HELU Blog

by Scott Douglas In early 2026, the Long Beach Community College District in Long Beach, California, agreed to an approximately $18 million settlement in a class-action wage-and-hour lawsuit brought by adjunct faculty. The case was backed by the California Teachers Association, which retained outside plaintiff-side employment counsel to litigate the claims. The significance of this […]

by Gregory Wolmart, Ph.D., Adjunct Associate Professor, Department of Film and Media Arts, Temple University; Vice-Chair of Adjunct Constituency Council, Temple Association of University Professionals (TAUP) I want to speak about obstacles to cross-rank solidarity by way of a short personal narrative — first as a tenure-track professor who was denied tenure, and now as

by Holly Clarke, Adjunct Lecturer, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York; member, Professional Staff Congress (PSC-CUNY) and Executive Committee John Jay College; member, HELU’s Contingency Task Force and NCOC. I’ve been an adjunct lecturer for more than thirty years at the City University of New York (CUNY). I’m a member

By Geoff Johnson, At Large member of HELU and President of the AFT Adjunct/Contingent Caucus At the AFT National Convention in Washington, DC on July 16-19, 2026, the Adjunct/Contingent Caucus will present a resolution calling for AFT to create model language and legislation for Due Process rights for Contingent faculty. This resolution is backed by

Helena Worthen with Lauren Lassabe Shepherd, HELU individual member, historian of American colleges and universities, author of Resistance from the Right: Conservatives and the Campus Wars in Modern America (University of North Carolina Press, 2023), Inventing the Liberal University (University of Chicago Press, forthcoming), and co-editor of Degrees of Liberation (SUNY Press, forthcoming). Listen to

The United Faculty of Florida (UFF) is a statewide union representing close to 10,000 public higher education workers in Florida. UFF has chapters in all public universities (12 in total). We have 16 chapters in the state college system and 4 graduate student chapters. UFF represents mostly instructional faculty and instructional support faculty. HELU asks: In

by Jenna Chernega, HELU Vice Chair and Chair of the HELU Politics & Policy Committee The Politics and Policy (P&P) committee is fairly large. I would guess that there are well over 20 people on the google groups list. Basically, we let anyone in who expresses interest in joining the committee, either when they join HELU

by Helena Worthen, based on an interview with Thomas Gokey, Organizer for Debt Collective, a HELU member labor organization, and active with the HELU Policyand Politics Committee HELU’s basic idea of centering the hoped-for transformation of the higher ed sector around labor means confronting opposition on multiple levels. One level is obviously collective bargaining, where