| Welcome to the National Center’s 47th Annual Conference. To download the conference schedule, click here. To download the conference program, click here. |
Monday, October 19, 2020
9:00 am – 9:30 am EST
| Welcoming Remarks with Jennifer Raab, President, Hunter College, CUNY, Risa Lieberwitz, General Counsel, AAUP and Professor of Labor and Employment Law, Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Theodore Curry, Professor of Human Resources and Labor Relations, Michigan State University, and William A. Herbert, Executive Director, National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions, Hunter College, CUNY. |
9:30 am – 10:30 am EST
| Keynote Presentation with Steven Greenhouse, former New York Times labor and workplace correspondent, and author of Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present, and Future of American Labor. Keynote Introduction with Lili Palacios-Baldwin, Deputy General Counsel for Labor, Employment & Litigation, Tufts University. |
Steven Greenhouse, the former New York Times labor and workplace correspondent, will be the keynote speaker. Mr. Greenhouse will be analyzing labor’s response to the pandemic in the context of the historical and contemporary themes set forth in his exceptional book Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present, and Future of American Labor (2019). His book traces U.S. labor history from the 20th Century up to and including the first two decades of the 21st Century. The book was published last year by Knopf, and it has been released in paperback: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/246798/beaten-down-worked-up-by-steven-greenhouse/
Click on the Names Below for Panelist Biographies
Steven Greenhouse was a reporter for the New York Times for 31 years, spending his last 19 years there as the Times’ labor and workplace reporter, before retiring from the paper in December 2014. A graduate of the N.Y.U. School of Law (1982), he is writing a book on the state of the nation’s workers and labor unions and on what shape worker advocacy will take in the future as unions grow weaker. He joined The Times in September 1983 as a business reporter, covering steel and other basic industries. He then spent two-and-a-half years as the newspaper’s Midwestern business correspondent based in Chicago. In 1987, he moved to Paris, where he served as The Times’ European economics correspondent, covering everything from Western Europe’s economy to the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe. After five years in Paris, he became a correspondent in Washington for four years, covering economics and the Federal Reserve and then the State Department and foreign affairs. As labor and workplace reporter, he covered myriad topics, including poverty among the nation’s farm workers, the Fight for 15, off-the-clock work and locked-in workers at Walmart, the New York City transit strike, factory disasters in Bangladesh and the push to roll back public employees’ bargaining rights. A native of Massapequa, N.Y., Greenhouse is a graduate of Wesleyan University (1973), the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism (1975). His first book, “The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker,” was published in April 2008 by Alfred A. Knopf. It won the 2009 Sidney Hillman Book Prize for nonfiction for a book that advances social justice. He continues to freelance for, among others, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and the Guardian.
Lili Palacios-Baldwin began her career at Robinson & Cole LLP where she practiced in the areas of land use, real estate, and labor and employment law, following co-ops with the Massachusetts Land Court, Equal Rights Advocates, and the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, Inc. Ms. Palacios-Baldwin later served as a Senior Trial Attorney at the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) where she practiced for almost ten years. While with the EEOC, she litigated individual and class cases within the federal courts, conducted training and public presentations, and worked with federal investigators on both enforcement and litigation matters throughout New England, New York, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. Upon leaving the EEOC, Ms. Palacios-Baldwin continued her law practice with the firm of Hirsch Roberts Weinstein LLP, a Boston boutique labor, employment and litigation firm. Ms. Palacios-Baldwin joined the Tufts University Office of University Counsel as Associate General Counsel for Labor and Employment in 2013. Ms. Palacios-Baldwin is a graduate of The Johns Hopkins University and Northeastern University School of Law.
10:30 am – 10:45 am EST
Break
10:45 am – 12:15 pm EST
| Panel A: LGBTQ Labor Issues in Higher Education After Bostock v. Clayton County with Barbara J. Diamond, Diamond Law, Portland, Oregon, Melissa Sortman, Director of Academic Human Resources, Michigan State University, Elizabeth S. Hough, Counsel to the President, United University Professions, and Elizabethe C. Payne, Founder and Director, Queering Education Research Institute (QuERI) and faculty at CUNY, Moderator. |
The speakers will be introduced and the panel moderated by Elizabethe Payne. Barbara Diamond will discuss cultural competencies and the importance of vocabulary/definitions. Melissa Sortman and Elizabeth Hough will continue with a review of health care examples expansions for LGBTQ members in the higher education community. Barbara Diamond will follow up with an analysis of transgender rights beyond health care, and lastly the panel will review the most recent federal legal updates in reference to decisions made in the Supreme Court.
Click on the Names Below for Panelist Biographies
Barbara J. Diamond is currently a labor arbitrator and mediator in Portland, Oregon. She attended Binghamton University and NYU Law School. Before becoming a neutral, Barbara was a union-side attorney for over 30 years is the founder of Diamond Law Training, a consulting and training firm specializing on anti-bias work in the unionized environment. In 2019, Diamond Law Training sponsored an LGBTQ Summit for union leaders and activists which drew more than 100 attendees. The summit produced bargaining proposals to improve working conditions for transgender, non-binary and queer members. Barbara produces and directs documentary films for anti-bias education under the name No Micro Project. Her films can be accessed at www.kanopy.com. Barbara uses she/they pronouns.
Melissa Sortman is the Director of Academic Human Resources at Michigan State University (MSU). She provides leadership and support for the university on all aspects of academic employment including human resources, bargaining, policies, and procedures. She has been at MSU since May 2019. Prior to coming to MSU, she worked at the University of Michigan as the Associate Director of Academic Human Resources and served as chief negotiator in the bargaining with the Graduate Employees’ Organization (GEO). She previously worked at the Michigan Education Association (MEA) serving in a variety of positions including chief negotiator for the largest MEA local (MSU-APA) and bargained the Coalition of Labor Wage and Health Care Agreement. She has negotiated many contracts representing public school employees for over 16 years with MEA. She started her career as a congressional staff person before running political campaigns for the Michigan Legislature and Michigan Supreme Court.
Elizabeth S. Hough, Counsel to the President, United University Professions. Hough has worked as Counsel to the President of UUP since 2015. Her work for UUP includes all aspects of state-wide contract negotiations and implementation. Prior to coming to UUP, she worked for more than 20 years for the Public Employees Federation, first as an Associate Counsel and then as the Director of Contract Administration. During that time, Hough was involved in contract negotiations, interpretation and enforcement, including six rounds of state-wide negotiations with the Governor’s Office of Employee Relations. Prior to her work at PEF, Hough worked as a law partner with Gurian, Hough & Bickson in New York City, representing plaintiffs in civil rights and employment law claims, as a prosecuting attorney at the NYC Human Rights Commission, and as a staff attorney at the National Employment Law Project. Hough has also served as a local union officer in Hotel Employee and Restaurant Employee, United Auto Workers, and United Steelworkers locals and has additional experience negotiating contracts for the members of her own locals. Hough received her J.D. from New York University School of Law and her undergraduate degree in history from the University of Wisconsin. Following graduation for law school she held a one-year Women’s Law and Public Policy Fellowship at Georgetown University Law Center.
Elizabethe C. Payne, PhD, is director of the Queering Education Research Institute (QuERI) and faculty in the Hunter College School of Education. She is a sociologist of education with a focus on anti-bullying policy, LGBTQ issues in K-12 education, sex education, qualitative research methodology, and queer girlhoods. Her current research explores educator responses to transgender elementary school students, and the implementation of the NY Dignity for All Students Act (DASA). She has worked with state legislators and NYSED on DASA, the US Department of Justice on the application of Title IX to LGBTQ student harassment cases, and in the settlement and resolution processes with school districts as they address patterns of LGBTQ discrimination. For more information about QuERI: www.queeringeducation.org; Twitter & FB, @QueeringEDU.
| Panel B: Black Lives Matter On Campus and Off with Elijah Armstrong, Organizational Specialist in Human and Civil Rights, National Education Association, Paul Ortiz, University of Florida Chapter President, United Faculty of Florida NEA-AFT, Terri Givens, Center for Higher Education Leadership, CEO and Founder, Calvin Smiley, Assistant Professor, Sociology, Hunter College, CUNY, and Alethea Taylor, Doctoral Lecturer/Internship Site Developer, Hunter College – School of Education, Department of Educational Foundations and Counseling, Participant and Moderator. |
This panel will explore how institutions of higher education can integrate antiracist and abolitionist work that listens to and elevates the voices, experiences and histories of black people. Statements supporting Black Lives Matter is a movement in the right direction but are not enough. What can leaders (presidents, provosts, deans, etc.) do to make a true investment in practices, policies and beliefs to create a real impact in ending systemic racism when the intensity of this moment dissipates? As well, this panel will discuss how cultural taxation continues to burden faculty of color and how higher education institutions can provide social promotion and credit for the service work of scholars of color. Lastly, this panel will ask what measures colleges and universities can take to help students address not only their individual biases but how students can address racial justice issues on campuses and within communities.
Click on the Names Below for Panelist Biographies
Elijah Armstrong is currently at the NEA as an Organizational Specialist in the Human and Civil Rights Department where he focuses on developing campaigns around building power to win on issues affecting members and creating trainings around power, racial justice and the educational industrial complex. Elijah also works with Milita Design providing consulting for corporations around corporate social responsibility and assisting community groups and nonprofits with political education curriculum. Prior to coming to NEA, Elijah worked for the Dream Defenders for 3 years. He served as regional community organizer in North Florida. In this role, Elijah taught strategic nonviolence civil disobedience trainings, political education around race, class, gender, ecology, running campaigns around ending private prisons, school to prison pipeline, and voter suppression. Elijah was also a juvenile justice advocate for the Southern Poverty Law Center working to stop the full privatization of the juvenile justice system in Florida, overturn SB 2112 which allows juveniles to be put in the same facility as adults, and to end the bed quota private prisons have with the state of Florida. Elijah was also the HBCU outreach coordinator for the National Student Power Convergence. He also worked with the America Heart Association on the Healthy Food Initiatives aimed at ending food deserts in low end communities by providing access to fresh food through farmer’s markets as well as bringing grocery stores to those communities. Elijah also created a justice coalition in Polk County, Florida to get rid zero tolerance policies and implement restorative justice. As well, Elijah worked with the federation of southern cooperatives to teach low income communities about land initiatives, creating cooperatives and solidarity economy. In Georgia he worked with Rise Up around ending private probation and stopping the amendment that would have turned over 100 Atlanta Public Schools into charter schools. Elijah received his master’s degree in Applied Social Sciences and a Bachelor of Science in Political Science from Florida Agricultural & Mechanical University. If you would like to reach him his email is earmstrong@nea.org or his personal email elijah89.armstrong@gmail.com or check him out on his podcast Whilst We Roll.
