Graduate Employees Strike in NYC

Graduate Employees at NYU have voted to strike!
In response to the NYU administration's refusal to negotiate on terms of a contract, the graduate employees at NYU have voted to strike. It is important to know that NYU had a graduate employee union with a contract. Then in 2004 when the National Labor Relations Board overturned its 2000 ruling regarding graduate employees at private universities, NYU's administration no longer was legally obligated to recognize the grad union. There was nothing stopping them from continuing to negotiate in good faith with the union, but the did not have to. They chose not to. So much for the liberal universities I hear the neo-cons whining about.

I have a more complete summary of this chapter of academic labor history which I'll post when I'm not so busy. For now, some musings prompted by the recent NYU developments.

The strike was coming for a while. The NYU grad employees have been working without a contract since August 31. In late October, with knowledge that a strike vote was pending, deans at New York University sent a letter to tenured faculty. The letter is typical of the disappointing habit of union busting behavior and rhetoric on the part of universities' adminstrations. What bothers me most about this letter is here:
"Tenured faculty have a special, additional responsibility not to do anything or say anything that could be construed as encouraging untenured colleagues, graduate students, or administrative staff not to fulfill their responsibilities, thus placing inappropriate pressures on them."
WHAT? I'd be mightily pissed if I were tenured faculty at NYU right now.

This is so disappointing. The edifice of academic free speech is showing some serious cracks these days. When a university adminstration can send out a letter like this...I mean, read it again for just a second: "not do or say anything that could be construed as..." How would you feel if you got a letter like this from your employer?

And can you imagine howthis would be enforced?
Provost: Drs. A, B, and C, you understand what actions or words brought you here for disciplinary review today?
Dr. A: Um...I gave a thumbs up sign to a lecturer who I saw on the picket line?
Dr. B: Well, I did emit an extremely derisive snort while our department head was reading your letter at that ridiculous mandatory faculty meeting.
Dr. C: Why I'm here? I really don't know. What did I do? Maybe when I said "the poor ain't so bad" at a colloquium dinner last week...

Ok, enough hypothetic and hyperbolic. How about some concrete?

You'll hear complaints about censorship from the neo-cons so let me clarify that the source of their complaints is (usualy) a bit different from what I consider institutionalized censorship. Typically what gets their boxers all in a twist is that David Horowitzian type views are extremely offensive to some people; that while some might accept creationism is "valid" as a belief system, a belief system is not a fucking scientific theory (the philosophers can help me out here...can something which has as a premise that it cannot be proved true, only accepted on faith, even be evaluated for validity?); that statements like "queerin' don't make the world go round", while certainly memorable, are not the sort of pithy social commentary one would have every right to expect at a university sponsored discussion of public attitudes and policy.

Unpopularity, public criticism by peers/community, protest, peer led boycott, student petition, debate, and I'd say even refusal to accept pay for promotion (newspaper ads, radio spots) - all of those responses are crucially different from what I mean when I say institutional censorship. I propose this term relatively closely describe a situation where we find limits or constraints imposed on perceived execution of individuals' constitutionally granted and completely reasonable personal freedoms, which limits originate at or near the top of the official institutional hierarchy (or a hierarchy in which the institution is embedded, such as state or federal government), and which have direct or implied threat of reprisal to back them up. When I speak of the loss of academic free speech, this institutional censorship is the necessary context.

Some examples:
At my own university a few years back, there were cuts to Grad Assistant (GA) health insurance as part of a truly foul state budget proposed by convicted ex-governor John Rowland. GAs agreed they wanted say in how the health insurance cuts would play out, but found themselves shut out of administrative discussions about GA health care priorities. During this time, a GA was interviewed on a local commercial radio station about the cuts. The GA said he thought that our university had been involved in some kind of deal with the governor which included cutting the state's subsidy to our health benefits.

The very same day of the interview, the GA was called by a top university adminstrator who asked him to come to a meeting to discuss GA health insurance. At the meeting, the administrator and a dean took turns yelling at this student. The administrator swore quite a bit and knocked over a chair in her rage. As if the tone and setting was not hostile enough, the GA was also subject to vague threats from both administrators.

Still not convinced that free speech is a becoming a bit of a sick joke at the academy? Consider the crusade against University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill who was investigated by the university for having written an essay which expressed his opinions, conclusions, believes, analysis, etc. about a sensitive and socially complex matter in that annoying baby boomer style. Was it an annoying obnoxious essay? YES. Did I strongly dislike this essay and do I think Churchill is just another blowhard? Yep. Was what he did something the Colorado state government should hunt him out of office for? No. As a nice point of contrast, consider Harvard University president Larry Summers' statements which suggest he, as someone in charge of faculty recruitment and hiring, might have a belief women have natural, biologically inevitable intellectual deficiencies to men in certain areas. Application of such an attitude in Summers' judgment could damage equal employment opportunity at one of the nation's most prestigious universities. Summers' statement opened him up to criticism from his peers in academia and yet people reacted as he were the subject of a witch hunt. Where were the cries of witch hunt when U Colorado administrators were encouraged by the government to sift through Churchill's personal and academic history for cracks into which they could drive the chisel to pry him loose from his tenured position?

In a much larger scope (and much more creepy) example of the loss of freedom of expression in the academy, we have the immediate post September 11th Lynn Cheney/Joe Lieberman academic blacklist. The document had an "appendix" with a list of names, places, and dates where individuals on college campuses had said anything "unamerican" in the days just after the 9/11 attacks. The criteria for "unamerican", as you can imagine, was rather liberally applied and included things like "Lindsay D. Etudiant, 3rd year undergraduate political science major at peace rally". I read this in the unadulterated version, before the ACLU made them take out the names. I can't tell you how utterly chilling it was*.


So the deans' letter to the NYU faculty is not that surprising in this context. Still, I wonder how these folks think of themselves. Do they see where they fit into this movement of limitation? Do they notice that they are "the man" (and I don't mean that in an even remotely good way)? Most people see themselves as good people. You do. I do. Think of how your life might feel if you didn't. I've felt it. It is intolerable. So what do the deans tell themselves in order to maintain the belief they are inherently good people? When college presidents make salaries in the hundreds of thousands, when top level academic administrative positions are multiplying like wet mogwai, when fully compensated staff and faculty positions are being replaced with temp, part time, and other contingent positions, when graduate employees and other workers in the contingent labor pool are so undercompensated that too many of them must choose between basic needs like health care and shelter - when these people sign their names to a letter saying ignore all of this and do what we say, what do they tell themselves so they don't feel like the monstrously huge assholes they effectively are?


*For a good list of references regarding civil liberties in the post 9/11 era, go here)

Arrgh. I have spent too much time on this now. I'll post now and come back to clean it up later. Don't mind the errors.