Tag: precarity
-
Factcheck on Provost’s TCPL Cap Argument
Yesterday in Senate, the Provost made an argument for abolishing the TCPL cap. (The TCPL cap constrains the number of teaching professors, clinical and professional faculty and lecturers to a percentage of the number of tenure-line faculty). The Provost’s argument failed to mention an important option that would allow us to stand with him in…
-
Open Letter to Miami Senators
Summary (please read proposed resolutions at end of letter): It’s in everyone’s interest to have more continuing faculty at Miami. But if we abolish the TCPL cap without enacting protections for our teacher-scholar model, we’ll fail to prevent further increases in contingent faculty and we’ll enable further declines in tenure lines. Dear Senators: On Monday, you’ll…
-
Two End-of-Semester Wins
AAUP members and friends, A couple of important successes yesterday we need to tell you about—we’ve won a victory against precarity at Miami through the new TCPL* policy Senate passed yesterday, plus a victory for shared governance by challenging and halting the overweening Arrest Reporting Policy passed last session. Success #1: Yesterday, Senate passed a policy…
-
Free speech and the university
A couple of important items related to academic freedom: 1) “Over the weekend, during a speech to activists at the Conservative Political Action Conference, President Trump pledged to issue an executive order that would deny federal research funds to colleges and universities that do not ‘support free speech.’ AAUP’s position on this is clear. We…
-
Tenure-line and non-tenure-line at Miami: the real numbers
Minutes posted this week for the April 23, 2018 meeting of Senate contained a significant correction. A chart on overall full-time faculty distribution that had been handed out at the meeting seemed to show that tenure-line hiring was trending up significantly. The correction in the minutes shows that that is not the case. Tenure-line numbers…
-
“Torn Between Two Worlds”: A VAP’s Story
We are reposting in its entirety this article about Miami Visiting Assistant Professor Karim Ibrahim, which appears in today’s issue of the Miami Student. Warning: it’s a heartbreaker. It’s hard to imagine a story that better illustrates the risks of contingent faculty precarity and how those risks are multiplied for those without citizenship status. As…
-
Miami’s “Boldly Creative” Profit Focus: How to Reduce the Risks
Miami’s new “Boldly Creative Initiatives” plan — funded by $50 million that’s just been swept from department and program budgets—is an effort to respond to a difficult situation for higher ed. Moody’s, the bond rating agency, has just revised the bond outlook for higher ed downward. Higher education’s financial outlook is not good. Publics such…
-
Letter in support of Georgette Fleischer
The leadership of Miami’s AAUP chapter have submitted a letter to Sian Beilock, president of Barnard College, in support of Georgette Fleischer, an adjunct who has taught there for seventeen years and who was abruptly and unfairly terminated on the heels of the formation of a contingent faculty union at Barnard. Fleischer is a leader…
-
Got academic freedom in the classroom?
Are you a lecturer or visiting professor at Miami, or do you have a friend who is? As you may know from reading other recent posts (or if you’ve read Miami’s policy manual), you know NTT faculty at Miami—including not only visiting and per-credit-hour faculty but also lecturers and clinical faculty—don’t have due-process protections should they face…