Professor Paul Ortiz (Ph.D. Duke University, 2000) is the author of An African American and Latinx History of the United States, which received the 2018 PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles Award for Literary Excellence. His book Emancipation Betrayed: The Hidden History of Black Organizing and White Violence in Florida from Reconstruction to the Bloody Election of 1920 was awarded the Harry T. and Harriette V. Moore Book Prize from the Florida Historical Society and the Florida Institute of Technology. He also co-edited and conducted oral history interviews for the book, Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell About Life in the Segregated South. Professor Ortiz teaches undergraduate courses and supervises graduate fields in African American history, Latina/o & Latinx history, comparative ethnic studies, U.S. South, labor, social movement theory, oral history, digital humanities, ethnography and other topics. Ortiz is currently co-editing a book with Wesley Hogan titled Changing the System Now: People Power, History, and Organizing in the 21st Century, which includes contributions by William Greider, Lane Windham, Ernie Cortes and other activist intellectuals. Changing the System Now will be published by the University Press of Florida in 2021. He is also writing Settler Colonialism and the ‘War on Terror’: 1492 to the Present, which will be published by Beacon Press. He is currently finishing a synthesis of the segregated South with William H. Chafe titled: Behind the Veil: African Americans in the Age of Segregation, 1895-1965. Professor Ortiz is also the director of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program at the University of Florida and the President of the United Faculty of Florida-UF (NEA/AFT/AFL-CIO). To reach Professor Ortiz, email him at: ortizprof@gmail.com
Terri Givens,CEO, The Center for Higher Education Leadership. Terri E. Givens is a CEO/Founder, Political Scientist and a consultant to educational technology companies and educational institutions. In February of 2019 she founded The Center for Higher Education Leadership, a portal for professional development for higher education administrators. She was the Provost of Menlo College from July 2015 to June 2018. From the Fall of 2003 until the Spring of 2015 she was a Professor in the Government Department at the University of Texas at Austin where she also served as Vice Provost for International Activities and Undergraduate Curriculum from 2006 to 2009, Director of the Robert S. Strauss Center’s European Union Center of Excellence, and Co-Director of the Longhorn Scholars Program. She founded and directed the Center for European Studies and the France-UT Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies from 2004-2006. She was a faculty member in the Department of Political Science at the University of Washington from 1999 to 2003. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles, and her B.A. from Stanford University. She is the author/editor of several books on immigration policy, European politics and security, including Voting Radical Right in Western Europe, Immigration Policy and Security and Immigrant Politics: Race and Representation in Western Europe. Her most recent book is Legislating Equality: The Politics of Antidiscrimination Policy in Europe (Oxford University Press, May 2014). Her textbook, Immigration in the 21st Century was published in May of 2020 (Routledge). Her most recent book is, Radical Empathy: Finding a Path to Bridging Racial Divides is scheduled for publication in February 2021 (advance excerpts are available). A popular speaker, blogger and social media enthusiast, Terri is very active in the community as a member of several nonprofit boards and is a fitness enthusiast. To reach Ms. Givens, email her at: tgivens@higheredleads.com
Calvin John Smiley received his Ph.D. from The Graduate Center-CUNY in 2014. His work focuses on issues related to race, inequality, and social justice. More specifically, as a critical sociologist and criminologist, he has studied mass incarceration and prisoner reentry, particularly for urban inhabitants. Smiley has been published in a number of academic peer-reviewed journals and book chapters. In addition, his research has been cited in notable publications such as The Washington Post and Le Monde (France). He is the co-editor of Prisoner Reentry in the 21st Century: Critical Perspectives of Returning Home published by Routledge Press. Finally, Smiley is working on a book-length manuscript on his work on prisoner reentry, specifically examining many of the intricacies and complications of prisoner reentry and how men and women navigate and negotiate reentry space, moving from confinement to community, with diminished legal rights and amplified social stigmas. For more information on Dr. Smiley’s research, teaching, and publications, please visit: www.cjsmiley.com
Dr. Alethea Taylor, RhD, CRC is distinguished lecturer with Hunter College School of Education in the department of Educational Foundations and Counseling. Dr. Taylor provides instruction along with developing internship sites. Recently, Dr. Taylor served as the Executive Director with Greenhope Services for Women helping women with substance use disorders who were formally incarcerated. She has 23 years of professional experience including staff development, university teaching, serving women and youth, and working with the criminal justice community. In 2013, Dr. Taylor was selected as a Fellow of the New York University’s Research for Leadership in Action’s inaugural IGNITE Fellowship for Women of Color in the Social Sector. Dr. Taylor has served as an adjunct professor at New York University, NYACK College, and The College of New Rochelle teaching courses such as research methods, statistics, career counseling, and medical aspects of disabilities. As an educator, Dr. Taylor is constantly seeking creative ways to foster a dynamic learning environment and promoting creative thinking in the classroom. She has also conducted many presentations and seminars addressing topics such as strategic planning, substance use disorders, mental health, women and incarceration, reentry services and justice reform – criminal, racial and social. Dr. Taylor is currently the co-chair of the Equity and Advocacy Committee for the School of Education. She is a member of the Hunter Presidential Task Force to Advance Racial Equity. Dr. Taylor is a committee member of The Independent Commission on New York City Criminal Justice and Incarceration Reform which is responsible for helping with New York City’s decision to close Rikers Island jail. She is also serving on the MOCJ Justice Implementation Task Force Working Group on Culture Change. The group advises on policies to create a justice system where individuals in New York City jails interact in a safe and respectful environment. She is currently serving as a member of the Justice for Women COVID-19 Taskforce. She previously served as a liaison for the New York City Alternative to Incarceration Coalition, a member of the NY County Behavioral Health Diversion Forum, and was also a member of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo’s executive committee “Work for Success,” employment initiative for the formerly incarcerated. She has served as a member of the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice (MOCJ) Reentry Committee. She was the co-chair of the Manhattan Recovery Community Coalition. To reach Dr. Taylor, email her at: alethea.taylor@hunter.cuny.edu
| Panel C: Title IX Regulations: Bargaining Issues for Unions and Institutions with Rana Jaleel, Assistant Professor, Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, University of California, Davis, Lance Houston, University EEO, Inc., Debra Osofsky, Negotiator, Educator and Contract Specialist, and Judi Burgess, Director of Labor Relations, Boston University, Moderator. |
Do you have the information you need to protect your interests when it comes to the intersection of Title IX law and collective bargaining? Some of the most sweeping changes to the Title IX landscape have gone into effect recently, and those changes impact your bargaining obligations and opportunities, whether you are a public or private institution or a labor union. This expert panel will give you a basic understanding of the rules and how to apply them in your unique setting.
Click on the Names Below for Panelist Biographies
Lance Toron Houston, J.D., LL.M., serves as founder of University EEO, Inc. (www.universityeeo.com), a boutique higher education equal opportunity, Title IX and labor relations consulting firm located in Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA. Lance Houston holds a Bachelor’s of Liberal Arts Degree (A.L.B.) from Harvard University, a Juris Doctor from Suffolk University Law School and graduated cum laude with an LL.M. in labor and Employment Law from Atlanta’s John Marshall Law School where his dissertation critically examined Title IX Sexual Assault Investigations, the Clear and Convincing Evidence Standard within Public Higher Education Collective Bargaining Agreements and the Conflicting Constitutional Due Process implications of the “Preponderance of the Evidence” standard as set forth in the U.S. Department of Education’s 2011 Dear Colleague Letter, 34 Hofstra Lab. & Emp. L.J. 321. Lance Houston will complete a terminal law degree, an S.J.D. in 2022, with a dissertation focus in Title IX, Academic Labor and Due Process in Higher Education. Lance Houston serves on the roster of Expert Witnesses with Thomson Reuters Expert Witness Services (Now RoundTable) in the areas of Labor Law and Title IX. Most notably, the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights (“OCR”) cited and quoted Lance Houston as a source authority in its May 2020 Title IX Final Rule Regulations (Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Sex in Education Programs or Activities Receiving Federal Financial Assistance) in the area of Title IX, the Evidentiary Standard of Proof and Campus Labor Unions, See May 2020 Title IX Final Rule Regulations, 85 FR 30378 n. 1424 and n. 1426. The above law review article, with reasoning, quotes and recommendations codified by the DOE/OCR Title IX Final Rule helped establish a new area of Title IX and Labor Law and also helped create a standard of proof campus uniformity requirement on all college campuses nationwide. See 34 CFR §106.45(b)(1)(vii).
Debra Osofsky Esq. of EPT Legal, is a graduate of Harvard Law School and of the Cornell School of Industrial Labor Relations and has been practicing law, advising clients, providing executive leadership and/or training professionals for almost 30 years. Debra began her legal career in law school working with police officers in criminal investigation matters under Robert Morgenthau at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. Thereafter she practiced as a general litigator with Jeffer Mangels and as a general litigator and criminal defense attorney with Shaw, Pittman, Potts and Trowbridge, before specializing in labor and employment law. Debra joined the Air Line Pilots Association, rising to Senior Contract Administrator over the course of a decade of negotiating and administering contracts, advocating in arbitrations, and teaching pilots leadership, negotiation, and advocacy skills. While at Air Line Pilots Association, Debra also investigated sexual harassment complaints, employee conflicts, and other workplace disputes and proposed resolutions, and recommendations involving workplace issues. Debra is a certified workplace investigator certified by Employee and Labor Relations Academy. Among her many professional appointments, Debra has served as the National Director of News and Broadcast at the American Federation of Television and Radio artists (now SAG-AFTRA), where she represented 9,000 television and radio professionals. She has also served as the Executive Director of the faculty union at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (now Rutgers) Biomedical. As a workplace expert, she recently completed an extended engagement with the Amalgamated Transit Union, where she worked for a newly-elected administration, applying a union-side version of management consulting to advise the officers on human resources policy, staff and organizational responsibilities, and work flow. She currently teaches labor law, negotiation, contract language drafting and other workplace-related subjects with Cornell University’s Scheinman Institute on Conflict Resolution. Debra is licensed in California and the District of Columbia.
Rana M. Jaleel is an Assistant Professor in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at the University of California, Davis. She holds a PhD in American Studies from New York University, a JD from the Yale Law School, and an MFA from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. From 2013-2015, Dr. Jaleel was the Center for Reproductive Rights Fellow at Columbia Law School. Her book, The Work of Rape, is a critical genealogy of rape and law in the wake of the Cold War’s end. Beginning with the ethnic wars of the 1990s and continuing through the War on Terror and contemporary debates regarding Title IX on university campuses, chapters address how multi-sited feminist and activist debates around empire and colonialism transform the meanings of and relationships between sexual consent, sexual coercion, and state power. Active since graduate school in the American Association of University Professors, she presently serves as the Chair of the Committee for Gender & Sexuality in the Profession (formerly known as Committee W). She also serves on the editorial board of the Critical Ethnic Studies Journal. Her work has been published in Cultural Studies, Social Text: Periscope, The Brooklyn Law Review, and other venues.
Judi Burgess is the University’s Director of Labor Relations. Judi launched her career as an attorney with the National Labor Relations Board’s Philadelphia and Boston Regional Offices. Prior to joining Boston University, she worked at the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (the T) as the Assistant General Manager for Employee and Labor Relations where she had oversight of Labor and Employee Relations, Human Resources, and Occupational Health Services. Judi was formerly a member of the Board of Advisors for the National Center for Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions. Her passion as the University’s LR Director is found in ensuring balanced labor harmony for faculty and staff through the negotiation of fair and transparent collective bargaining agreements on behalf of the University, as well as ensuring compliance with respect to the NLRA, and other labor and employment laws pertaining to the Higher Ed workplace. Judi is a graduate of Howard University, and holds a Juris Doctorate from Villanova University School of Law, as well as certifications in management, and trial advocacy through the NLRB’s Trial Advocacy Institute. Judi is a sports enthusiast, has played rugby competitively, and served as the past president of the Philadelphia Women’s Rugby Club. She has been active in the fight for marriage equality, and her family was featured by GLAD (GLBTQ Legal Advocates and Defenders) in the legal fight against DOMA. (http://legacy.glad.org/doma/stories/a-very-ordinary-family). Judi lives outside of Boston with her wife and their three children.
12:15 pm – 12:30 pm EST
Break
12:30 pm – 1:45 pm EST
| Presentation: Growth in Union Density Among Academic Labor, 2012-2019 with Jacob Apkarian, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Department of Behavioral Sciences, York College, CUNY and National Center Affiliated Researcher, Joseph van der Naald, Graduate Student Researcher, Program in Sociology, Graduate Center, CUNY and National Center Affiliated Researcher, Gary Rhoades, Professor and Director, Center for the Study of Higher Education, University of Arizona, JCBA Co-editor, Commentator, Adrianna Kezar, Endowed Professor and Dean’s Professor of Leadership, USC, Director of the Pullias Center, Commentator, and William A. Herbert, Distinguished Lecturer and National Center Executive Director, Moderator and Presenter. |
Click on the Names Below for Panelist Biographies
Jacob Apkarian is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Behavioral Sciences at York College, City University of New York. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Riverside, and was previously an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Virginia Tech. His current research focuses on the intersection of finance and higher education as well as unionization and collective bargaining at colleges and universities. His published work on governance in higher education has appeared in the journal Tertiary Education and Management. Last year, he served as moderator for the panel on “Markets and Higher Education” at the 44th annual conference of the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions. His recent publication in Socio-Economic Review examines conflicting logics in corporate finance.
Joseph van der Naald is a PhD candidate in the program in sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center and a graduate student researcher at the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions at Hunter College, CUNY. Joseph’s work at the National Center has focused primarily on the unionization of graduate student employees since 2012, and he is a co-author on the upcoming 2020 Supplementary Directory of New Bargaining Agents and Contracts in Institutions of Higher Education, 2013-2019 alongside National Center Executive Director William Herbert and National Center Research Fellow Jacob Apkarian.
Gary Rhoades is Professor and Director, Center for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Arizona. His research addresses restructuring of academic institutions and occupations/professions, as in, Managed Professionals: Unionized Faculty and Restructuring Academic Labor (SUNY, 1998), and (with Sheila Slaughter) Academic Capitalism and the New Economy (Johns Hopkins, 2004). A former AAUP General Secretary and New Faculty Majority Foundation board member, Rhoades works with various unions at the national and local level. Currently, he is working on an updated and expanded analysis of unionizing and unionized academic employees, in a book entitled, Organizing “professionals”: Academic employees negotiating a new academy. Rhoades is currently an ex-officio Board Member of the National Center and is Co-editor of the Journal of Collective Bargaining in the Academy.
