Clarion December 2018 Lr.Pdf
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STUDENTS ● Organizing for ASAP CUNY Rising is calling to expand a popular and successful CUNY program. larıon PAGE 9 CNEWSPAPER OF THE PROFESSIONAL STAFF CONGRESS / CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK DECEMBER 2018 Erik McGregor PSC TESTIFIES FUND OUR CONTRACT PSC members packed a CUNY Board of Trustees hearing in October to offer hours of personal testimony and urge the board to do its duty and request a budget that fully funds the next PSC-CUNY contract. Members unrolled a banner with more than 5,000 signatures of members demanding $7,000 per course for adjuncts, raises for all and full funding for the contract. PAGES 5-8 BARGAINING COMMUNITY CAMPUS POLITICS Contract talks Amazon is on Enrollment drop PSC pushes move ahead its way to CUNY at Kingsborough electoral wins In campaigning for a fair The CUNY administra- Student enrollment has Democrats won big in contract, the PSC pres- tion welcomes the retail declined at Kingsborough November at both the sures the administration giant’s Queens headquar- Community College. PSC state and national level, not to defer to an insuffi- ters, but PSC members members have pushed the with substantial cient state bargaining raise concerns about new administration to ad- contributions from pattern. PAGE 3 the plan. PAGE 4 dress the problem. PAGE 10 PSC members. PAGE 11 AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS ● AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS ● NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION ● NYC CENTRAL LABOR COUNCIL ● NYS AFL-CIO ● NEW YORK STATE UNITED TEACHERS 2 LETTERS Clarion | December 2018 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR | WRITE TO: CLARION/PSC, 61 BROADWAY, 15TH FLOOR, NEW YORK, NY 10006. EMAIL: [email protected]. even Jews can be anti-Semitic – views (“Silencing dissent,” letters, Clarion October/November 2018). She uses CUNY’s investigation of Why we defend the tenure system a PhD student’s email where they criticize Israel as an example and ● In the September 30, 2018, issue of ing out an exact count of adjunct a reflection of CUNY’s manipula- the Chronicle of Higher Education, scholars and convert their slave tion and complicity toward Israeli William Egginton of Johns Hopkins predicament into positions of more injustices. Just to put things in University published an essay en- fairly paid “regular” faculty. Short perspective, the student in question titled “The Left-Wing Case Against of this we will continue to see ex- responded to a CUNY Earth and Tenure.” Rather than the usual ar- pansion of hiring of non-scholar Environmental Sciences listserv gument against tenure of attacking faculty that will dictate and ensure advertising Fulbright grants to faculty who have tenure-track or ten- puny salaries continue forever, as a study in Israel with this comment: ured positions as lazy slugs living off matter and consequence of the sim- “This is some sick Zionist propa- the taxpayers or the hardworking do- ple principle of supply and demand. ganda.” Some Jewish students felt nors of private universities, Egginton Radoslav Dimitric threatened and believed his rheto- argues that tenure reinforces privi- College of Staten Island ric incited hate. They utilized Title lege. At the center of his case is the VI and IX to file a complaint and, claim that the tenure system is “par- in the end, CUNY investigated the ticularly vulnerable to unconscious Help for pensioners matter and sided with the student. bias,” especially against women, ● Ruth Wangerin’s letter in the last How is this showing complicity? people of color and young scholars issue of Clarion titled “Working for I also challenge Schulman’s accu- whose work does not “fit” the estab- members” commented that the PSC sations that Israel “murders large lished criteria of their discipline. interceded to achieve a victory in a numbers of unarmed civilians in There is no question that such single unemployment benefits dis- Gaza.” It has always been the Is- biases are at work in academia. It SandersDave pute. Terrific! raeli Defense Force’s policy to alert is also clear to anyone paying at- PSC members learned about the CUNY tenure process during an information How about holding the PSC account- civilians of forthcoming attacks by tention that white men who do “ac- session at Queens College. able to resolve the pension issues for dropping leaflets and going door to ceptable” mainstream research are the thousands of retired faculty and door to warn them of impending grossly overrepresented among the programs. Some CLIP and CUNY strikingly through the division into staff who have not received their cor- target areas. I know of no other tenure professoriate. However, Egg- Start instructors, like me, would like tenure-track faculty and a grossly un- rect pension benefit payments as per army that does such a thing. It is inton’s diagnosis