Higher ed conference focuses on democracy and freedom

Faculty and staff from dozens of colleges and universities converged in Los Angeles Feb. 16-18 for the first AFT Higher Education Professional Issues Conference since before the pandemic. The air was charged as cross-country colleagues shared experiences, brainstormed solutions and rallied, and they returned home with fresh energy and new ideas focused on preserving funding for higher education, championing academic freedom—a precious element of learning that is increasingly threatened—addressing job security at every level, and ensuring that the academic enterprise serves the public good.

AFT President Randi Weingarten brought all these elements together but highlighted the free exchange of big ideas. “We don’t get enough money, there’s huge precarity, we’re always in an investment fight,” she said, acknowledging the issues higher education has faced for decades. But one thing used to be certain: When it came to the exchange of ideas and knowledge, “a college campus was sacrosanct.”

“It’s supposed to be a place of ideas. It’s supposed to be a place where people can think and can talk and can debate and can protest,” she said. But today, faculty are threatened when they speak out on thorny issues such as race, gender and, most recently, the war in the Middle East. Many, including AFT members, have been doxxed for voicing their opinions.

“The question is, what are we going to do about it?” Weingarten said. The AFT has partnered with Faculty First Responders to distribute tools for educators to protect themselves from online and real-world attacks. And we have already pledged to defend anyone who is targeted because they are “doing the work of education,” said Weingarten, by teaching true history: For example, the union is defending a Florida teacher fired after flying a Black Lives Matter flag, and is supporting a lawsuit against New Hampshire legislation that bans teaching “divisive concepts.”

The union—which is now the largest higher education union in the country, representing 70 percent of all organized faculty in America—also builds collective power to work for access, affordability and academic freedom. We organize, bargain good contracts and go on strike when we need to. “That is the power of belonging,” said Weingarten. 

Humanizing higher education

In a session about higher education as a public good (photo below), the refrain was similar. Jon Shelton, AFT-Wisconsin vice president for higher education and author of the recent book The Education Myth, posits that higher ed’s mission has shifted from educating an informed citizenry for a role in democracy, international understanding and cooperation, to an economic pursuit centered on job acquisition. When that goal is coupled with inequitable access to public education, the entire enterprise perpetuates opportunity gaps. “When we’re thinking about higher education as a public good, it should be something everyone has access to,” he said.

Weingarten called “access” the most important concept to take away from the conversation, and she described how labor unions have always worked to “obliterate poverty” and provide pathways to the middle class. Education is key to achieving that, and with 60 percent of students who leave high school not going to college, she called for multiple pathways to fulfilling careers—including career and technical education.

The dehumanization of education is also a problem—creating “human capital” as if people are widgets in the economic machinery. The effects can be devastating. Ben Chida, chief deputy cabinet secretary and senior adviser for California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Cradle-to-Career Data System, dropped out of high school at age 14; he felt like a “loser,” he told participants, because he was not going to an elite university, and for an entire year he contemplated suicide. “That is the dehumanizing impact of the norms and culture that actually are amplifying these systems,” he said.

Chida eventually attended Harvard Law School, where “the system said, ‘you’re high-level capital, let’s stick you on the high-level conveyor belt.’” While they should have been happy they’d “won” the game, Chida says many of his classmates were anxious and depressed, and eventually left the law profession. “The system never asked them what meaning they could make for themselves,” he said.

In a plenary session on historically Black colleges and universities and minority-serving institutions, panelists (shown below) described the deep meaning their institutions had for them and the importance of continuing to support these schools’ missions. Derryn Moten, co-president of the AFT Faculty-Staff Alliance at Alabama State University, said he was awed by the faculty at Howard University, where he learned political science from Jesse Jackson’s campaign manager, Ron Walters, and got to know renowned poet and scholar Sterling Brown. AFT Secretary-Treasurer Fedrick Ingram, the first in his family to earn a college degree, described the life-changing impact of being around accomplished scholars and leaders who were Black.

Florida Education Association Secretary-Treasurer Nandi Riley and Denise Gaither-Hardy, president of the AAUP chapter at Lincoln University, had similarly personal stories to share. Both dove into the conversation about the relevance, funding and future of HBCUs—and how the AFT can help these crucial institutions thrive, especially since the addition of 17 HBCU chapter affiliates to the AFT family.

Following this plenary, a workshop on bargaining racial and social justice explored how labor contracts can move the needle on issues like cultural taxation, gender equity and more.

Relevant sessions, inspiring speech

During lunch one day, conference participants got the inside scoop on the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists strike from SAG-AFTRA Executive Vice President Linda Powell, who described turning points in her union’s successful fight to address new issues like artificial intelligence and streaming services. And while higher ed unionists may not face those specific challenges, they certainly related to what she called her proudest takeaway from the strike: “We didn’t give in.”

At another session, American Association of University Professors President Irene Mulvey laid out the rich resources AAUP offers as part of its affiliation with the AFT. The organization boasts a deep history of upholding academic freedom and tenacity in defending faculty who exercise it. Whether it is in teaching, research, intramural speech or extramural speech, “Defining, advancing and protecting academic freedom is the AAUP’s core mission,” said Mulvey, calling it “essential” to democracy.

Participants learned from workshop panels and each other on topics including program elimination, state legislative threats, financial analysis of college and university resources, internal organizing post-COVID-19, academic freedom and campus free speech, affirmative action, reimagining solutions to contingency and academic precarity, and more.

There were also listening sessions that will help shape the AFT’s higher education campaign on topics including academic freedom/free speech, funding and contingency.

[Virginia Myers]