Adrianna Kezar is Dean’s Professor of Leadership, Wilbur-Kieffer Professor of Higher Education, at the University of Southern California and Director of the Pullias Center for Higher Education within the Rossier School of Education. Dr. Kezar is a national expert of student success, equity and diversity, the changing faculty, change, governance and leadership in higher education. Kezar is well published with 20 books/monographs, over 100 journal articles, and over a hundred book chapters and reports. Recent books include: The Gig Academy (2019) (Johns Hopkins Press), Administration for social justice and equity (2019) (Routledge), The Faculty for the 21st century: Moving to a mission-oriented and learner-centered faculty model (2016) (Rutgers Press),and How Colleges Change (2018) (2nd ed) (Routledge Press).
William A. Herbert is Executive Director of the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions, a Distinguished Lecturer at Hunter College and a Faculty Associate at the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute. His scholarship focuses on labor law, history, and policy. He is a co-editor of the treatise Lefkowitz on Public Sector Labor and Employment Law and he has authored book chapters and articles on public sector labor issues, and other subjects. Prior to joining the Hunter College faculty, Mr. Herbert was Deputy Chair and Counsel to the New York State Public Employment Relations Board (PERB). Before his tenure at PERB, he was Senior Counsel for CSEA Local 1000, AFSCME, AFL-CIO.
1:45 pm – 2:00 pm EST
| Plenary Greetings with Christina R. Cutlip, Senior Managing Director, Institutional Relationships, TIAA. |
2:00 pm – 3:30 pm EST
| Plenary: The Student Debt Crisis: History, Consequences, and Solutions with Elizabeth Tandy Shermer, Associate Professor, Loyola University Chicago, Caitlin Zaloom, Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis, New York University, Jennifer Mishory, Senior Fellow and Senior Policy Advisor, Century Foundation, and Suzanne Kahn, Director, Education, Jobs, and Worker Power and the Great Democracy Initiative at the Roosevelt Institute, Participant and Moderator. |
This panel will explore America’s $1.6 trillion student debt crisis. Among other topics, we will dig into the origins of this crisis in policy decisions made over the course of the 20th century and the different consequences the choice to push the financing of higher education onto individuals has had for students of color, low-income students, and women. Panelists will also discuss how recent policy proposals to address ballooning student debt levels engage with the nuances of this crisis.
Click on the Names Below for Panelist Biographies
Elizabeth Tandy Shermer is an associate professor of history at Loyola University Chicago, where she teaches courses on labor, capitalism, and politics. She has written about those topics for US and international news outlets, academic journals, and scholarly books. Her publications include her 2013 book, Sunbelt Capitalism: Phoenix and Transformation of American Politics, 2013 edited collection, Barry Goldwater and the Remaking of the American Political Landscape,and The Right and Labor: Politics, Ideology, and Imagination, a 2012 book that she edited with historian Nelson Lichtenstein. She has been offered and accepted research fellowships around the world, including at Stanford’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Cambridge University’s Faculty of History, and the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center. She is currently finishing a book on the historically complicated finances of public universities, entitled the Business of Education. Harvard University Press will publisher Her history of the student loan industry, Indenturing Students, under its Belknap Press imprint in 2021.
Caitlin Zaloom is a cultural anthropologist and professor of Social & Cultural Analysis at New York University. She studies the cultural dimensions of finance, technology, and economic life. Her latest book, Indebted: How Families Make College Work at Any Cost, explores how the financial pressures of paying for college affect middle-class families. Zaloom is also author of Out of the Pits: Traders and Technology from Chicago to London, editor in Chief of Public Books, and co-editor of the recent volumes Think in Public and Antidemocracy in America. Zaloom’s research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, and Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and her work has been featured in outlets including The New York Times, The Atlantic, Time, NPR, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Times Higher Education. Twitter: @caitlinzaloom
Jen Mishory is a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, working on issues related to workforce, higher education, and health care, and a senior policy advisor. Prior to joining TCF, Jen co-founded and served as the Executive Director of Young Invincibles, which has grown to become the largest advocacy organization in the country representing young Americans. While at YI, Jen published research on and developed policy proposals designed to address the growing economic challenges facing today’s young people, particularly those related to higher education, health care, and workforce development. She led initiatives focused on solutions to a range of those challenges, from improving financial aid and other supports for low-income students to the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. She testified before Congress on those issues on numerous occasions and has been frequently cited in media outlets across the country. She has also served as an expert on financial challenges that face consumers for several entities, including as a member of the Consumer Advisory Board of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, as a consumer advocacy negotiator for the Department of Education’s negotiated rulemaking around student loan repayment, and as a consumer representative for the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. Jen received a bachelor’s degree in economics and political science from UCLA and a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center, where she has taught as an adjunct professor of law.
Suzanne Kahn is Director, Education, Jobs, and Worker Power and the Great Democracy Initiative at the Roosevelt Institute. Suzanne most recently worked as a research analyst at SEIU 32BJ, where she built a program to organize workers in new residential developments. Prior to that she worked on SEIU’s campaign to pass comprehensive healthcare reform. Suzanne holds a Ph.D. in American history from Columbia University and earned her B.A. from Yale University. Her forthcoming book, Divorce, American Style, won the American Society for Legal History’s Cromwell Dissertation Prize.
3:30 pm – 3:45 pm EST
Break
3:45 pm – 5:15 pm EST
| Panel A: Collective Bargaining from All Sides: Unionism, the Faculty Senate, Contingent Faculty, and Academic Administration with Naomi R. Williams, Assistant Professor, Labor Studies and Employment Relations, Rutgers University, Nelson Ouellet, Associate Professor, Université de Moncton, David Hamilton Golland, Professor, History, Governors State University, Jon E. Bekken, Professor, Communications, Albright College, and Theodore Curry, Professor of Human Resources and Labor Relations, Michigan State University, Moderator. |
To what extent are faculty part of the decision-making process of their institutions? To what extent are they employees of their institutions? What responsibilities and rights do faculty have in the workplace? How does this differ from unionized and non-unionized schools? And where do adjuncts fit in? These are but a few of the questions with which our panelists from two countries have wrestled in their recent roles on campus and in their scholarship. Of our four panelists, two have led faculty senates, three are in unionized workplaces, one has been a union grievance officer, two have focused specifically on the concerns of contingent faculty, and one has been a department chair. This panel proposal was originally solicited by LAWCHA President Will Jones for submission for inclusion in the program of the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions conference. It was accepted for that conference, which was delayed until October, 2020, and made virtual. The delay was positive as our topic continues to be vital and relevant. Indeed, just as we had more to say in October 2020 than we did in March 2020, we will have even more to say in May 2021. For that reason, we have reprised our application, but with one change: Dr. Williams, a member of the Roundatble at the National Center Conference, will be our chair/commentator at LAWCHA as she is already expecting to be on the LAWCHA program for another panel.
Click on the Names Below for Panelist Biographies
Naomi R. Williams is Assistant Professor of Labor Studies and Employment Relations in the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers University, where she is a proud rank and file member of the AAUP/AFT chapter. Dr. Williams is also active in LAWCHA’s Contingent Faculty Committee.
Nelson Ouellet is an Associate Professor in the Département d’histoire et de géographie, Université de Moncton, where he has served multiple stints as senior grievance officer for the faculty association (ABPPUM), managing more than 80 cases.
David Hamilton Golland is Professor of History and Coordinator of Humanities at Governors State University in Chicago’s south suburbs, where he serves as President of the Faculty Senate, is a proud member of the UPI/IFT/AFT chapter, and has participated in contract negotiations.
Jon E. Bekken is Professor of Communications at Albright College, a non-union private college, where he served as Chair of the Faculty until August 2020. He has negotiated successful policy changes to improve job security and research support for contingent faculty and has previously worked with the Boston Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor.
Theodore H. (Terry) Curry is Professor of Human Resources and Labor Relations at Michigan State University (MSU). He served from 2007 until 2020 as Associate Provost and Associate Vice President for Academic Human Resources at MSU with responsibility for faculty affairs issues for more 5700 faculty, academic staff, and executive managers. In his 13 years in the role, he managed the promotion and tenure process, reviewing more than 2,000 reappointment, promotion and tenure dossiers. In collaboration with the Office of Employee Relations, he was responsible for contract negotiations and administration with the MSU non-tenure track teaching faculty and graduate teaching assistants. Professor Curry and his team worked closely with academic governance and the Council of Deans to revise and create policies to improve the quality, diversity and climate at MSU. Before his appointment as associate provost, Curry served for eight years as director of the School of Labor and Industrial Relations (now Human Resources and Labor Relations). He joined the faculty of the school in 1976 rising to full professor and associate director before his appointment as director in 1999.
| Panel B: Affirmative Action in Higher Education, Post-Pandemic with Victor Goode, Associate Professor, CUNY Law School, Cara McClellan, Assistant Counsel, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Risa Lieberwitz, General Counsel, AAUP and Professor of Labor and Employment Law, Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations, and Lili Palacios-Baldwin, Deputy General Counsel for Labor, Employment & Litigation, Tufts University, Moderator. |
Affirmative action in higher education is facing more and more challenges. Come learn about the history of affirmative action and how we have gotten from affirmative action to diversity. Get updated on recent litigation and the current state of law affecting affirmative action in higher education. Gather ideas, strategies and approaches for navigating these difficult but important issues on campus and in considering creative approaches for working towards equity and inclusion for the common good. Affirmative action in higher education is facing more and more challenges. Come learn about the history of affirmative action and how we have gotten from affirmative action to diversity. Get updated on recent litigation and the current state of law affecting affirmative action in higher education. Gather ideas, strategies and approaches for navigating these difficult but important issues on campus and in considering creative approaches for working towards equity and inclusion for the common good.
Click on the Names Below for Panelist Biographies
Victor Goode, Associate Professor, earned a B.A. from Northwestern University and a J.D. from Rutgers Law School. He has practiced in the areas of affirmative action, housing, and other civil rights issues. Before joining the Law School faculty, he served as Executive Director of the National Conference of Black Lawyers, founded the Affirmative Action Coordinating Center, worked as part of the legal team that filed amicus briefs in three landmark affirmative action cases (Bakke, Weber, and Fullilove), and taught in the Urban Legal Studies Program at the City College of New York. He has served continuously at the Law School since 1983-as Professor of Law and as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs-except for two years as Visiting Professor at Columbia University Law School, where he taught in the Fair Housing Clinic and assisted in the introduction of computer-assisted course material for the Clinic. He has lectured widely on teaching professional skills and values, and has given Congressional testimony on police misconduct and racially-motivated violence. His many organizational affiliations have included the Society of American Law Teachers, the Northeast Regional BLSA Job Fair, and, most recently, the New York City Open Housing Center. He teaches a variety of first-year courses and has also taught Housing Discrimination Law, and a Race and the Law seminar.
Cara McClellan is Assistant Counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund where she works primarily on education access and ending the criminalization of youth of color. She is a co-author of the report Our Girls, Our Future: Investing in Opportunity and Reducing Reliance on the Criminal Justice System in Baltimore and counsel on lawsuits including SFFA v. Harvard, Robinson v. Wentzell, Bradford v. Maryland State Board of Education, and I.S. v. Binghamton School District. She has published in the Columbia Journal of Race & Law, Yale Law & Policy Review Inter Alia, The Hill, and the Huffington Post. Prior to joining LDF, Cara was a law clerk on the United States District Court for the District of Delaware and the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Cara graduated with honors from Yale College, received an M.S.Ed. from Penn Graduate School of Education and a J.D. from Yale Law School. She previously taught middle school with Teach for America in Philadelphia.
Risa L. Lieberwitz is a Professor of Labor and Employment Law in the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR) and an Associate of the Worker Institute at Cornell. She also serves as General Counsel of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), and is a member of the AAUP Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure. Prior to becoming a professor, she was an attorney for the National Labor Relations Board in the regional office in Atlanta, Georgia.
Lili Palacios-Baldwin began her career at Robinson & Cole LLP where she practiced in the areas of land use, real estate, and labor and employment law, following co-ops with the Massachusetts Land Court, Equal Rights Advocates, and the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, Inc. Ms. Palacios-Baldwin later served as a Senior Trial Attorney at the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) where she practiced for almost ten years. While with the EEOC, she litigated individual and class cases within the federal courts, conducted training and public presentations, and worked with federal investigators on both enforcement and litigation matters throughout New England, New York, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. Upon leaving the EEOC, Ms. Palacios-Baldwin continued her law practice with the firm of Hirsch Roberts Weinstein LLP, a Boston boutique labor, employment and litigation firm. Ms. Palacios-Baldwin joined the Tufts University Office of University Counsel as Associate General Counsel for Labor and Employment in 2013. Ms. Palacios-Baldwin is a graduate of The Johns Hopkins University and Northeastern University School of Law.
| Panel C: Retirement Plan Trends in the COVID-19 Pandemic with Patricia McConnell, Levy, Ratner, PC, Gary Herzlich, Senior Director, Associate General Counsel, TIAA, Susan E. Bernstein, Schulte, Roth & Zabel LLP, and Christina Cutlip, Senior Managing Director, Institutional Relationships, TIAA, Moderator. |
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a major impact on retirement plans. Higher education has reacted to the financial impact by implementing furloughs, layoffs, pay freezes, pay reductions and reduction in or elimination of retirement contributions. All of these actions have an impact of retirement readiness, at a time when market volatility is also impacting retirement accounts. Legislation has been passed to ease the financial burdens of those impacted by the pandemic. This panel will explore the legislative and regulatory impacts and well as trends in higher education on retirement plans such as: the SECURE Act, the CAREs Act, Electronic Delivery and the regulatory response, Changes to retirement plans due to pandemic (ER contributions), and the use of Financial Exigency.
