wing or simply anti-liberal. For over a decade, these efforts have tried to turn words like "multicultural" and "liberal" into pejoratives. Famously, that former history professor, Newt Gingrich, has led this effort, producing lists of words with which to tar the opposition.
Now we get an economist trying to impugn the integrity of scholars at great universities simply on the basis of their political party registration. It's not rational; it's not fair; and it's really not American.
]]>Rashid Khalidi, director of Columbia's Middle East Institute, had spoken this month at one of a series of teacher-development workshops, paid for by the university, about Middle Eastern culture and politics. But last week, after The New York Sun published an article assailing Mr. Khalidi's involvement in the program, Joel I. Klein, the city's schools chancellor, announced that the professor would no longer be allowed to participate.
"Considering his past statements, Rashid Khalidi should not have been included in a program that provided professional development for DOE teachers, and he won't be participating in the future," Jerry Russo, Mr. Klein's press secretary, wrote in an e-mail message to the Sun....
Mr. Khalidi, in an interview on Monday, criticized Mr. Wiener and the Sun for attacking his institute and the field of Arab studies in general. "I think there's a broad attack on professors of the Middle East, and it's based on calumnies, innuendo, and taking situations out of context," he said.
Mr. Khalidi also blamed the Columbia administration's "supine" response to the controversy, which, he said, has emboldened the institute's critics...."