AFT Higher Education took advantage of its meeting at the 2006 AFT Convention in Boston to announce the launch of a state and national legislative campaign to address the exploitation of part-time and adjunct labor in colleges and universities. This staffing crisis—underreported and poorly acknowledged—is a consequence of longtime attacks on the academy, notes Barbara Bowen, AFT vice president and head of the program and policy council committee that designed the initiative. Coming up with a proactive solution emerged last year as a high priority of the division's strategic planning.

The goals of the legislative campaign are to encourage state legislators to explore the impact of the staffing crisis on higher education and the people it serves, to foster public discussion through hearings, to promote the improvement of working conditions and the earnings of part-timers and to reverse the erosion of full-time, tenured jobs. The hope is to have locals craft and advance legislation to be introduced in 20 states and Congress starting in January 2007.

Higher ed delegates also got an update on the AFT response to attacks on academic freedom. The most fevered of those attacks, noted AFT vice president William Scheuerman, president of the United University Professions at the State University of New York, have come from well-funded and loud voices on the far right, such as conservative commentator David Horowitz, and organizations like the National Association of Scholars and the American Council of Alumni and Trustees. Horowitz is the author of so-called Academic Bill of Rights (ABOR) legislation that has been introduced in 25 states but has not passed anywhere.

The AFT is at the forefront of fighting the legislation, helping to found the Free Exchange on Campus coalition and blog. (Sign up at www.freeexchangeoncampus.org) AFT associate director Craig Smith described the multipronged response the coalition has made to ABOR legislation and Horowitz's book, The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America. Free Exchange refuted the book with a report, "Facts Count," and is preparing further analyses and reports.

Another panel meeting presented an overview of the work of the Spellings Commission on the Future of Higher Education. Doug Lederman, who has covered the commission for the online publication Inside Higher Ed, compared the most recent draft of its report to the concerns embodied in an AFT resolution on the commission to be presented at this convention. The commission's recommendations are a mixed bag, he noted, with attention paid to college access and need-based student aid that will please the AFT. On the other hand, its advice on testing and accountability are likely to raise AFT concern. The union has communicated the faculty perspective in letters to the 19 commission members. [Barbara McKenna]

July 28, 2006