To: Marty Kich, President AAUP-WSU

The California Conference of the American Association of University Professors (CA-AAUP) stands in solidarity with the striking faculty of the American Association of University Professors-Wright State University (AAUP-WSU). Yours is a fight for your students' education and for the continued existence of public higher education as a common good.

We are dismayed that administrators at your institution refuse to negotiate in good faith and are instead using deceptive and coercive tactics to weaken support for the strike among faculty, students, and the Dayton, Ohio, community (e.g., running classes with scab faculty unfamiliar with the curriculum; threatening loss of financial aid to students who fail to attend class; filing an unfair labor practice claim to seize faculty intellectual property). Such tactics are unacceptable in an institution of higher learning.

At the same time, we are heartened by the broad support you have received from your students, the local community, and other members of the higher-education community in Ohio and beyond. We recognize how crucial your struggle is to the future of public and private higher education in the United States, and we will support your strike until you achieve the resolution that your collective-bargaining chapter finds acceptable.

Signed,

Claudio Fogu, President, CA-AAUP
claudiofogu@gmail.com
on behalf of the CA-AAUP Executive Board:

President
Claudio Fogu, University of California, Santa Barbara
(2018-2020)
 
Secretary/Treasurer
Mary Ann Irwin, Diablo Valley College (2018-2020)

Vice President for University of California:
Jesse Drew, University of California, Davis
(2018-2020)

Vice President for California State University:
Rosalinda Quintanar, San Jose State University (2018-2020)

Vice President for California Community Colleges:
Katie Graham, Diablo Valley College (2018-2020)  

Vice President for Private Colleges and Universities:  
Alex Zukas, National University (2018-2020)

It has been an incredible week at Wright State University. The weather has been terrible (temperatures in the single digits followed by snow and freezing rain).But everyday this week, hundreds of faculty have been on the picket line from 8a - 6p at the four main entrances to the campus. Our faculty have given up their pay checks, lost their health insurance, and left their classrooms, labs, schools and hospitals to take a stand and send a message to the administration and Board that we will not let them destroy public higher education at Wright State.

Members of the AAUP-WSU Executive Committee have been working around the clock, writing press statements, doing interviews, posting on social media, organizing picket shifts and dealing with the campus police. All who can are also doing regular shifts on the the picket lines.  We have other members in charge of checking people in for picket duty, supplying picketers with hand and foot warmers providing food for hundreds of strikers, shoveling snow, shuttling picketers from our headquarters to the picket line, putting up and taking down tents everyday.

Our students and been unbelievable. They have brought food and drinks to us on the picket lines. One day last week while I was on the picket line a computer science student crossed the street in front of campus carrying a shopping bag full of hot bowls of chili and thanked us for what we were doing. Students have held two marches walking from campus out to our picket lines and briefly occupied the President’s office on Thursday demanding a meeting with the President.

We have been joined by our brothers and sisters in the labor movement from Dayton area and beyond. Of course Paul Davis was there with us as were others from Cincinnati State. John McNay President of the Ohio Conference was on the line with us. Other chapters from across the state have joined us as well, BGSU, University of Cincinnati, Miami University and faculty from the University of Dayton. This fall the Wright State Chapter affiliated with the Dayton-Miami Valley Central Labor Council (AFL-CIO) and their support for us has been fantastic. The President Tom Richie and Executive Director Diane Walsh have been on the line with us as have members from IBEW local 82, UFCW local 75 , IUE local 775, Iron Worker’s local 290, Ohio Federation of Teachers, Ohio Education Association. The state AFL-CIO blasted out our petition and a petition organized by students across the state. The AAUP-CBC has approved a grant in support of the strike and we have received donations letters of support from other unions across the country.

We have had the support from members of the Dayton City Commission and Senator Sherrod Brown.

We have had great support from the national staff of the AAUP. Ben Ratliff and Kira Schuman have been on the ground for weeks and both Christopher and Julie have also been here to offer their support.

The administration and Board have still refused to negotiate with us believing that our faculty would never strike. Once the strike was a reality, they claimed that they would cover all of our classes. In reality what is happening is that the campus is in chaos. They have threatened students with the loss of financial aid if they fail to attend class. They have some chairs attempting to teach as many as six classes. They have ads on LinkedIn offering to hire hundreds of scabs but there are hundreds of reports from students on social media telling us that substitutes are telling them to read their books or work on previous assignments. We have had reports of clinical sections at hospitals where no instructor showed up so the students left. Their definition of covering a class is having a “sweeper” take attendance! But as one of the signs held up by one of our picketers said “Attendance is not Instruction."