Click on the Names Below for Panelist Biographies
Patricia McConnell, Levy Ratner. Pat works to protect workers’ retirement and healthcare security through the representation of collectively bargained pension and welfare benefit plans in the private and public sectors and labor unions. Her practice encompasses the full range of employee benefits law issues, from the establishment, design and qualification of employee benefit plans to the administration, merger and termination of plans, including by mass withdrawal, and the collection of withdrawal liability. She counsels plan trustees and administrators on fiduciary responsibility, legal compliance, fund administration and investment matters and handles employee benefit claims, appeals and litigation on behalf of both plans and participants. She also advises on the employee benefits aspects of purchases and sales of businesses and compliance with ERISA, COBRA, FMLA, the Affordable Care Act, HIPAA, the Pension Protection Act and other employee benefit and employment laws. In addition to traditional defined benefit pension plans, Pat represents 401(k) and annuity plans and advises on legal compliance by ESOPs. For her entire career, Pat has represented local and international labor organizations, handling litigation, arbitration, collective bargaining, internal union governance and elections, and proceedings before the National Labor Relations Board and other federal and state administrative agencies. She also represents individuals regarding employment matters, including discrimination and wage and hour claims. Before joining Levy Ratner, she was a partner of Meyer, Suozzi, English and Klein, P.C. and Vladeck, Waldman, Elias and Engelhard, P.C. Pat is rated “AV Preeminent” by Martindale‑Hubbell, the highest level of professional excellence, and since 2013 has been recognized by New York Super Lawyers in the area of employee benefits. She is a former board member of the AFL‑CIO Lawyers Coordinating Committee.
Gary E. Herzlich is a Senior Director and Associate General Counsel with TIAA and is a General Counsel with TIAA Charitable, Inc. Mr. Herzlich advises on Section 403(b) plans, Section 401(a) qualified plans, nonqualified deferred compensation arrangements, fiduciary issues, compliance, and general pension matters. Mr. Herzlich’s practice also focuses on donor-advised funds. Before joining TIAA, Mr. Herzlich was a member of the Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation group of Proskauer Rose LLP. Mr. Herzlich received his J.D. from the Boston University School of Law and his LL.M. in Taxation from the New York University Law School.
Susan E. Bernstein, Special Counsel at Schulte Roth & Zabel, focuses her practice on ERISA issues for single, multiple and multiemployer qualified and nonqualified benefit plans, including: designing and amending plans; ongoing plan administration and regulatory compliance; monitoring legislative and regulatory developments; complying with ERISA reporting and disclosure requirements; preparing and negotiating IRS, DOL and PBGC filings; communicating with employees; and counseling clients on issues related to the merger and termination of benefit plans. Her experience includes advising clients on the design and administration of health and welfare benefit plans, including compliance issues regarding health care reform, COBRA and HIPAA, negotiating employment agreements and counseling employers on all aspects of executive compensation, including Section 409A compliance. Susan also advises nonprofit and educational institutions on a wide range of issues, including board governance, by-laws, transitions, and employee benefit matters including 403(b) plans, 457(b) plans and 457(f) plans. Additionally, she negotiates employment contracts and nonqualified deferred compensation arrangements with particular attention to 990 reporting issues, reasonable compensation and compliance with the IRS intermediate sanction requirements, as well as New York Executive Order 38.
Christina Cutlip is a Senior Managing Director for the Institutional Financial Services division of TIAA (www.tiaa.org), a Fortune 100 financial services organization. She is the head of the Client Engagement & National Advocacy team, which is responsible for expanding relationships with industry and government associations, while also focusing on client engagement. In 2011, Christina was recognized as TIAA’s Working Mother of the Year by Working Mother magazine and received an Outstanding Volunteer Award in 2016 from The Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) State Fund Network for her contributions to higher education. She was appointed by the Secretary of Labor to the Department of Labor ERISA Advisory Council for a three-year term from 2013 – 2016. Christina is on the board of The Council of Independent Colleges (CIC), and chairs the board of Almasi Collaborative Arts, a non-profit organization that strives to create and facilitate artistic collaborations between African and American artists and American artistic institutions. She serves on the board of retirement healthcare provider Emeriti, and on the advisory councils of WISER and ERIC. Christina earned a B.A. in Economics from Grinnell College, an MBA from Regis University and a PhD in Organizational Leadership from Northcentral University. As a FINRA registered representative and principal, she holds Series 7, 24 and 51 licenses while maintaining accident, health, life and variable annuity licenses. Additionally, Christina has obtained the Certified Employee Benefits Specialist (CEBS) professional designation.
5:15 pm – 5:30 pm EST
| Closing/Summary with National Center Executive Director, William A. Herbert. |
Tuesday, October 20, 2020
8:30 am – 9:00 am EST
| Opening Remarks and Announcement about the Journal of Collective Bargaining in the Academy with William A. Herbert, Executive Director, National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions, Hunter College, CUNY, David Cecil, Executive Director, United Academics, AAUP-AFT Local 3209, Jeffrey Cross, Former Associate VP, Academic Affairs, Eastern Illinois University (Emeritus), and Gary Rhoades, Professor and Director, Center for the Study of Higher Education, University of Arizona, Journal of Collective Bargaining in the Academy Co-editors. |
9:00 am – 10:30 am EST
| Panel A: Unemployment Insurance Policies and Practices: Adjunct Faculty, COVID-19, and Beyond with Michele Evermore, Senior Research and Policy Analyst, National Employment Law Project, George Wentworth, Of Counsel, National Employment Law Project, Arnab Datta, Senior Legislative Counsel, Employ America, and Francisco Diez, Worker Justice Policy Advocate, Center for Popular Democracy, Participant and Moderator. |
This webinar examines the unemployment insurance (UI) system. It touches on the primary features of the system as a whole as well as the particular ways in which Adjunct Faculty interact with that system. Additional topics will include current efforts underway to reform current UI policies and the current mobilization, organizing, and advocacy around the CAREs Act and it’s UI supplement, Pandemic Unemployment Compensation.
Click on the Names Below for Panelist Biographies
Michele Evermore joined NELP in 2018 as a senior policy analyst for social insurance. In this role, she works with states to improve their unemployment insurance systems and public sector pensions. Federally, she has worked for a more inclusive and sufficient unemployment insurance system, leading to key protections for unemployed workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. She also works to preserve and improve the Social Security system and to develop innovative solutions to our nation’s looming retirement security crisis. In addition, she works with both national and state level worker advocacy groups to assist with their capacity to mobilize workers to achieve the kind of lasting structural change that can only be accomplished through movement building. In the past, she has worked to promote worker power as a legislative advocate for labor unions, including the Service Employees International Union District 1199 New England and National Nurses United. She also worked for the Obama Department of Labor to advance sound benefits policy, employment policy for people with disabilities, and equal pay for equal work. Prior to that, she worked in Congress for a decade, primarily for Senator Tom Harkin and also for the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. In those roles, she worked to advance worker protections, organizing rights, and improving retirement security in a variety of private pension plan designs, as well as Social Security. Michele has testified before both the Senate Finance Committee and the House Oversight Special Select Committee on the Coronavirus.
George Wentworth is senior counsel with the National Employment Law Project (NELP), where he has worked since 2009. He provides legal research, policy analysis, and legislative advocacy in the area of unemployment insurance (UI). George has worked extensively with state organizations advocating for strong UI programs and has testified before numerous state legislatures. He was part of NELP’s efforts to insure a strong federal response to record high unemployment during and immediately after the Great Recession. Before joining NELP, George worked at the Connecticut Department of Labor for 35 years, where he spent 20 years as the agency’s chief legal counsel and 12 years managing unemployment insurance and employment and training programs. He was chief drafter of Connecticut’s unemployment insurance eligibility regulations and represented Connecticut as a member of the USDOL Unemployment Insurance Reform Workgroup. George has authored and co-authored numerous papers and reports on all aspects of UI benefits, financing, and reemployment services. His most recent work includes Closing Doors on the Unemployed: Why Most Jobless Workers Are Not Receiving Unemployment Insurance and What States Can Do About It (December 2017) , and in collaboration with the Century Foundation, A New Safety Net for an Era of Unstable Earnings (December 2016). He has appeared on C-Span’s Washington Journal and Need to Know on PBS, and his writing has appeared in numerous publications including Politico, The Nation, The Hill, and The Huffington Post. He is a graduate of St. Bonaventure University and the University of Connecticut School Of Law. George is admitted to practice law in Connecticut.
Arnab Datta recently served as the Senior Legislative Counsel for Employ America, a research and advocacy organization fighting for full employment. EA pushes monetary and fiscal policies to boost employment, wages and job quality. Prior to joining EA, he worked on housing policy for Senator Michael Bennet, and clerked on the Senate Judiciary Committee for Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein. He holds a Juris Doctor from George Washington University Law School, a Masters of Science in Foreign Service from Georgetown University, and previously worked as a teacher and school leader in Bombay, India.
Francisco Diez is the Worker Justice Policy Advocate at Center for Popular Democracy. He works to amplify worker voices and power within the workplace and improve workplace protections. He supports affiliate organizing for reforms to unemployment insurance, Fair Workweek legislation, paid leave policies, and the fight against forced arbitration. In the past, Francisco has worked as a content researcher for TED Talks and as an organizer and strategist with the New York City Democratic Socialists of America and for the Bernie 2016 Campaign. He holds a Master in Public Affairs from Princeton University, where he focused on Economics and Public Policy, and a Bachelor’s degree in Ethics, Politics, and Economics from Yale University. You can follow him on Twitter @fdiezb.
| Panel B: Labor as Contingent as Free Speech? An Analysis of Recent Adjunct Faculty First Amendment Cases with Nora Devlin, Doctoral Candidate, Rutgers Graduate School of Education, Stacy Hawkins, Professor of Law, Rutgers Law School, Commentator, Martin Malin, Professor of Law and Co-Director, Institute for Law and the Workplace, Chicago-Kent College of Law, Illinois Institute of Technology, Commentator, and Christopher Simeone, AAUP, Moderator. |
This panel focuses on the constitutional protections available for adjunct faculty. Specifically, we discuss what speech by adjuncts has been characterized as protected speech under the First Amendment in recent court decisions. We discuss litigation strategies and policy recommendations as well as areas of continuing vulnerability or concern for adjuncts unprotected by a collective bargaining agreement.
Click on the Names Below for Panelist Biographies
Nora Devlin is a PhD Candidate (ABD) in Higher Education and doctoral fellow at Rutgers Graduate School of Education. Her research interests include higher education law; just and humane organizational/governance structures in academia; gender and sexuality in higher education; and academic freedom, faculty labor, and the professoriate. Her dissertation examines faculty First Amendment cases brought against (public) college and university employers. Nora’s research seeks to map and theorize how this legal landscape shapes understandings of academic freedom within the professoriate, university administrations, and the courts, while offering practical recommendations for faculty, labor organizers, and university leaders. In the 2019-2020 academic year, Nora was awarded a yearlong fellowship at the Rutgers Center for Cultural Analysis for the theme The University and Its Publics. Nora has presented her research on free speech in higher education at multiple national conferences including the AAUP’s national conference on higher education in 2018. In November 2020, Nora will present her preliminary dissertation findings at the Education Law Association conference as well. Nora’s experience in higher education includes serving as an academic and executive coach, an intergroup dialogue co-facilitator, an editorial assistant for scholarly journals, a teaching assistant, and as an elected member to the executive council of a national scholarly organization (AESA). Nora earned her master’s degree in social and philosophical foundations of education at Rutgers Graduate School of Education, a graduate certificate in comprehensive evidence-based coaching from Fielding Graduate University, and her bachelor’s degree in Sociology & Spanish from the Templeton Honors College at Eastern University. Nora is currently applying for faculty positions and post-doctoral fellowships for the 21-22 academic year.
