From Joe Ramsey, HELU Steering Committee and Chair of the Contingency Task Force
The passing of Bill Lipkin is very sad news indeed. Bill Lipkin was a serious, passionate fighter for adjunct faculty rights across New Jersey and within HELU. From the very beginning, Bill was a key member of HELU’s organizing efforts (even before many, including myself, were involved). Serving on the Budget & Finance Committee as well as the Outreach Committee, he also effectively advocated for support for the then-newly emerging Contingency Task Force, helping the CTF to secure the funding and staff support that made our major kick off events last summer such resounding successes.
Bill was also a great source of encouragement and support to me personally during this early organizing stage, offering our project wisdom, attention to detail, strong follow-through, a no-nonsense approach, and a backbone drawn from decades of organizing against the odds. He also carried with him a detailed knowledge of contingent faculty contracts and the available strategies for improving them, based on long and hard-fought experience in the trenches. He was an important speaker at CTF public events, where he drew out the importance of building unity across contingent faculty sectors, without losing sight of the serious work that needed to be done – culturally as well as contractually – to make faculty equity a reality, on our campuses and in our unions and other advocacy organizations.
BIll’s full obituary is here: https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/name/william-lipkin-obituary?id=55568015