The administration and Board have filed an Unfair Labor Practice against us for not helping them determine how many scabs they need to teach classes and for refusing to provide scabs with the intellectual property of our faculty to enable them to run classes. On Thursday in what is clearly a move of desperation, they filed a Notice of an Unauthorized Strike with the State Employment Relations Board (SERB). Our attorney has told us there is a difference between an illegal strike and and effective strike and what the administration and Board are admitting with this filing is that the strike is effective. We have a hearing at 12 noon tomorrow and SERB will make a decision by 4p the same day.

We are confident that our members will remain united and do whatever is necessary.  As the President of the AAUP, I am proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with each of our members who have  chosen to take a stand, putting everything on the line, to fight for students and to ensure the continued existence of public higher education as a common good.

Rudy Fichtenbaum
Professor Emeritus of Economics
Wright State University
President
American Association of University Professors
937-620-7430

At a time of year when there’s a lot of talk about setting goals and resolutions, the AAUP’s goal is clear: continue to be a strong advocate for academic freedom, the faculty voice, and shared governance this year and beyond. There are a multitude of ways that you can get involved in the AAUP’s work in 2019 -- from proposing an article for our Journal of Academic Freedom to nominating a colleague for an award to joining us for our 2019 Annual Conference -- and by doing so, ensure that we continue to be a strong voice for higher education in turbulent times.  

Here’s one major thing you can do to help build the voice and power of the AAUP in 2019: talk to your nonmember colleagues about the importance of joining the AAUP. Tell them why you’re a member and what you’re fighting for.

So what’s ahead in 2019?

We’ll be releasing the report of an investigation into the abrupt nonreappointment of a faculty member at Nunez Community College. The investigating committee concluded that the action was taken in apparent violation of his academic freedom and without a dismissal hearing to which he was entitled as the result of having obtained de facto tenure at the institution after twenty-two years of service. We’ll also release a report of an investigation at Maricopa Community College, examining the governing board's termination of a “meet-and-confer” provision of the faculty policy manual and its move to severely limit the participation of the faculty in institutional governance. We’ll share those reports later this winter. To get up-to-the-minute updates on our work and join lively discussions, you can follow us on Facebook or Twitter.  

Our next volume of the Journal of Academic Freedom is scheduled for publication in fall 2019 -- add your voice. We’re seeking original, scholarly articles that consider how “bullying” is implicated in conflicts taking place around discourses of civility and academic freedom. We are especially interested in essays related to how discourses of civility operate in terms of precarity, identity, and labor; globalization; social media and communication, campus discourse and more. See the complete call for papers, due March 1.

If your state has an active AAUP conference, you may be interested in getting more closely involved with the AAUP’s Assembly of State Conferences (ASC) or know someone who is. The ASC, which works to promote the general objectives of the AAUP and supports the development of state conferences and the member chapters, is seeking nominations for the following positions on its executive committee: treasurer and two at-large members. Visit https://www.aaup.org/2019-asc-election for more information. Nominations are due by 5:00 p.m. on Friday, January 18.

Save the date for the AAUP annual conference! It will be held June 12–16 just outside of Washington, DC. Highlights include a plenary session on the state of academic freedom, a Friday night reception, and an awards and recognition luncheon. In lieu of paper panels this year, we will organize peer-to-peer sessions in which chapters, staff, and members can share information about topics such as state-level legislation and lobbying; shared governance challenges; organizing locally around contingency; what’s coming up at the bargaining table; and organizing and member recruitment. We will also discuss proposed changes to the AAUP’s organizational structure.

Register now for the 16th Annual  Meeting of the California Conference of the AAUP, Are Shared Governance and Academic Freedom One and the Same? to be held March 2 at Cal Maritime in Vallejo. Highlights include a keynote address, The Future of Academic Freedom, by Henry Reichman and 4 timely workshops on topics ranging from Creating Just Spaces on Campus to Fair Use for Academics. 

If there is a leader or someone you want to recognize for outstanding service to the profession or chapter- or conference-level work, nominate them for an award. The deadline for all awards is March 15. Learn more here. Awards are presented at the Annual Conference.

Last but not least: in case you missed it, we highlighted some of our most significant wins in fall 2018 on our Academe Blog. From a victory for academic freedom at Rutgers to an important win for faculty of Purdue Global where our work exposed Purdue Global’s attempt to stifle individual faculty’s rights and undermine shared governance, it was a busy year. Read more and share the news.

Thank you for being a member of the AAUP.