Stacy Hawkins is a frequent writer and sought-after speaker on the issue of employment law and diversity. She’s served on the Philadelphia Diversity Law Group and the Pennsylvania Bar Association Commission on Women in the Profession Diversity Task Force. She worked as a senior labor and employment attorney and as the director of diversity for major law firms. Professor Hawkins teaches courses in Constitutional Law, Employment Law and an original seminar on Diversity and the Law. Her scholarship focuses on the intersection of law and diversity and has been published in the Fordham Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law and the Columbia Journal of Race and Law, among others. She is a recognized expert on employment law and diversity and has been interviewed or quoted in various news outlets, including the Courier Post, Law 360 and Philadelphia Magazine. She is an experienced employment lawyer and diversity professional. Prior to law teaching, Professor Hawkins spent more than a decade in private practice advising clients in both the public and private sector on the development and implementation of legally defensible diversity policies and programs. She served as Special Diversity Counsel to Holland & Knight, LLP and was the first Diversity Director for Ballard Spahr, LLP. As a management side employment lawyer, Professor Hawkins has counseled and defended employers in a wide range of legal matters, including labor relations, employment discrimination, wage and hour compliance, and affirmative action planning. She has held or holds a number of professional and civic appointments, including as an Advisory Board Member of the Public Interest Law Center, as an inaugural member of the Pennsylvania Bar Association Diversity Team, and as a member of the Board of the Philadelphia Diversity Law Group. Professor Hawkins earned her B.A. from the University of Virginia and her J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center where she was the national champion of the 1996 Frederick Douglass Moot Court Competition.
Martin H. Malin is professor of law and co-director of the Institute for Law and the Workplace at Chicago-Kent College of Law, Illinois Institute of Technology. He teaches Labor Law, Employment Discrimination, Public Sector Employees, ADR in the Workplace, and Contracts. He received his B.A. from Michigan State University’s James Madison College and his J.D. from George Washington University, where he was an editor of the law review and elected to the Order of the Coif. He joined the Chicago-Kent faculty in 1980 after serving as law clerk to United States District Judge Robert E. DeMascio in Detroit and on the faculty of Ohio State University. Professor Malin is a former national chair of the Labor Relations and Employment Law Section of the Association of American Law Schools, a former Secretary of the ABA Section on Labor and Employment Law, a former member of the Executive Committee of The Labor Law Group, and a former member of the Board of Governors and vice president of the National Academy of Arbitrators and a former member of the Board of Governors of the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers. During 1984 and 1985, Professor Malin served as consultant to the Illinois State, Local and Educational Labor Relations Boards and drafted the boards’ regulations implementing the Illinois Public Labor Relations Act and the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Act. From 2004 to 2008, he served as reporter to the Neutrality Project of the Association of Labor Relations Agencies, which produced a mini-treatise on labor board and mediation agency impartiality. In October 2009, President Obama appointed Professor Malin as a member of the Federal Service Impasses Panel, which resolves impasses in collective bargaining between federal agencies and unions that represent their employees. President Obama reappointed Professor Malin in 2014. He served until May 2017 when he and the other Obama appointees were removed by President Trump. In 2016, the ABA presented Professor Malin with the Arvid Anderson Award for lifetime contributions to public sector labor law. Professor Malin has presented seminars to numerous management and labor groups. He regularly teaches the FMCS’s course Becoming a Labor Arbitrator. He has written extensively on all aspects of labor and employment law. He has published more than 80 articles and seven books, including Public Sector Employment (West 2004, 3rd ed. 2016), the leading casebook on the law governing public employees, and Labor Law in the Contemporary Workplace (West 2009, 3rd ed. 2019), a leading casebook on labor law. He ranks in the top 10 percent of authors in the Social Science Research Network database in terms of downloads of his work.
| Panel C: Health and Safety Issues and COVID-19 with Deborah Berkowitz, Worker Safety and Health Program Director, National Employment Law Project, Amy Bahruth, Assistant Director for Health and Safety, AFT, Jeffrey Hescock, Executive Director Environmental Health and Safety, UMass Amherst, and Thomas H. Riley, Jr. Executive Director of Labor and Employee Relations and Special Counsel for the University of Illinois System, Moderator. |
Click on the Names Below for Panelist Biographies
Debbie Berkowitz, NELP’s Worker Safety and Health program director, joined NELP (National Employment Labor Project) in 2015, following six years serving as chief of staff and then a senior policy adviser for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) (2009-2015). Debbie has a long record of achievement in the field of occupational safety and health. Her past positions include health and safety director of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union and the health and safety director of the Food and Allied Service Trades Department of the AFL-CIO. Since she joined our team, Debbie has led NELP’s efforts to strengthen federal and state worker safety and health protections, as well as state workers’ compensation laws. She is the author of widely cited NELP reports on improving worker safety and workers’ compensation systems. Debbie works with national and state partners to develop successful policies and campaigns that improve conditions for vulnerable, low-wage workers in dangerous industries, including temporary workers and those in the meat, poultry, and food industry. Debbie is the recipient of numerous awards, including the American Public Health Association’s Alice Hamilton Award.
Amy Bahruth has been a safety and health specialist and educator for over 30 years. She is an associate director in Health Issues at the American Federation of Teachers in Washington, DC, where she has trained hundreds of members and developed curricula on bullying, workplace violence, emergency preparedness, and indoor environmental quality. She previously worked as a staff representative for the Communications Workers of America representing public employees in the state of New Jersey. As a part-time lecturer at the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations, she has taught OSHA, Introduction of Labor Studies and Employment Relations, Development of the Labor Movement II, and Internships in Labor Education. She has been teaching in the labor studies program at the university since 1997. She is a former president of the Rutgers PTL faculty union, American Association of University Professors – American Federation of Teachers (AAUP-AFT) and has served as secretary of the National AFT Staff Union (AFTSU). Ms. Bahruth holds a bachelor’s degree from Rutgers in labor studies and a master’s degree from Hunter College, City University of New York in environmental and occupational health science.
Jeffrey Hescock, Executive Director Environmental Health and Safety, UMass Amherst. Hescock has been with the UMass System serving in an Emergency Management role since 2010, coming to the Amherst campus in 2013. Prior to joining the UMass system, Hescock worked as a senior consultant on emergency management issues for Science Application International Corp., a Framingham-based company. He also served as a regional planner and a government preparedness manager with the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency.
Thomas H. Riley, Jr. is the Executive Director of Labor and Employee Relations and Special Counsel for the University of Illinois System. For over 30 years Mr. Riley has counseled and represented private and public-sector employers on all aspects of labor and employment law issues, including substantial experience handling complex labor matters in higher education. At the University of Illinois, Mr. Riley oversees negotiations, administration and strategy for the university’s 50 collective bargaining agreements across the three campuses in Urbana-Champaign, Chicago and Springfield covering many of the approximately 25,000 employees in a wide range of bargaining units such as service and clerical, health care professionals, trades, police, nurses, faculty and graduate student unions. He counsels university administration to align human resource, budgetary and operational goals and routinely directs and advises on a multitude of labor issues, such as bargaining unit formation, compliance, strikes and picketing, retaliation, interest arbitration, labor litigation and agency matters including unfair labor practice claims and union organizing, arbitration and mediation, and preventive strategies.
10:30 am – 10:45 am EST
Break
10:45 am – 12:15 pm EST
| Panel A: Higher Education Funding After the Pandemic with Thomas Anderson, Executive Director, Union of Part-Time Faculty, AFT Local 477, AFL-CIO, Thomas L. Harnisch, Vice President for Government Relations, State Higher Education Executive Officers Association, Sophia Laderman, Senior Policy Analyst, State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEO), and Fred Floss, Professor and Chair, Department of Economics and Finance, SUNY Buffalo State University and Fiscal Policy Institute, Senior Fellow, Moderator. |
The COVID-19 Pandemic has heightened the financial distress many higher education institutions have been subject to since the great depression. This session looks at the funding issues surrounding higher education coming out of the recession and how the pandemic has speed up the financial decisions colleges and universities face. The session will look at the 2019 State Higher Education Finance (SHEF) SHEEO report to set the stage for this discussion followed by projections in a post pandemic world. Michigan will be used as a case study to talk about these issues and then the session will conclude with how we move forward and advocate for higher education in the new reality.
Click on the Names Below for Panelist Biographies
Thomas Anderson. Tom has taught at WSU since 1981, first as a GTA, and subsequently as either Part-Time Faculty or as a Lecturer, receiving his Ph.D. in Medieval History in 1991. He has also taught as Adjunct Faculty at other institutions at various times. Tom was a charter member in both the Union of Part-time Faculty at Wayne State (UPTF, AFT Local 477) and of the Adjunct Faculty Organization at Henry Ford (AFO, AFT Local 337). He served as the Lead Negotiator for the first three contracts for the AFO and now for four for the UPTF. He helped to fashion the 2012 agreement at Wayne State leading to part-time faculty participation in the 403b retirement program without a match, and its revision in 2016 that provided for a limited employer match. Since 2008, Tom has been the Vice President and Grievance Officer of the UPTF. He was also the Grievance officer for the AFO from 2009, and its part-time Executive Director and internal Vice President from January of 2013, until leaving Henry Ford College in August of 2015. Since then, until his retirement on August 31, Tom has also served as the UPTF’s Executive Director.
Dr. Tom Harnisch joined SHEEO in January 2020. As vice president for government relations, Dr. Harnisch is located in Washington, D.C., where his primary leadership responsibility is planning, implementing, and coordinating SHEEO’s portfolio of federal relations, policy, communication, and advocacy work. He monitors new and potential federal action (legislation, rules, and other policies and actions) that have relevance for our membership. Dr. Harnisch is responsible for bringing these issues to the attention of SHEEO staff and SHEEO’s membership and for articulating their potential impact on our members and the institutions and students they serve. From 2007 to 2019, Dr. Harnisch worked in a series of roles at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU), including as director of state relations and policy analysis. In his role at AASCU, his roles included policy research, analysis, and communication to the AASCU membership and other external stakeholder groups. He helped craft the AASCU Public Policy Agenda and planned the Higher Education Government Relations Conference. His research interests and commentary on higher education finance, access, affordability, and other topics have been cited in over 200 articles, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, Inside Higher Ed, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. He is also an adjunct faculty member at Georgetown University and The George Washington University. Dr. Harnisch earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a master’s from the University of Minnesota, and a doctorate from The George Washington University.
Sophia Laderman is a senior policy analyst at the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEO). In this role, Laderman focuses on higher education finance policy. She leads the State Higher Education Finance (SHEF) project and manages a grant-funded expansion of the SHEF data collection. She has also coauthored reports on student equity, tuition, and affordability. Her research centers around evidence-based state finance policies and promoting the public benefits of higher education. Sophia is currently a Ph.D. candidate in higher education at the University of Denver and an NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellow.
Frederick G. Floss is Professor and Chair of the Department of Economics and Finance at SUNY Buffalo State; and a senior fellow at the Fiscal Policy Institute. Before returning as Chair, Professor Floss was the Executive Director of the Fiscal Policy Institute and President and Vice President for Academics at United University Professions, as well as the Chief Negotiator for the 2008-2011 United University Professions contract. He continues to serve of the Buffalo Fiscal Stability Authority and is Chairperson of the School Board for SUMMIT a school for autistic students. Professor Floss has published in a number of areas including forensic economics, public finance, economics of higher education, wage inequity and international finance. He teaches courses in microeconomic theory, public finance, investment management, econometrics and environmental economics. Professor Floss received his BA in Economics and English from Oswego State and an MA and PhD from the University of Buffalo.
| Panel B: The Old Wolf, Again: Latinx Faculty Negotiations, Recruitment, Retention, and Racism in the Academy with Theresa Montaño, California State University, Northridge, Chicana/o Studies, California Faculty Association, Michael Ortiz, Sul Ross University, José Luis Morín, Chairperson, Department of Latin American and Latinx Studies, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and José Cintrón, Professor, College of Education, CSU Sacramento, California Faculty Association, Moderator. |
Click on the Names Below for Panelist Biographies
Theresa began her teaching career as a middle School para-educator in Northeast Los Angeles. She became a middle and high School Social Studies classroom teacher and taught for 15 years in Los Angeles, CA and Denver, Co. An active unionist, Montaño was also on the staff of United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), where she worked as a professional development specialist and as an area representative for nine years. Theresa was the first coordinator of UTLA’s Helen Bernstein Professional Development Center. While at UTLA, she helped establish a program for teachers interested in securing their National Board certification and helped secure a stipend and retirement benefits for those teachers. In partnership with LAUSD, she engaged in program and curriculum development for Dial-a-Teacher, Multilingual Teacher Academies, the New Teacher Academy, and SB 1969/CLAD certification. She also served on the Board of Directors, House of Representatives, and CTA State Council. 15 years of experience as a middle and high school teacher in Los Angeles, coupled with more than decade in higher education, gives Theresa a special understanding of issues facing educators in California’s public schools. In 2000, she left the UTLA to work as a faculty advisor for the UCLA Teacher Education Program. In 2003, she accepted a position at Cal State Northridge in Chicana/o Studies, area of emphasis: Education. At CSUN, Theresa teaches courses on Equity and Diversity in Schools, The Chicana/o Child, The Chicana/o Adolescent and Chicano Education. She is an advisor for students enrolled in the Chicano/a Studies Masters’ Program and is a member of CSUN Academic Senate Executive board. Dr. Montaño has published articles, research and books on issues related to teacher preparation, bilingual education, union activism and educating the Latino/a and Chicano/a student. Currently, her activist scholarship includes securing Ethnic Studies as a graduation requirement for California’s students and critical race projects on women of color in educator unions. For more than 10 years, she served as leadership in both state and national educators unions. In NEA she was a board director and the president of the National Council for Higher Education and in CTA she served as board member for higher education and CTA Vice President. She has also served as president of educational rights organizations such as the National Association for Multicultural Education and the California Association of Mexican-American Educators. She remains active in the California Faculty Association where she leads the work in public education and serves on the Mesa Directiva of the Association of Raza Educators, Vice President of the Northeast Democratic Club, and co-chairs LULAC’s Higher Education Taskforce. As a member of the California Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Advisory Committee, she was and advisor on the original draft of California’s Ethnic Studies framework. Today, she is co-director of the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium, a team of over fifty experienced Ethnic Studies teachers, faculty and paraeducators from throughout California are drafting a model curriculum for K-12 students in African-American, Asian American, Arab American, Chicana/o, Latino/a and American Indian Studies. In addition, to curriculum development, the LESMC is offering virtual workshops on Ethnic Studies to classroom teachers on lesson plan development and exemplary lessons for teaching in elementary and secondary classroom, aiding selected Districts in the implementation of Ethnic Studies and engaging teacher education faculty and Ethnic Studies faculty on Ethnic Studies teacher preparation.
