Union takes on academic freedom in Florida

The local, state and national unions are defending Sami Al-Arian, the tenured computer engineering professor who administrators at the University of South Florida have been threatening to fire since December.

Al-Arian, 44, is a Palestinian refugee who has lived in the United States since 1975 and has taught at USF since 1986. At times he has been a figure of controversy because of his views. Through an institute for Islamic studies that he established, Al-Arian has sponsored visiting scholars, one of whom later became associated with the Islamic Jihad, a terrorist group. Although Al-Arian had been investigated by the university and the FBI more than once in the past decade, no evidence that links him to terrorists has ever surfaced.

Since 1995 at least, Al-Arian has been more temperate in expressing his political views, says Roy Weatherford, president of the USF chapter of the United Faculty of Florida, the statewide local union, which is affiliated with both the AFT and the National Education Association. His teaching and research records are excellent says Weatherford, and he has never brought his political views into the classroom.

Nevertheless, Al-Arian got into some trouble when he agreed to go on a television network program called "The O'Reilly Factor" on Sept. 26. Invited to provide a perspective on Islam, instead Al-Arian faced a barrage of questions about anti-Israel comments he made in 1988 and about his connections to terrorists. The program generated calls to the university and death threats as well as admonitions from alumni and donors who said they would withdraw support if Al-Arian stayed at USF.

Claiming that his presence on campus was a security risk, the university's president put the professor on administrative leave. Then in December, the board of trustees met. The board is made up primarily of businesspeople (and a holdover academic, the president of Howard University) appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush under the state's newly reorganized governance system. The board voted 12-1 to approve the president's firing of Al-Arian, claiming that he violated his contract on two fronts. The board says he failed to state on "The O'Reilly Factor" that the views he expressed were his own and did not represent those of the university. He also came on campus once after he was put on paid leave.

Shortly thereafter, Gov. Bush announced his support of the board action.

If the USF president acts on her threat, Al-Arian will be the first faculty member to be fired in an academic freedom case since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.

As the termination process went ahead, the USF union met and voted almost unanimously to condemn the actions of the administration. Should Al-Arian be fired, the union is prepared to file a grievance that Weatherford predicts will move rapidly to the third step: binding arbitration. "We have been communicating with faculty and the press, trying to explain the issue," says Weatherford. "We make the case in terms of academic freedom, the importance of due process and justice, and the reputation of the university."

Soon after the chapter voted, the statewide UFF passed a resolution in support of the local. On Jan. 20, the AFT's higher education leadership group passed a resolution commending UFF "for its actions in defending due process, academic freedom and the enforcement of the collective bargaining agreement...."

"This is a clear-cut violation of the academic freedom of one of our members," AFT vice president William Scheuerman observes. "The institution's responsibility lies with protecting core academic values, not catering to those who would short-circuit an individual's due process rights through threats and intimidation."

"We have a good case," says Weatherford. "The contract requires the administration to give specific charges of misconduct. The charges they came up with are so obviously red herrings, pretexts and trivia that no experienced arbitrator would believe you would fire a tenured professor for that sort of thing."

The trustees come from a world where an employee who is causing trouble or embarrassment to the employer is fired, Weatherford adds. "But in the national and world community of scholars, the trustees are wrong. What we'll end up with is a university that has suffered a serious blow to its reputation. In the end, Professor Al-Arian will carry on."

The New Mexico AFL-CIO has its first female president--and she's an AFT leader. Christine Trujillo, president of the AFT-affiliated New Mexico Federation of Educational Employees, was elected president of the New Mexico AFL-CIO in December. A 20-year veteran elementary classroom teacher and Taos native, she replaces outgoing president, Joe Chavez.

As president of the state AFL-CIO, Trujillo will lead a federation of 202 local union affiliates scattered across New Mexico with 30,000 AFL-CIO members employed in all public and private job categories.

Trujillo previously served as political action and legislative issues vice president of the AFT affiliate in New Mexico and led the organization's 2000 general elections campaign. During the 2001 session of the Legislature, she helped persuade legislators to pass one of the largest public school employee salary increases in recent history.

The new AFL-CIO state federation president also worked closely with the Legislature and its Education Initiatives and Accountability Task Force to reform New Mexico's public schools.

Faculty and students at the City University of New York are protesting a change in tuition policy that has more than doubled the bills of many immigrant students from last semester to this one. Since 1989, CUNY had charged in-state tuition rates for undocumented immigrants who could show they had lived in New York for at least a year. As of this January, CUNY is charging these students the out-of-state rate.

