Have a Crack at This-It's a Dean Dad Thing

This is also posted on NFM's blog site: It's a treat, I think, for some of us. Have a look. What's all dis? Dad, your hair! 


I am very tired, in a good way, after our wonderful NFM-AAUC conference in DC. See here and here for instance, and I stumbled across a recent reference to our noble organization here, to which I take exception.    Here are my remarks, to Dean Dad-some of you may know him, even his name. Anyway, this is just for the elite, the cognoscento, as it were. Gosh, I really am tired. Anyway, I chunked this in here because I can't seem to get it out on the great webish highway any other way:


Dear Dean Dad, 
Your comments, as always, are most provocative. You must be enjoying yourself. As a board member of New Faculty Majority though, I have to take exception to your comment about New Faculty Majority’s advocacy of the “Vancouver model” for paying adjuncts, and I worry about you hair, and that you “pull out what little” you have left when you read NFM on such subjects. Please. Whatever your notions about Canada being where it is, and not being in the United States, the published NFM position is that we advocate equity in compensation, job security, academic freedom, faculty governance, professional advancement, benefits, and access to unemployment insurance. http://www.newfacultymajority.info/national/ The Vancouver Model is but one model that is of interest, and it is a good one, in the opinions of many, and there are others that we discuss. We do not believe that there is one model. Recently, for instance, there has been interest in the model of Fashion Institute of Technology (SUNY), which is in the United States, actually. There were other models discussed at our recent conference in D.C., in conjunction with the American Association of Colleges and Universities. We would have loved to have you there, and to hear your views, if not to know your name. We discuss many models, in fact, and we give a respectful hearing to all of them, but our overall view is that there are many roads to improvement in the currently dreadful working conditions for adjuncts and contingents, who are the majority teaching faculty in the United States. You are always welcome. I am invited below to "choose an identity." I am Dr. Alan Trevithick, Board member, NFM, and adjunct in anthropology and sociology at Fordham University, Westchester Community College (SUNY), and LaGuardia Community College (CUNY). I invite you and all who are interested to discuss models with me at my personal email address-dralt@optonline.net. Please look after your hair.

NFM, MLA,AAUC: Too Many Letters-but it's all about Adjunct/Contingent Equity

Professor Michael Berube, new President of the MLA, will be attending Saturday's Reclaiming Academic Democracy: Facing the Consequences of Contingent Employment in Higher Education National Summit, sponsored by New Faculty Majority and held in conjunction with the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) - http://www.nfmfoundation.org/National-Summit.html.

It’s wonderful to see this, and to see it covered in CHE.

If I can expand a bit on one of Professor Berube’s hopes in that CHE article, I hope that we’ll look back on 2012 as the year when we “got the ball rolling" and finally got accrediting agencies, students, traditional faculty, administrators, and policy makers inside and outside of government, to understand what non-tenure-track faculty have been saying—insecure and underpaid “contingency” cannot be the model for higher ed faculty, and we must get to work on solutions, learning as we go from those same non-tenure track faculty who are doing an excellent job, under trying circumstances, as the nation's majority faculty—and who will do even better with the proper support! Please, everybody, let’s get on board and make some loud and gladsome noises!