Dr. Michael Ortiz is an Associate Professor of Mathematics at Sul Ross State University Rio Grande College, where he has worked since 2009. He earned a Doctor of Philosophy Degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 2009, with support from the Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship for Minorities. His professional interests include geometry, theoretical physics, the history of mathematics, humanistic mathematical education, and philosophy. He is serving his fifth term as Faculty Senate President. He resides in Uvalde, Texas.
José Luis Morín is Professor and Chairperson of the Latin American and Latinx Studies Department at John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY). His areas of academic specialization include domestic and international criminal justice, civil rights and international human rights law, Latinx studies, and Latin American studies. He is editor of Latinos and Criminal Justice: An Encyclopedia (2016), which was selected by Library Journal as one of the “Best Reference Titles of 2016.” He is also author of Latino/a Rights and Justice in the United States: Perspectives and Approaches (2nd edition, 2009). Professor Morín’s publications also include “Latinx Communities, the Criminal Justice System, and Literature” (Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature, 2020), “The Social Condition of Stateside Puerto Ricans: Critical Needs and Policy Implications” (CENTRO Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies, 2012), and “Latinas/os and US Prisons: Trends and Challenges” (Latino Studies, 2008). He has also held various administrative positions within City University of New York, including founding Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost of Stella and Charles Guttman Community College (2011-2014), Interim Dean of Undergraduate Studies at John Jay College (2007-2009), and founder and Interim Director of the CUNY-wide Latino Faculty Recruitment Initiative (2006-2007). Prior to coming to CUNY, Professor Morín was a visiting professor at the Center for Hawaiian Studies at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, and served many years as an international human rights and civil rights litigator and advocate with organizations, including the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund (now known as Latino Justice/PRLDEF). A recipient of many honors and awards, Professor Morín was one of ten individuals selected nationwide for the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU)-Kellogg Leadership Fellows Program (2005-2006). In 2007, he received “El Award” for outstanding contribution to the Latino community, presented by the El Diario/La Prensa, the oldest Spanish-language newspaper in the United States. Professor Morín is a graduate of Columbia University and New York University School of Law.
Dr. Cintrón is Professor Emeritus of Education at California State University, Sacramento, College of Education, Teaching Credentials Branch and past Chair of the Bilingual/Multicultural Education Department. He is currently the Multiple and Single Subject Teaching Credentials Bilingual Authorization (Spanish & Hmong) Coordinator and the Northern Regional Director for the National Latino Education Research and Policy NLERAP)/Comprometid@s project, a five-year 2.7 million DOE grant to expand the K-12 Latinx teacher “pipeline.” Professor Cintrón teaches a Racial/Social Justice Critical Multicultural Education course for Single Subject credential candidates and an Introduction to English Learner course for undergrads entering the credentials program. His academic interests include critical/multicultural education theory and curriculum integration, critical race theory, bilingual education, second language acquisition, socio-linguistics, pre-credential teacher preparation, urban education, and school/classroom ethnography. Dr. Cintrón received the Ph.D. (1985) from the University of California, Santa Bárbara in Educational Psychology with specialization in Bilingual and Cross-Cultural Education. He has a B.A in Spanish (Teaching Credential) and an M.A.T. from Purdue University. Sample Publications: 2020 Growing and nurturing future latinx bilingual teachers in California ispanic serving institutions (Chapter Co-author with Jana Noel, Margarita Berta-Ávila, Karina Figueroa-Ramírez) in Handbook of Research on Teachers of Color (Editors, Conra Gist, University of Houston & Travis Bristol, UC Berkeley) Publication spring 2020; 2016 Teaching for critical consciousness: Topics, themes, frameworks, and instructional activities (Chapter Co-author with Adele Arellano, Margarita Berta-Ávila & Barbara Flores) in Growing critically conscious teachers (Editor, Angela Valenzuela, University of Texas, Austin) NY: Teachers College Press; 2003 The politics of survival in academia: Narratives of inequity, resilience, and success. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield (Co-Editor with Lila Jacobs and Cecil Canton); 1993 Healing multicultural America: Mexican immigrants rise to power in rural California. London: Falmer. (Co-author with Henry T. Trueba, Cirenio Rodríguez & Yali Zou).
| Panel C: Contingent Faculty, Job Security, and Academic Freedom with Carl Levine, Levy Ratner P.C., Keila Tennant, Associate General Counsel and VP for Labor Relations, The New School, Sonam Singh, former Unit Chair, BCF-UAW Local 2110, and Barry Miller, Senior Policy Advisor on Labour Relations, Office of the Provost, York University, Moderator. |
This panel will begin with a brief overview of the history of tenure, academic freedom and governance. It will then consider potential challenges or limitations for contingent faculty in exercising academic freedom and participating in University governance, and discuss the question of why it matters. Examples illustrating the challenges and examples of institutional efforts to explore ways of promoting contingent faculty participation in governance will be discussed. The perspectives informing the presentations include those of external labor counsel, senior university administrator, and contingent faculty member and former bargaining unit chair.
Click on the Names Below for Panelist Biographies
Carl Levine, Partner, Levy Ratner. Carl specializes in representing faculty members at all levels, including graduate student employees, adjunct faculty, and contingent and tenure‑track full‑time faculty at major colleges and universities in the New York-New Jersey area. Those institutions include New York University, the New School, Barnard College, New Jersey Institute of Technology and Union County College, among others. He has also assisted individual faculty members in employment disputes at Columbia University, Cornell University, Fordham University, Seton Hall University and others. He not only provides general advice and guidance, but he also litigates complex arbitration cases, and he practices before federal and state labor boards.
Keila Tennent is an associate general counsel of The New School. She has a Bachelor of Arts from Amherst College and a Juris Doctor from Vanderbilt University. Ms. Tennent began working at The New School in 2000. Before joining the university, she worked for King, Pagano and Harrison, a boutique labor and employment firm in New York City; the Nashville office of Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak and Stewart, P.C.; and Strang, Fletcher, Carriger, Walker, Hodge and Smith in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Barry Miller is Senior Policy Advisor on Labour Relations at York University. He has been involved in academic labour relations at the University for over 20 years, first as an associate dean with labour relations responsibilities and, following, as Director/Executive Director of Faculty Relations for the period 2001 to 2017 prior to moving to the Senior Policy Advisor role. Dr. Miller has extensive negotiation experience, including as University lead and chief table spokesperson. In his current role, he works closely with the AVP Labour Relations to support negotiations, including the development of proposals, negotiation strategy and collection and analysis of negotiation-related information, and other strategic and policy matters. Dr. Miller has a tenured faculty position with an academic specialization in linguistics.
12:15 pm – 12:30 pm EST
Break
12:30 pm – 1:45 pm EST
| Presentation: Race and Labor In Historical and Contemporary Contexts with Bill Fletcher, Jr. author and activist, former president of TransAfrica Forum, and Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies, Derryn Moten, Alabama State University, co-president of the Alabama State University Faculty-Staff Alliance and a vice president of the Alabama AFL-CIO, Discussant, Sherri-Ann Butterfield, Executive Vice Chancellor and Associate Professor, Sociology, Office of the Chancellor, Rutgers University—Newark, Discussant, and DeWayne Sheafter, President, National Council for Higher Education/NEA, Moderator. |
Click on the Names Below for Panelist Biographies
Bill Fletcher Jr has been an activist since his teen years. Upon graduating from college, he went to work as a welder in a shipyard, thereby entering the labor movement. Over the years he has been active in workplace and community struggles as well as electoral campaigns. He has worked for several labor unions in addition to serving as a senior staffperson in the national AFL-CIO. Fletcher is the former president of TransAfrica Forum; a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies; an editorial board member of BlackCommentator.com; and in the leadership of several other projects. Fletcher is the co-author (with Peter Agard) of “The Indispensable Ally: Black Workers and the Formation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, 1934-1941”; the co-author (with Dr. Fernando Gapasin) of “Solidarity Divided: The crisis in organized labor and a new path toward social justice“; and the author of “‘They’re Bankrupting Us’ – And Twenty other myths about unions.” Fletcher is a syndicated columnist and a regular media commentator on television, radio and the Web.
Derryn E. Moten is a professor of history and chair of the history and political science department at Alabama State University, formerly, Alabama State College, and formerly, the department of history that Dr. L. D. Reddick chaired from 1995 until 1960. Moten received his doctorate at the University of Iowa in American Studies. His 1997 Iowa dissertation “A Gruesome Warning to Black Girls: The August 16, 1912 execution of Virginia Christian” provides the inspiration for Forsaken, a novel by Ross Howell, Jr. Prior to his studies in Iowa City, Moten earned a graduate degree in Library Science from Catholic University of America and worked as a law librarian for a boutique tax firm in Washington, DC. He is a local co-president for the American Federation of Teachers and is vice chair of the AFT Higher Education Policy and Planning Council. He is also a vice president for the Alabama AFL-CIO. He lives in Montgomery, Alabama.
Sherri-Ann P. Butterfield is Executive Vice Chancellor and Associate Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University–Newark. She is a nationally recognized scholar, teacher, and thought leader in race and ethnicity, immigration, and diversity in higher education. Sherri-Ann is also a sought-after facilitator on managing diversity within complex institutions. As an advocate for leveraging diversity in all its dimensions, she works with her RU-N colleagues to actualize the public mission of colleges and universities as engines of social mobility, and as anchor institutions that collaborate with partners from multiple sectors in order to help communities succeed. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and edited volumes that include the International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy and the Research in Urban Sociology Series. While at Rutgers-Newark Sherri-Ann has served in numerous academic and administrative capacities, including: Visiting Academic Fellow in Nuffield College at Oxford University, American Council on Education Fellow at New York University, Faculty Fellow in the Office of the Chancellor, Acting Director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program, Associate Director of the Clement A. Price Institute on Ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience, and former Chair of the Sociology and Anthropology Department. She received her B.A. in Sociology from Yale University and M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Michigan.
DeWayne Sheaffer has worked in higher education for over 30 years. DeWayne started his career at California State University at Stanislaus where he earned a Bachelor’s of Science Degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Marketing in the Business Office and Admission & Records area. He moved to California State University, Los Angeles working in the Admissions and Records Office processing students for graduation. He subsequently moved to California State University. Dominguez Hills serving as the Supervisor of the Graduation Unit in the Records Office while completing his Master of Science Degree in Counseling with an Emphasis in Higher Education. DeWayne is currently working at Long Beach City College since 1996 in the Counseling and Student Development Department. While at LBCC, DeWayne has served in several leadership capacities such as Department Chair, Transfer Coordinator, Career Services Coordinator, and Association President at the college. DeWayne’s strong sense of advocacy came into existence at an early age when he participated in picketing at his father’s work place of Chevron Oil Refinery during a strike. He thought that was awesome that employees would do all they could including striking to ensure their voice was heard during the negotiation process. To date that event continues to remain his motivation in supporting and protecting the collective bargaining process.