The new policy raises the tuition for undocumented immigrants at CUNY's two-year colleges from $1,250 to $1,538 and from $1,600 per semester to $3,400 at the four-year institutions. CUNY estimates that just over 2,000 students are affected by the hike.

CUNY says the increase brings the university into compliance with a 1996 federal immigration law. The university undertook a review of its policies regarding non-citizens after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The federal law, it says, stipulates that non-citizens should not get benefits in this country that citizens don't receive. All U.S. citizens enrolled in CUNY who do not reside in New York state must pay tuition at the out-of-state rate.

Those condemning the new policy say it's a betrayal of the university system's mission to serve the city's disadvantaged populations. Many of the affected students came to the city with their families when they were young and attended the public schools starting as early as prekindergarten.

"The federal law contains no penalty for non-compliance, and it allows states to set alternative policies on college tuition for undocumented and out-of-status immigrants. Both Texas and California--states with large immigrant populations--have passed laws that allow these students to continue paying in-state tuition," says Barbara Bowen, president of the Professional Staff Congress/AFT (PSC). "CUNY should be supporting a legislative solution, not cutting the lifeline for thousands of students."

In the past year, state or public college officials in California, Texas, Utah and Washington state have moved to liberalize their tuition policies. Texas passed a law last June allowing undocumented immigrants to pay the residents' rate if they have attended three years of high school in the state and graduated. The students also have to sign a pledge that they will apply for permanent residency when eligible. The University of California regents voted for a similar policy in January. Legislators in Washington and Utah also are considering bills.

The PSC passed a resolution at the end of November asking CUNY trustees to halt the implementation of the new policy and instead launch an open review of the university's policy. Before the current semester began, the union rallied a coalition of labor, religious and community leaders to sign a letter to the chancellor asking him to hold off on the policy. In mid January, 12 CUNY professors, students and community activists began a three-day fast to protest the university's action. "We hope this will bring awareness to the severity of the problem," said City College professor and PSC member Bill Crain.

Penn grad employees file with NLRB

Graduate employees at the University of Pennsylvania filed a majority petition for a proposed bargaining unit with the National Labor Relations Board in December. The employees, called Graduate Employees Together-University of Pennsylvania (GET-UP), are affiliated with the AFT.

Because the university is a private institution, the employees' right to unionize will be covered under the federal National Labor Relations Act, as opposed to state laws, which govern public employees. GET-UP and the university administration spent much of January in hearings before an NLRB hearing examiner in Philadelphia, considering the issue of whether graduate employees are workers.

GET-UP began organizing last April on the heels of an NLRB decision at New York University that graduate employees there had the right to union representation. In October, GET-UP began its card campaign.

The graduate employees are most concerned with issues of pay, health benefits and working conditions. They currently receive stipends of up to $12,500, says GET-UP organizer Jeff Hornstein, which is not a sufficient sum to support the average graduate employee in Philadelphia, let alone those with family obligations. Providing adequate health benefits has also been a major difficulty for the university.

The administration recently imposed changes in the plan that had a price tag so prohibitive that employees with dependents couldn't afford it. GET-UP's questioning of the administration forced public disclosure of information about how the changes came about. The facts particularly roiled the academic community, when it was revealed that the University of Pennsylvania president, the highest paid university president in the country, sits on the board of the corporation that provides the health insurance.

The university's many international graduate employees are also hard-pressed to make ends meet. They are hamstrung by visa restrictions that prohibit them from working for any employer other than the university.

In the months since the graduate employees began organizing, the university has instituted some welcome changes. The administration has responded to GET-UP's criticisms of the health plan and has begun a staggered teaching schedule, whereby the graduate employees in the School of Arts & Sciences have their first and fourth years free of teaching. Nevertheless, GET-UP estimates that undergraduates receive 50 percent of their instruction from the graduate employees, says Hornstein.

GET-UP hopes the NLRB will allow the election to be held before the semester ends in late April. The University of Pennsylvania will be the third private institution in the country to hold a vote for graduate employees. NYU graduate employees voted for a union in late 2000 and have recently negotiated a contract. Brown University graduate employees held a vote last fall, but the administration--stridently opposed to the graduate employee union--appealed the election. The ballots are impounded while the NLRB considers the appeal.

In Pennsylvania's public higher education sector, the AFT has successfully organized graduate employees at Temple University and has an organizing campaign under way at Pennsylvania State University. The Temple University Graduate Students' Association is also in the midst of negotiating its first contract.