More than 650 higher education union activists gathered in Orlando, Fla., March 3-5 for the first-ever, completely joint AFT/NEA higher education conference. The theme, "Sharing our Successes, Challenges and Strategies," signaled coordinated events beginning with a day-long organizing drive with United Faculty of Florida/AFT/NEA at Central Florida University and ending with a panel presentation on efforts to protect free speech on campus—one of the recurring hot topics of the weekend. AFT executive vice president Antonia Cortese kicked off the conference with a welcome to the 350 AFT members who came.

The conference featured a number of workshops, training sessions and plenaries on topics ranging from bargaining rights to political action. A highlight was the March 3 keynote presentation by Robert McChesney, a research professor of communications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and president and co-founder of Free Press, a media policy group. McChesney's point resonated with the academics: A free press and academic freedom—the twin pillars of a free society—are both under siege right now and must be protected.

Jennifer Washburn, a fellow at the New America Foundation and author of University, Inc.: The Corporate Corruption of Higher Education (Basic Books), delivered the Irwin Polishook Lecture. Washburn's paper detailed how corporate interests, such as those of pharmaceutical companies, are transforming the research mission of higher education.

Conference participants also discussed a number of other challenges facing higher education, including:

• the work of U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spelling's Commission on the Future of Higher Education;
• major changes in federal student aid programs as Congress reauthorizes the Higher Education Act; and
• so-called Academic Bill of Rights measures in state legislatures that would limit speech by professors.

In addition to funding and political issues, the conference looked at the challenges of forming unions at historically black colleges and institutions serving Hispanics; retaining and mentoring diverse faculty; and equity issues in education and pay.

Together, the AFT and the NEA represent more than 250,000 higher education faculty and staff. [Lindsay Albert, Barbara McKenna]

March 10, 2006