1:45 pm – 2:00 pm EST
Break
2:00 pm – 3:30 pm EST
| Panel A: The Equal Rights Amendment and Higher Education with Julie Suk, Dean for Master’s Programs and Professor, Sociology, CUNY Graduate Center, Elizabeth Schneider, Rose L. Hoffer Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School, Jessica Neuwirth, Distinguished Lecturer, Rita E. Hauser Director, Human Rights Program, Roosevelt House, Public Policy Institute at Hunter College, CUNY, and Karen Stubaus, Vice President for Academic Affairs, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Moderator. |
Nearly 100 years after it was first proposed by the National Woman’s political party in 1923, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) is still not the law of the land. A proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution designed to guarantee equal legal rights for all American citizens regardless of sex, it would end the legal distinctions between the sexes with regard to employment, property, divorce, and other matters. This panel will explore the history of the ERA, why it matters, its current status and future prospects, and what its passage might mean for higher education.
Click on the Names Below for Panelist Biographies
Jessica Neuwirth is the Rita E. Hauser Director of the Human Rights Program at Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute, Hunter College. She is an international women’s rights lawyer and activist and one of the founders of Equality Now, an international women’s rights organization established in 1992, and the founder and Director of Donor Direct Action, an offshoot project now hosted by the Sisterhood is Global Institute to support women’s rights organizations around the world. She is also a founder and Co-President of the new ERA Coalition, mobilizing a renewed effort to get the Equal Rights Amendment into the United States Constitution. To aid this effort, she has also written a book Equal Means Equal, Why the Time for the ERA is Now. Jessica holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a B.A. in History from Yale University. She has worked for the human rights organization Amnesty International, for the Wall Street law firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton, and for the United Nations Office of Legal Affairs, as well as the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. She served as a special consultant on sexual violence to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda for its landmark Akayesu judgment holding that rape is a form of genocide, and again worked for the Rwanda Tribunal on the Media judgment holding print and radio media accountable for their role in the Rwandan genocide. More recently she directed the legal team that drafted the judgment of the Special Court for Sierra Leone convicting former Liberian President Charles Taylor of war crimes and crimes against humanity. As a guest lecturer, Jessica has taught international women’s rights at Harvard Law School.
Julie Chi-hye Suk is dean for master’s programs and professor of Sociology. She is a scholar of comparative law and society, with a focus on women in comparative constitutional law. She is most known for her recent work on renewed efforts to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, in light of the theory and practice of gender equality provisions in constitutions around the world. Her dozens of articles and book chapters address the potential and limits of antidiscrimination law as a tool for eradicating social inequality. Representative publications include “Feminist Constitutionalism and the Entrenchment of Motherhood” (Studies in Law, Politics, and Society 2018) “An Equal Rights Amendment for the Twenty-First Century: Bringing Global Constitutionalism Home” (Yale Journal of Law & Feminism 2017); and “Are Gender Stereotypes Bad for Women? Rethinking Antidiscrimination Law and Work-Family Conflict” (Columbia Law Review 2010). Prior to joining The Graduate Center, Dr. Suk was a law professor for 13 years at Cardozo Law School in New York, with visiting professorships at Harvard University, Columbia University, University of Chicago, and UCLA. She has lectured widely in the United States and Europe, and has been a visiting fellow at the European University Institute in Florence and LUISS-Guido Carli in Rome. In addition to master’s and doctoral degrees in politics from Oxford University, she holds a J.D. from Yale Law School and an A.B. in English and French Literature from Harvard University. She is excited to bring her interdisciplinary background and professional school experience to strengthen master’s education at The Graduate Center.
is a national expert in the fields of federal civil litigation, procedure, gender, law and domestic violence and a frequent commentator for print and broadcast media. She is the author of the prize-winning book, Battered Women and Feminist Lawmaking (Yale University Press, 2000), co-author of Domestic Violence and the Law: Theory and Practice (3d. ed. Foundation Press, 2013) (with the late Cheryl Hanna, Emily J. Sack and Judith G. Greenberg), and co-editor of Women and the Law Stories (Foundation Press, 2010) (with Stephanie M. Wildman). She teaches and writes in the fields of civil procedure, civil rights, women’s rights and domestic violence and has also written numerous articles and book chapters. She has lectured around the world and participated in trainings of lawyers and judges in countries such as China, Vietnam, Turkey, South Africa and the U.K. Professor Schneider has also been a Visiting Professor at Harvard and Columbia Law Schools. She is a member of the American Law Institute and was formerly Chair of the Judicial-Academic Network of the National Association of Women Judges (NAWJ). She has been honored by numerous organizations and has been active in legal education reform serving as a member of the AALS Executive Committee and on the Board of Governors of the Society of American Law Teachers. Professor Schneider was the founder and has been Director of the Edward V. Sparer Public Interest Law Fellowship Program at Brooklyn Law School. She joined the faculty in 1983, after serving as Staff Attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights and a Staff Attorney with the Rutgers Law School-Newark Constitutional Litigation Clinic. She also clerked for the late United States District Judge Constance Baker Motley of the Southern District of New York. She graduated from Bryn Mawr College cum laude with Honors in Political Science, received her M.Sc. in Political Sociology from The London School of Economics as a Leverhulme Fellow, and earned her J.D. from New York University School of Law, where she was an Arthur Garfield Hays Civil Liberties Fellow.
Karen R. Stubaus, Vice President for Academic Affairs and Administration at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Douglass College, Dr. Stubaus received her Ph.D. in seventeenth-century American history from Rutgers. Responsible for a broad array of academic, budgetary, strategic, and policy matters across the university’s three geographical locations in New Brunswick, Newark, and Camden, as well as for Rutgers Biological and Health Sciences, Dr. Stubaus has been a leader in increasing the diversity of the faculty and in promoting women’s leadership at all levels of the institution. She is responsible for faculty and academic labor relations and provides the primary interface between Academic Affairs and General Counsel’s Office on all faculty matters. She is also centrally involved in the development and implementation of the first New Brunswick Campus Strategic Plan in over two decades, and in the full academic and policy integration of Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences into the broader Rutgers community. Dr. Stubaus teaches whenever she is able in the School of Arts and Sciences Department of American Studies and the Department of Women’s and Gender studies as well as in the Rutgers Ph.D program on Higher Education. Her favorite course is Death and Dying in American History, which her students note “is not nearly as grim as expected.”
| Panel B: Mass Incarceration and Higher Education with Patrick Mitchell, Board Member, Community College Association, CTA, NEA, Michelle Jones, Doctoral Student, New York University, Vivian Nixon, Columbia University Teaching Fellow, and Bidhan Chandra Roy, College of Arts and Letters, California State University, Los Angeles, Participant, and Moderator. |
This panel will discuss mass incarceration in higher education and its impact on the ability to participate in the workforce including work that is tied to collective bargaining practices. The audience will learn the relationship between America’s unprecedented system of mass incarceration, education and the ability to earn a living wage. The panel will also present on how this impact disproportionately affects people of color in the United States.
Click on the Names Below for Panelist Biographies
Vivian D. Nixon is Executive Director of College & Community Fellowship (CCF), serving women and families harmed by mass criminalization and incarceration. CCF champions equity as justice, demanding access to opportunity, and rights of citizenship and human dignity for all. In 2001, shortly upon release from state prison, Vivian joined CCF as an undergraduate student. The board of directors hired her as lead organizer in 2004 and appointed her Executive Director in 2006. CCF considers inclusion in education, democratic governance, and autonomous organizing to be tools that enable oppressed people to build power. Commitment to the work of CCF has prompted honors including the John Jay Medal for Justice, Aspen Ascend Fellowship, Soros Justice Fellowship, Tribeca Disruptive Innovator Award. As a Columbia University Community Scholar, Vivian conducted independent research on African American Literature and the intersectional links between structural racism, education access, and criminal legal policy in America. Afterward, she completed an MFA at Columbia School of the Arts and accepted a Pen America Writing for Justice Fellowship. Her interests encompass roles as chair of JustLeadershipUSA and member of FICPFM’s National Steering Committee. She is an author, speaker, and adjunct professor at the Center for the Advancement of Public Action, Bennington College.
Michelle Daniel (Jones) is a fourth-year doctoral student in the American Studies program New York University. She is interested in excavating the collateral consequences of criminal convictions for people and families directly impacted by mass incarceration. She is a founding member and chairwoman of the board of Constructing Our Future, a reentry alternative for women created by incarcerated women in Indiana and a 2017-18 Beyond the Bars fellow, a 2017-18 Research Fellow at the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University, and a 2018-19 Ford Foundation Bearing Witness Fellow with Art for Justice, 2019 SOZE Right of Return Fellow, 2019 Code for America Fellow and 2019-2020 Mural Arts Fellow. Michelle is currently under contract with The New Press to publish the history of Indiana’s carceral institutions for women with fellow incarcerated and formerly incarcerated scholars. As an artist, further, Michelle is interested in finding ways to funnel her research pursuits and subject matter expertise into theater, dance and photography. Her original co-authored play, “The Duchess of Stringtown,” was produced in December 2017 in Indianapolis and New York City and her artist installation about stigma, “Point of Triangulation,” ran September 26, – October 1, 2019 at NYU Gallatin Gallery in New York and the Beyond the Bars Conference at Columbia University, March 6 – 8, 2020.
Patrick Mitchell has been teaching Mathematics at the 2- and 4-year college levels for over twenty-five years. Originally from New Jersey, he has taught full-time at Merced College in Merced, California since 2008 and also teaches part-time at California State University, Stanislaus. Patrick served as President of the Merced College Faculty Association from 2014-2018 and has served on the Community College Association CTA/NEA Board of Directors since 2016.
Bidhan Chandra Roy is an associate professor of English Literature at California State University, Los Angeles. Bidhan has published articles and book chapters on Hanif Kureishi, Muslim identity and the novel, literary representations of South Asian ethnicity, Buddhism and literature, Christopher Isherwood’s A Single Man, as well as the travel writing of V.S. Naipaul. His recently published monograph is entitled, A Passage To Globalism: Globalization and the Negotiation of Identities in South Asian Diasporic Fiction in Britain. Bidhan’s current research and teaching focuses upon a critical pedagogical approach to community engagement in the humanities. Toward this objective, he has produced several community storytelling projects and exhibitions, and analyzed the pedagogical and social effects of these projects in recent publications; “Towards a Global Critical Literacy: Literature, Community Engagement and The Global Commons,” “The New Uses of Literacy: A Pedagogical Diptych of Literature and Community Engagement,” and “Words Uncaged: The Prison, The University, and Critical Pedagogy.” He is the founder of Words Uncaged, an organization with headquarters in downtown Los Angeles that provides a platform for incarcerated artists and writers to engage with the public, through book publishing, art exhibits and digital media. Bidhan is also currently the faculty director of the first in-prison degree program at Los Angeles County Prison, Lancaster and researches new pedagogical approaches to teaching in prison.
| Panel C: Negotiating for Part-Time Faculty Equity with Will Silvio, President, Berklee College of Music Faculty Union, Jay Kennedy, Berklee College of Music Vice President for Academic Affairs/Vice Provost, Darryl Wood, NYSUT Labor Relations Specialist, Dia M.Carleton, Chief Human Resources Officer, SUNY Oneonta, and Beth Margolis, Gladstein, Reif & Meginniss, LLP, Moderator. |
With the substantial increase in the use of part-time faculty in academia and the successful campaigns to unionize these faculty, this Panel will discuss the process two academic institutions have gone through to negotiate Collective Bargaining Agreements for these faculty. The Panel will also discuss substantive terms included in the CBAs as well as issues that have arisen in defining those terms. The Panel members include representatives from management and labor at a small private college where part-time faculty have been covered by the CBA for over three decades, and from a large public university where a promotional ladder for part-time faculty was recently negotiated.
Click on the Names Below for Panelist Biographies
Jazz saxophonist William Silvio resides in Boston, Massachusetts where he is a Professor at the acclaimed Berklee College of Music. He is an active performer in the Boston area and has also performed throughout Europe and Japan, including performances at the North Sea and Montreux Jazz Festivals. He has appeared with such artists as Herbie Hancock, Quincy Jones, Abe Laboriel, John Faddis, Eddie Daniels, Ramsey Lewis, Billy Pierce, George Garzone, Joe Lovano and many others. William became involved in the Berklee Faculty Union in 2001 working for the founding President Mike Scott and his successor Jackson Schultz. In 2019 he was elected President of the organization. Over the past 19 years he has been part of 9 contract negotiations..
