News from AFT Higher Ed Archive

In her latest column, AFT President Randi Weingarten warns that our democracy is under serious strain as elected officials test the limits of power and threaten fundamental rights. She highlights troubling reports from members about aggressive immigration enforcement and the undermining of civil liberties. Americans are pushing back through protests and by breaking with leaders when necessary, she writes. Weingarten frames this moment as a critical test of our democratic traditions, and she calls on people to defend freedoms and act before it’s too late.

In a move that further squelches freedom of expression, the Trump administration is requiring disclosure and review of social media accounts belonging to international students, skilled academic workers and their dependents (people with H-1B, H-4 and F-1 visas). Protest activity, activism and even posts that object to government policy may be flagged and used against academics who dare to post such content. To help protect affected AFT members and their colleagues, the AFT has produced these guidelines, including a checklist of things to do to stay safe and a list of what “red flags” officials may be looking for. Image: salimhanzaz/iStock/Getty Images Plus

 

As access to affordable healthcare is threatened, many Americans live in fear that they’re just one medical emergency away from financial crisis. In this AFT Voices post, adjunct professor Tom Moomjy shows us exactly what that feels like, describing the serious illness that landed him in the hospital and the impossible medical bill that followed—with no insurance to cover it.

 

The power of labor has been growing in new ways within academic writes Gary Rhoades, a professor in the University of Arizona’s Center for the Study of Higher Education, in the American Association of University Professors' Academe journal. “As academic workers’ sense of justice and possibility has changed in recent years, so, too, have their perspectives on unions, their views about what can and should be bargained collectively, and their approaches to negotiations,” he writes, describing how unions now reach beyond bread-and-butter issues into social justice and the public good. Read more here. Image courtesy of Brown Postdoc Labor Organization.

 

Recently, we have witnessed unconscionable acts of violence by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, including the murder of Renee Nicole Good, the unjust detention of an AFT-member educator and the use of pepper spray on school property. ICE’s reckless operations are endangering the safety and well-being of students, educators and families, and our members are fighting back in a myriad of ways. Join the fight by signing a petition with Minnesota educators and writing your members of Congress to demand ICE respect sensitive locations and stay away from schools. Above, Professional Staff Congress protests with allies in New York.

 

Along with the devastating loss of scientific research funding from government entities like the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, the Trump administration has also gutted education research, hobbling education policy at its core. This Hechinger Report article describes the “chaos” wrought by firing thousands of researchers and others from the Department of Education and the National Center for Education Statistics—a pillar of education research. Photo illustration by AFT; photo by G. Edward Johnson/flickr.

 

Bayard Rustin, the iconic civil rights leader behind the March on Washington in 1963, was steadfast and inspirational, as a new exhibit at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tenn., “The Life of Bayard Rustin: Speaking Truth to Power,” shows. But perhaps more importantly for today’s activists, his life informs our current work. “As many leaders and institutions submit to Donald Trump’s demands for allegiance to his reactionary policies, the exhibition title alone is a basic lesson for our time,” writes Eric Chenoweth on the Albert Shanker Institute’s blog. Read more about the parallels between the Civil Rights Movement and our fight for justice today. Image: Stanley Wolfson/New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection (Library of Congress).