From Ian Gavigan, HELU
Recent developments in the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) show how HELU’s principles are reshaping the higher education labor movement.
In a landslide victory, the United Faculty of the Common Good (UFCG) slate won four of the five open seats on AAUP’s National Council in the election held at the organization’s convention this June.
The UFCG victory signals growing consensus among higher education workers that wall-to-wall organizing and strategy are key to combatting the sector’s deep crises, including attacks on all campus workers, contingency, funding, academic freedom, debt, and more.
The winning UFCG agenda calls for “building labor power and solidarity, uniting faculty of all ranks and building coalitions with our other campus (non-faculty) colleagues, and expanding political power through coalitions with allied student, climate, and social justice organizations at the local and national levels, among others.” In 2022, AAUP joined the American Federation of Teachers.
Convention delegates elected the following leaders to national office:
- President: Todd Wolfson. Wolfson is currently the president of Rutgers AAUP-AFT in New Jersey and HELU’s former interim Chair.
- Vice President: Rotua Lumbantobing. Lumbantobing is a professor of economics at Western Connecticut State University and president of the WCSU-AAUP.
- Secretary-Treasurer: Danielle Aubert. Aubert is the president at Wayne Academic Union at Wayne State University in Detroit.
- At-Large Council Member: Chenjerai Kumanyika. Kumanyika is a professor of journalism at New York University.
The new leaders join four UFCG-affiliated Council members who were elected in 2022: Ernesto Longa (University of New Mexico), Davarian Baldwin (Trinity College), Karin Rosemblatt (University of Maryland), and Donna Murch (Rutgers University).