by Joseph G. Ramsey
Our Contingency Task Force (CTF) spent the fall reflecting on the strong turnout and the many insights gathered from our two-part summer series on Confronting Contingency. This series drew a diverse coast-to-coast group of 300 faculty (and other higher ed allies) together for a pair of two-hour discussions this summer. Many attendees have now joined the Task Force regularly. We welcome you to join as well!
Our June 20 event, “Strategies for Abolishing Faculty Contingency” (see the video here) featured reflections from HELU union leaders on recent contingent faculty union struggles and major successes at Rutgers, the University of California, and across the Connecticut Community College system. It also offered some paradigm-shifting ideas about how we can better orient our efforts towards the egalitarian higher ed future that we all need and desire: one founded on the principle of job security and academic freedom for all and equal pay for equal work.
Our July 20 event, “Grasping and Overcoming the Lines that Divide Us as Faculty and Higher Ed Workers” turned to the difficult but important question of building trust, understanding, and solidarity across the many institutional lines that presently divide our higher ed faculty ranks (both within and between institutions). This event modelled what tenure-to-non-tenure track solidarity can look like, while also challenging us all to bear in mind the particular needs of part-time and adjunct faculty at the bottom of the present hierarchical system.
Framing Contingency as a growing menace that negatively impacts us all, albeit in very different ways, our Task Force has helped make sure the particular concerns of the most marginalized and exploited get heard, in a framework that helps to build and deepen understanding and solidarity across all ranks. (See our kick-off “Welcome” document for more on our approach.)
The Contingency Task Force continues to meet biweekly as we plan our next group projects. We are now considering upcoming events focused on community college struggles. Another possible project involves building alliance with organizers from the Debt Collective, with an event addressing the pedagogical dangers – and opportunities – created by the twin forces of Contingency & Debt, which ensnare both faculty and students on our campuses.
There are lots of possibilities to get involved! Please email our chair Joe Ramsey to get involved in the Contingency Task Force.