A tenured journalism professor at the University of Wisconsin-Superior is fighting a battle with the university that many say could have repercussions for tenure throughout the system. John B. Marder was fired this past summer despite unanimous recommendations from two faculty committees that he not be dismissed. And although a majority of the UW board of regents voted for his dismissal, they were going against their own personnel matters review committee, which also had voted unanimously on two occasions this year not to dismiss Marder because the university had insufficient evidence of wrongdoing.

Marder, who has taught at the university since 1987 and who was recognized for his teaching and work as an adviser to the student newspaper, was accused of sexually harassing two undergraduate women in 1995 and of uncollegial behavior in 1996. The two harassment claims were investigated at the time they were alleged, and the university dropped them. Oddly enough, while those charges were not among the 18 compiled in the chancellor's complaint letter for dismissal of Marder, they were the most discussed in the case.

There are other oddities in the case, points out Richard Schauer, chair of The Association of University of Wisconsin Professors/AFT academic freedom and tenure committee. Schauer has been representing Marder for the past few years and has witnessed and documented the university's violations of Marder's right to due process to an extent that "boggles the mind," Schauer says.

Under Wisconsin law, tenure is a property right, and the dismissal of a tenured professor is prosecuted very formally under a special law known as Chapter 4. From the time the UW-Superior chancellor fired Marder in 1999 without first setting into motion dismissal proceedings, the administration has repeatedly violated Marder's due process rights, the union maintains.

In 2000, Marder went through the regular appeals process while carrying out his teaching duties. He presented his case before the UW faculty senate's committee on faculty terminations, which recommended retaining Marder because the evidence was insufficient for termination. In spring 2001, the board of regents personnel matters review committee reached the same conclusion. The regents asked their committee to review the evidence, which it did and again found insufficient grounds to terminate. On June 8, 2001, the board of regents took the unprecedented step of overturning its own committee's recommendation and voted to fire Marder.

It is Schauer's view and that of the union that internal politics have more to do with Marder's dismissal than any behavioral infractions. Schauer worries that because the unfounded harassment charges can raise such a red flag for well-intentioned people, they can provide a cover for those who have a personal agenda against the popular professor. Because so many aspects of university life rest on the sometimes fractious process of debate and discussion, both within departments and campus- and university-wide, the treatment of Marder by the UW-Superior administration sets a precedent for all faculty in the system that should raise alarm, says the union. "This is the death of tenure at the University of Wisconsin," says TAUWP president Ray Spoto.

With the help of his union, Marder is taking his case forward into civil court. His lawyer filed a complaint in Douglas County Circuit Court charging both a violation of Marder's due process rights and a violation of the state's open records laws.

N.Y.U. adjuncts build community

New York University adjunct faculty are familiar with limitations. Over time they've lived with the restrictions the elite private university puts on their pay, working conditions, and professional growth and security. By limiting academic labor costs, NYU's wealth has grown. Its endowment places it among the wealthiest 50 universities in the country.

NYU's adjunct work force, which numbers between 4,000 and 5,000 in the course of an academic year, is proud to be associated with NYU, but lately, some adjuncts are beginning to question whether the university's financial health should come at the expense of their own. That's why the adjuncts likely will be voting for the chance to be proudly associated with the New York State United Teachers and the AFT before the end of the spring semester.

Adjunct Peter Schweitzer is a retired employee assistance program administrator who used to work for the city of New York. Now he teaches in the human resources certificate program within the School of Continuing and Professional Studies (SCPS). Schweitzer makes $1,000 on the course, he says, whether he has a class of 20 or 10. "The students pay $500 each," he notes, making "the university a tremendous amount of money. My sense is that this section is such a revenue center, adjuncts should get a share of that."

Teaching conditions for some of the adjuncts are not optimum. Schweitzer teaches his course in the Norman Thomas High School in lower Manhattan. Other adjuncts teach at more than 140 different work sites that include church halls, public schools and other institutions. Schweitzer is not able to enter the school or his classroom until shortly before his students arrive at 6:20 p.m., an inconvenience for someone who doesn't have an office. The bathrooms smell, and there's no chalk. "We hate that," he says.

There are other unpredictable variables to teaching at NYU. Sometimes, when Schweitzer has prepared a new course for the program, he has been paid extra; other times, not. He has no contact with full-time faculty nor with many other adjuncts. He is on his fourth supervisor in four years. "My student evaluations give me top marks, so [administrators] don't bother me," he says.

Louis Rosen is a composer who supplements his income by teaching music in the SCPS. He has taught two or three courses a semester for more than 18 years. He is paid $58 per contact hour or about $1,300 a course. Rosen says he consistently gets excellent evaluations and wonders why his compensation can't reflect that. Offering benefits to people like himself "would be a real service to teachers," he says.

But equal to benefits, Rosen says, would be the value of being able to teach in other departments--a cross-fertilization so difficult to execute, he notes, that it is almost prohibited. "You should be able to grow in the job," he says. "Right now there is no sense of that. In my case, it would be the possibility of getting to know people in the music department and being able to move from one department to the other."

Although AFT organizers have heard many different stories from the teachers at NYU, no two stories are alike. There is the 10-year veteran film studies instructor who has been receiving $3,000 per course to teach in two different NYU schools, was then told he'd get a raise of $2,000 per course at one of the sites--only to be released from that teaching assignment the day he showed up to begin at the new pay level.

As the new semester gets under way, adjuncts are finding that the union can give them a sense of community where they were a marginalized work force before. And together, they can start leveraging their unified voice to get a consistent and fair level of compensation for all. They would be joining more than 10,000 adjuncts represented by NYSUT in the state of New York.

Temple University agrees to recognize union

After 2.5 years of organizing, amassing community support, receiving favorable court and labor board rulings, and winning a landslide victory at the collective bargaining polling booth, the graduate employee union at Temple University has finally gotten the administration to cry "uncle."

On Sept. 14, the Temple University Graduate Students' Association/AFT (TUGSA) and the university signed an agreement that will bring them to the bargaining table. It spells out what will and will not be subject to negotiations. And it binds the university to drop its appeal of the union's election and to recognize TUGSA as the exclusive representative of the employees. Temple's board approved the agreement on Sept. 26.

The agreement defines what academic matters will be beyond the scope of bargaining. These include, for example, admissions requirements for graduate students; how tuition, fees and student benefits are set, but not within the context of employment; how departments are organized; and how decisions are made regarding assistantships.

The agreement also includes an illustrative list of 13 topics the union plans to address at the bargaining table: benefits, evaluations, hours and workloads, job training, a grievance procedure, wages, termination, disciplinary proceedings and so on.

"In essence, it makes distinctions between our roles as students and our roles as employees," says Rob Callahan, a TUGSA founder and organizer. "We agree to a principle that we've maintained all along--that the collective bargaining contract will be relevant strictly to our employee status. The language the university inserted is pretty vague. Our paragraph says, whatever that language means, it doesn't mean these specific points."