is, in many ways, to earn a second masters or obtain a derpaid and undervalued adjunct ma- the 2016 contract settlement? not Israel’s fault that Hamas stra- worse than the disease. He advo- PhD. Others would simply like to take jority faculty. These extremes seem to Geraldine Burghart tegically and methodically chooses cates more “renewable contracts” a class or two for professional devel- have dictated our union’s approach to Bronx Community College heavily populated areas such as with “periodic and positive evalua- opment. But we are forced to pay full attending to the interests of the whole hospitals and schools to launch tions of teaching, research or both.” price or attend classes at a different faculty corpus, through adoption of Editor’s note: Over a two-year peri- their attacks. This past summer, Some positions would be evaluated school because of CUNY’s unwilling- the middle “salary first” way, which is od, CUNY payroll has failed to pro- Palestinians set masses of forest more on research, others more on ness to grant us tuition waivers. Even the crudest of all possible approaches. vide the NYC Teachers Retirement land on fire with balloons that deto- teaching. Put simply, Egginton’s so- adjuncts get tuition waivers, provided More sophisticated approaches System (TRS) with accurate retro- nated, some even landed on school lution would increase the precarity they teach a certain number of hours should be taken with catering to pay data to calculate increased grounds and playgrounds. of academic labor that has driven over several years. smaller subgroups of the faculty. Let monthly pension payments for There are thousands of Palestin- down salaries and increased work- CLIP and CUNY Start instruc- us start with the most discriminated significant numbers of recent retir- ians and Muslims living peacefully loads for both part-time and full- tors receive no tuition waivers, and most exploited faculty, namely ees. Those affected are retirees who in Israel being active members of time tenured and untenured faculty which prevents us from developing scholars who have high academic worked at CUNY during the years the economy and even government. in the United States. professionally and being promoted. degrees (doctorates), who not only covered by the 2010–17 PSC-CUNY Schulman admits in a 2013 interview, A real solution to the conscious I think the PSC should first focus do a full load of teaching, but are ac- contract and were owed back pay. “I avoided becoming a truly informed and unconscious biases of the tenure on getting all full-time employees tive in research and administration, TRS benefits are based on salary person about Israel/Palestine….” How process involves three big changes. tuition waivers for CUNY classes, while being paid less than graduate history, age, years of employment can one, especially an educator, make First, we need to win equity in pay and then, after that is taken care of, student salaries. This group of fac- and other factors. Before TRS can such outlandish claims while admit- and job security between full-time focus on waivers for their families. ulty has comparable, if not better calculate your monthly pension pay- ting they are uninformed? and part-time faculty. As part-time C. Anthony Prato scholarly records than the privileged ments, the CUNY Payroll Office must I have heard from so many Jew- work becomes more costly, universi- Queensborough Community College faculty do, except they have to live up provide that final “salary history” so ish students that college has become ties will be compelled to hire more to higher standards when it comes to that it includes any back pay owed a fearful and dreaded place where on full-time, tenure-track positions. Editor’s note: The push to include promotions (“higher” because given through the 4/20/17 salary increase, anti-Israel and Jewish sentiments Second, we need a commitment to af- CUNY Start and CLIP instructors in other equal conditions, they are es- if applicable. are spewed daily. When they try to firmative action in the hiring, tenure the contract language mandating tu- sentially unsupported in their re- To date, CUNY Payroll has not speak their truth, they are either and promotion process to make up for ition waivers is also a PSC demand search and other scholarly pursuits). provided usable and accurate barred from participating in pro- past racial and gender discrimina- in the current contract campaign. A typical example of this kind of “salary history” data to TRS. PSC Palestinian meetings, denied entry, tion. Finally, we need clear criteria, The union’s demands, including this faculty member is paid about $22,000, leadership has pushed CUNY man- quickly shut down and silenced or formal evaluations and guidance one, were ratified during a Delegate instead of what should be at least agement, but has not been informed labeled as racists. So I applaud CU- throughout the process, enforced Assembly in the Fall of 2017.