How Ian Shapiro's book, which I will admit to never having read, was ever nominated for the Sidney Hillman prize, I don't know. That Unite-HERE (Hillman was a leader of the the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers' Union, which merged with the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union to form UNITE in 1995) would refuse to honor Shapiro, the superstar political science professor who has often used his prestige and power to aid Yale's anti-union campaign against 2500 Unite-HERE members, seems a foregone conclusion.
Yet what this episode, reported in the Chronicle of Higher Education, might teach us is that the actions of union-busters resonate not only within the halls of the ivory tower (itself a construct whose time has long since passed,) that supposedly progressive academics will be "called to account," (to borrow a phrase from Catherine Stimpson, another union buster,) that those of us who have lost our jobs, have been intimidated by our faculty, have walked picket lines in the freezing cold, and/or have put ourselves on the line for a just workplace and a better university are not alone.
I'm not sure what else it's appropriate to write here, since I don't really see the point of not-anonymously slinging mud at a tenured professor who has done a fairly successful job of dumping mud on himself.
I'm linking Hugh Baran's blog Creative Trouble. Baran is a UOCista whom I have never met. I am linking him because a) his nascent blog is quite interesting and b) he linked me.
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