Jay Kennedy’s career encompasses varied and successful experiences as a composer, arranger, producer, performer, educator, and administrative leader. He is currently Vice President for Academic Affairs/Vice Provost at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts and oversees academic affairs space planning, faculty development, academic equipment budgets, academic policy development, faculty contract management, library and learning resources, concert operations, and video services. He received the Ph.D. from Boston College and Master of Music and Bachelor of Music Education degrees from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Prior to joining Berklee in 1994, Kennedy was a freelance composer, arranger, and producer in Los Angeles and Chicago where he wrote and produced music for feature films, television, and hundreds of television and radio commercials. A veteran of the recording industry, Kennedy has written and produced music for Sheryl Crow, James Ingram, Patti Austin, Little Richard, Stanley Clarke, Brenda Russell, and Dave Grusin. His music has been heard in feature films, including Wayne’s World, Electric Horseman, and Lethal Weapon 2. His published compositions include works for concert band, percussion ensemble, and marching band. He has been an active adjudicator for marching band, drum corps, and indoor percussion competitions for over 35 years; has written for marching bands, several drum and bugle corps; and composed the theme for the Drum Corps International contest broadcasts. He was elected to the DCI Hall of Fame in 2007 for longtime contributions as an adjudicator, judge administrator, arranger, and composer. He is a member of the American Federation of Musicians, Local 47 (Los Angeles), Screen Actors Guild, and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists Union.
Darryl Wood is currently a Labor Relations Specialist employed by New York State United Teachers assigned to four campuses in SUNY, BInghamton, Cortland, Delhi, and Oneonta. He has been in this position for over 10 years. Prior to this, he was employed as a Professional at Binghamton for over 30 years. While there, he was a member of United University Professions, UUP. He was Chapter President, a member of the statewide Executive Board, and a member of three different statewide negotiations teams.
Dia Carleton holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology and Sociology from Albright College in Pennsylvania and a Juris Doctor degree from Syracuse University School of Law. She practiced corporate law in New York and Illinois for several years and served as the Chief Administration Officer of a multi-national oil and gas company headquartered in Canada. In 2004, Dia moved to higher education, serving first as Executive Director at Mansfield University of Pennsylvania and since August 2019, as the Chief Human Resources Officer at SUNY Oneonta.
Beth Margolis has been a partner at Gladstein, Reif & Meginniss since 1991. Her clients include transportation unions, health care unions and unions representing university professors. Ms. Margolis negotiates collective bargaining agreements, advises union officers about issues that arise in conducting the affairs of the union and litigates on behalf of these unions in state and federal court, before the state and federal administrative tribunals, and in arbitration. In addition, Ms. Margolis has advised many faculty associations concerning revisions to faculty handbooks, governance procedures and in conducting disciplinary hearings. She has also represented individual faculty in tenure, promotion and disciplinary matters in academic institutions throughout the Northeast. Ms. Margolis was the architect of, and trial counsel in, the precedent setting proceeding brought on behalf of the faculty, alumni and students of Adelphi University that resulted in the removal of all but one of the members of the Board of Trustees for breach of their fiduciary duties. Ms. Margolis has litigated many wage and hour cases on behalf of groups of workers in the construction and restaurant industries and in nuclear power plants. She has represented individual clients in age, sex and gender identity discrimination cases and has negotiated many employment contracts and severance agreements for individual clients. Ms. Margolis has spoken at many conferences and law schools. She has an AV Pre-eminent Peer Review Rating from Martindale-Hubbell. Before joining Gladstein, Reif & Meginniss in 1991, Ms. Margolis taught at New York University Law School, was an associate at Rabinowitz, Boudin & Standard and clerked for the Honorable Dickinson R. Debevoise in federal district court in Newark, New Jersey. She is a 1978 cum laude graduate of Barnard College and a 1983 graduate of New York University Law School.
3:30 pm – 4:00 pm EST
Break
4:00 pm – 5:30 pm EST
| Panel A: Reasonable Accommodations for Faculty and Teaching Assistants with Jamie Daniel, Former National Field Service Representative, AAUP, Laura Yvonne Bulk, President, CUPE Local 2278 (Canadian Union of Public Employees), PhD Candidate, Rehabilitation Sciences, The University of British Columbia, Barbara Aloni, Disability & Productivity Consultant, The Standard Insurance Company, John Rose, Dean for Diversity, Hunter College, CUNY, and Alexandra (Sascha) Matish, Associate Vice Provost for Academic and Faculty Affairs and Senior Director, Academic Human Resources, University of Michigan, Moderator. |
This panel will examine how higher education faculty with disabilities can be supported from several perspectives. Can, should, and how might faculty unions take a more proactive approach in advocacy for faculty with disabilities? Can colleges and universities themselves take a more proactive approach in supporting faculty with disabilities? What can we expect of the costs and benefits of moving from compliance with standards to proactive efforts to include? What can colleges and universities use from the Universal Design for Learning framework in designing systems to support faculty with disabilities, and what are the likely costs and benefits of this approach? Finally, what are the resources available to faculty with disabilities through insurance plans, and how might colleges, universities and unions support their faculty in accessing these resources? We will also discuss the barriers to accessibility that Teaching Assistants with disabilities encounter in their dual roles as students and employees. We will also discuss various strategies for eliminating these barriers, including Universal Design, reasonable accommodations and collective bargaining.
Click on the Names Below for Panelist Biographies
Jamie Owen Daniel has worked for the AAUP since June of 2014. Before that, she worked for 10 years with a higher education local in Illinois representing 7 public universities, where she focused on internal organizing and building strategic power for contract negotiations. She also brings her 30-year experience as a faculty member with a congenital disability to her understanding of the challenges and opportunities facing higher ed unions.
Laura Yvonne Bulk is a scholar, advocate, friend, learner, woman, teacher, mentor, daughter, mentee, disabled person, occupational therapist (OT), Christian, artist, and activist. A self-described ‘hat rack,’ Laura wears many hats, playing numerous roles in her academic, spiritual, recreational, professional, and familial communities. Often found preparing food for a small gathering, a meeting with colleagues, or a community event, Laura aims to contribute to shaping a more hospitable world for everyone wherever she can. Her heart for hospitality and belonging is also evident in her academic and advocacy work with the disability community and professional community. Laura co-founded a network of disabled health professionals and our allies, and serves on the executive board of the Canadian Union of Public Employees BC representing people with disabilities, Laura creatively bridges communities. Her PhD includes research-based theatre that was co-created with the blind community. Her research focuses on bridging clinical, educational, and disability communities. She works in the areas of belonging, disability, diversity, palliative care, and higher education teaching and learning practices.
Barbara Aloni is a Disability and Productivity Consultant with The Standard’s Workplace Possibilities Program with over 24 years of experience in the insurance industry. Barbara joined The Standard in 2002 as a Senior Disability Benefits Analyst in the New York office, later holding roles as a Benefits Technical Specialist and Manager of Disability Benefits. With broad experience in disability insurance and a passion for helping others, Barbara’s day to day responsibilities include sharing the benefits of The Standard’s Workplace Possibilities Program and ADA Services with new and existing clients, as well as implementing, developing and managing existing programs. She also has worked for two other major disability insurance carriers as a Disability Benefits Specialist and as a Senior Case Manager. In addition to her insurance experience, Barbara has worked for a non-profit organization and in human resources for a major hotel brand. Barbara graduated from Tufts University with a bachelor’s degree in Social Psychology and from Fordham University with a master’s degree in Counseling and is a Certified Disability Management Specialist (CDMS).
John Rose is responsible for developing and implementing a college-wide program to recruit individuals from underrepresented groups as faculty, senior administrators and staff. He also works closely with student groups to address diversity issues on campus, and is responsible for investigating employee complaints involving alleged discrimination based on protected status. Mr. Rose has had a successful career in the private sector managing a wide variety of human resources and employee relations matters. Previously he was Vice President for Human Resources at ABC, and prior to that he held the same position at ESPN. From 1994 to 1999, he was the National Basketball Association’s Senior Vice President for Player Relations and Administration. He is a graduate of Hunter College and Harvard Law School.
Alexandra (Sascha) Matish, Associate Vice Provost for Academic and Faculty Affairs and Senior Director, Academic Human Resources, University of Michigan. Sascha was appointed Associate Vice Provost for Academic and Faculty Affairs and Senior Director of Academic Human Resources at the University of Michigan in June 2019, after serving as interim director since October 2018. Sascha joined Academic Human Resources in June of 2008, serving as senior academic labor relations representative, associate director and most recently interim senior director. Prior to coming to University of Michigan, Sascha worked as an assistant general counsel at Wayne State University, where she focused on labor and employment law and collective bargaining issues. Sascha also worked as a union-side attorney in a law firm specializing in public sector labor law in educational settings. Sascha has a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations and Russian Language from James Madison College at Michigan State University and a Juris Doctor from University of Detroit Mercy School of Law.
| Panel B: LERA Higher Ed Industry Council – The Changing Place of Labor Studies in Higher Education with Marissa Brookes, University of California, Riverside, Tobias Schulze-Cleven, Rutgers University, Cedric de Leon, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and Ruth Milkman, CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies, Moderator. |
How is labor studies faring in contemporary higher education? As a field defined by its subject matter, labor studies is at the forefront of knowledge generation about the world of work. Drawing from different research traditions, the field leads in interdisciplinary engagement, which is highly prized in academia today. Yet, organizationally, it is often unclear where labor studies programs are best placed within universities. Moreover, for some observers, the field’s social justice mission and its deep connections to labor activism sit uneasily with academia’s commitment to open-ended inquiry. Sponsored by the Higher Education Industry Council of the Labor and Employment Relations Association (LERA), the panel takes stock of where labor studies stand today.
Click on the Names Below for Panelist Biographies
Marissa Brookes, Associate Professor, Political Science, University of California, Riverside, Dr. Brookes’ research centers on international political economy, the politics of economic globalization, and the relationship between organized labor and transnational employers. Specifically, her work analyzes the contribution of transnational labor activism to the governance of corporations on the international scale. By uncovering the conditions necessary for effective corporate regulation by non-state actors, her research speaks to critical debates in political science regarding the new politics of employment relations, the viability of private governance, and the impact of transnational politics on wages, working conditions, and labor rights in both advanced and developing economies. Her research has been funded by the Hellman Fellows Fund, the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, and the US Fulbright program. Dr. Brookes is also a co-founder and co-organizer of the Southwest Workshop on Mixed Methods Research. She teaches courses in international relations, international political economy, labor studies, and qualitative methods.
Tobias Schulze-Cleven is Associate Professor of Labor Studies and Employment Relations at the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations (SMLR) where he also serves as the Director of the Center for Global Work and Employment. His research examines the contemporary politics of labor market and higher education reforms in the rich democracies, frequently comparing developments across different European countries and the United States. A recipient of the John T. Dunlop award for research of international significance (Labor and Employment Relations Association, 2018), Tobias held fellowships at Harvard University and from Germany’s Max Planck Society, and received a teaching award at UC Berkeley. His publications have appeared in outlets such as Comparative Political Studies, German Politics & Society, New Political Economy, Politics & Society, and PS: Political Science & Politics. Tobias also, guest-edited special issues for German Politics, Higher Education, and the Journal of Industrial Relations.
Cedric de Leon, Labor Center Director, Professor, UMass Amherst. Cedric de Leon received his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Michigan. He also has a Master’s degree in Social and Political Sciences from the University of Cambridge and a B.A. in Sociology from Yale University. Cedric got his start in the labor movement as a researcher for the Connecticut School Bus Drivers Alliance Local 76 SEIU in 1994. From 1995 to 1996 he worked on the Chateau Ste. Michelle, Bruce Church, and strawberry campaigns for the United Farm Workers in Connecticut and Salinas and Watsonville, California. He then became an organizer for District 1199 SEIU in Providence. After a brief hiatus in England, Cedric returned to the labor movement as a rank-and-file member of Local 3550 American Federation of Teachers at the University of Michigan. He was local union president from 2000 to 2002 and, after finishing his dissertation, became lead organizer for the University of Michigan lecturers’ union, AFT Local 6244. Cedric’s research focuses on labor, race, and party politics in the United States, India, and Turkey. He is the author of Crisis! When Political Parties Lose the Consent to Rule (Stanford 2019), The Origins of Right to Work (Cornell 2015), and Party and Society (Polity 2014) and co-editor of The New Handbook of Political Sociology (Cambridge 2020) and Building Blocs (Stanford 2015). His work has appeared in a variety of journals including Labor Studies Journal, Global Labour, Sociological Theory, Political Power and Social Theory, and Studies in American Political Development. He teaches courses in social theory, the American labor movement, race, gender and labor, and political sociology.
Ruth Milkman is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the City University of New York Graduate Center and at CUNY’s School of Labor and Urban Studies, where she chairs the Labor Studies program. She is a past President of the American Sociological Association. She has written extensively about work and labor organization in the United States, past and present. Her recent books include L.A. Story: Immigrant Workers And The Future Of The U.S. Labor Movement; New Labor in New York: Precarious Workers and the Future of the Labor Movement (co-edited with Ed Ott); Unfinished Business: Paid Family Leave in California and the Future of U.S. Work-Family Policy, co-authored with Eileen Appelbaum; On Gender, Labor and Inequality, and most recently, Immigrant Labor and the New Precariat.
5:30 pm – 5:45 pm EST
| Closing/Summary with National Center Executive Director, William A. Herbert. |