apparently taking a lesson from the Dick Brodheads of the world, Alan Brinkley issues a memo outlining and implementing the nuclear option against Columbia University's graduate teachers, in a bald attempt at using fear and intimidation - which ought to have no place in a university, but neoliberalism doesn't really give a shit about "oughts" -- to break the union.

The whole world is watching.

(and so are the undergrads -- the columbia spectator not only says that GSEU should be proud of its accomplishments last week, -- they want them to organize the adjuncts too.)

The graduate student strike is over, and
Graduate Student Employees United should be proud of the statement it made. All
last week, while TAs and research assistants were chanting on the picket lines,
sympathetic faculty members moved their classes off campus in solidarity. Those
faculty members threw their support in the right direction, but some of them
should have been out striking too.
Although graduate students are overworked
and underpaid, the University’s adjuncts—its part-time professors who lack
tenure-track positions—have it even worse. TAs at Columbia complain that they
often can’t make ends meet with their $17,000 stipend, yet adjuncts often have
to live with even less than that. More than half of adjuncts nationwide make
less than $16,000 annually.
At Columbia and all over the country,
administrations exploit their adjuncts. The American Association of University
Professors reports that on average, adjuncts make a jaw-dropping 64 percent less
per hour than tenure-track assistant professors. Adjuncts often do not receive
basic benefits such as medical coverage and retirement plans. Yes, adjuncts are
part-time employees, but most do not have time to pursue other livelihoods: the
National Center for Education Statistics reports that adjuncts work an average
of 36.9 hours per week. Strapped for cash, universities use more cheap adjunct
labor every year. As of four years ago, 28 percent of classes nationwide were
taught by adjuncts, up from six percent in 1980.
Despite being mistreated,
adjuncts play a vital role here. Some of Columbia’s best-known professors are
adjuncts. Deborah Mowshowitz, director of Undergraduate Programs for the
Department of Biological Sciences, is an adjunct, as is Richard Sacks in the
Department of English and Comparative Literature. Were adjuncts to strike along
with graduate students, academics at Columbia would shut down.
Frustrated
adjuncts at other universities have begun to unionize. About 20 percent of
adjuncts nationwide currently belong to a union. At New York University, where
about 70 percent of the faculty work part-time, adjuncts unionized in 2002 as
Adjuncts Come Together, a local affiliate of United Auto Workers. ACT boasts on
its Web site that NYU adjuncts now receive subsidized health care, continuous
employment protections, and “some of the highest rates of pay for part-time
academic work in New York City.” Not coincidentally, NYU also has a graduate
student union.
As Columbia’s other group of persecuted scholars, adjuncts
make natural allies for GSEU. High turnover within the adjunct population might
make it hard for these professors to organize a union, but if unionization gave
adjuncts reasonable benefits and a living wage, the effort would be more than
worth it. This time next year, if adjuncts were striking with graduate students,
both groups would be able to do much more than make a statement. They might even
make a union.