CUNY Conference: Global Resistance in the Neoliberal University

Posted on February 20, 2017February 20, 2017Leave a comment

As the Professional Staff Congress builds resistance at CUNY to the university of the Trump era (world-wide neofascism, more oppressive every day), we organize under the motto of the anti-slavery militant Henry Highland Garnet. This union conference aims to build international teacher solidarity. Speakers from teacher struggles in South Africa, India, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Turkey will join their stories to ours and work with us on common problems and radical possibilities. How can we resist adjunctification, privatization, the explosion of student debt, “austerity blues,” race and gender oppression, police repression, the growing drum beat of war and militarization? What Read More …

CUNY Rising

Posted on November 17, 2016November 17, 2016Leave a comment

A CUNY Rising Town Hall at Brooklyn Borough Hall is scheduled for Tue. Nov 22, 6 pm. It’s in support of the CUNY student Bill of Rights, see below. The CUNY Rising Alliance includes dozens of community and labor groups listed on the flier below. What we’re seeking to do is name the crisis of chronic defunding, first of all, and give students, alumni, and faculty a platform to address its impact. From James Davis

Rustling Signs, Loud Noises, and Progressive Possibilities

Posted onNovember 17, 2016Leave a comment

On Monday, September 26, 2011, I, along with at least 3 other folks from the RT board, and 500 other members of our union, PSC-CUNY, descended on the CUNY Board of Trustees meeting to demand that the university adequately fund health care for adjuncts, who do more than half of the teaching on CUNY campuses. About 100 of us made it into the meeting room, where we stood silently in the audience holding paper signs urging CUNY to “DO THE RIGHT THING.” Early in the meeting, as CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein was droning on about CUNY’s participation in various economic Read More …

Deregulation Comes to Public Higher Education

Posted onNovember 16, 2016Leave a comment

At the moment of this writing, New York Governor David Paterson is playing a game of political chicken with the state legislature. Paterson (a Democrat) is counting on the state senate to pass a budget that effectively deregulates tuition at the state and city universities, SUNY and CUNY. At the CUNY campus where I teach, the cost of each year of college for full-time students who are residents of New York State is $5,050 ($4,600 tuition + $550 in fees). It’s not much by today’s standards, but it’s not nothing either…which is exactly what CUNY used to cost. Should Paterson Read More …