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UUP representatives joined more than 750 faculty members from across the nation at the NEA-AFT Higher Education Joint Conference March 28-30 in Washington, D.C. The theme of the conference, Building Alliances for Higher Education and the Public Good, reflected ambitious goals.
The three-day session covered a wide variety of issues, with a series of workshops and two major guest speakers. AFT President Edward McElroy set the tone when he addressed what he acknowledged to be the largest ever NEA-AFT higher education conference.
McElroy reflected that during the last decade, most of AFT’s time had been spent trying to stop the erosion of benefits won years ago, especially in health care and pensions. Noting that some unionized pilots and auto workers had lost their pension benefits, McElroy warned, “We’re in danger of facing the same thing. It’s a lesson to all of us that we’re all in this together.”
To overcome this challenge, McElroy said union members must be willing to organize and participate.
“We need to spend time organizing the people who are already in the union to get them involved,” he said.
McElroy also reinforced AFT’s endorsement of Sen. Hillary Clinton for president, saying it took seven months of careful
consideration to come to that decision. But he said they need to defeat anyone who looks like President Bush in the next election. “If (Barack) Obama wins (the Democratic Party nomination), we’ll work our tails off to get him elected as president.”
McElroy also told participants he will be retiring as AFT president after the union’s national conference in July.
John Podesta, chief of staff for former President Bill Clinton, delivered the keynote address.
“To reverse the economic downturn, we need a new president, a president that invests in human capital,” Podesta told an agreeable audience.
He warned the U.S. is falling behind in preparing students for the global economy.
“Other economies are moving ahead. We’ve got to move with them,” Podesta said. “Our nation needs more engineers and scientists. We need a national higher education policy to address these goals.”
Access to a quality education regardless of race was discussed by Harvard University law professor Charles Ogletree. Despite decades of struggle, the nation is still a long way from achieving racial equality, he said.
“Schools today are more segregated than they were before Brown in 1954,” he said, referring to Brown vs. Board of Education, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that barred segregated public schools. “Every child deserves an education and a good job. Make ‘one nation under God with liberty and justice’ for everyone.”
Ogletree said racial division is older than this nation, beginning when the first slaves arrived in the colony of Jamestown. Today, he stressed that diversity is not something American society can ignore.
UUPers played an active role in the conference’s workshops. Union President Phillip Smith moderated a discussion on how to best use visual information. David DuBois of Empire State College took part in a workshop on promoting faculty diversity. Ora Bouey of Stony Brook HSC moderated a workshop on effective accountability and assessment practices.
UUP Vice President for Academics Frederick Floss participated in a panel on liberal education. He observed that the influx of college students marked by the passage of the GI bill after World War II created larger classes, eliminating the opportunity for philosophical discussions between teachers and students.
“It changed the approach on how we teach our students,” Floss said.
He said the overall decline of unions has pushed apprenticeship programs, formerly run by unions, into the realm of higher education. Floss explained that further undermines the mission of liberal education.
“We have students going to college as an individual pursuit rather than a collective one,” he said.
During a workshop exploring the promotion process for professionals, Thomas Matthews of Geneseo walked participants through UUP’s history of representing professionals in SUNY. He said more often than not, professionals get promotions because “individual and enlightened supervisors take the initiative.”
Purchase Chapter President John Delate addressed a familiar issue — how unions can help and involve new faculty — as part of a panel discussion. He said the key is to make the union more relevant to the lives of its members by establishing a broader approach toward participation. Delate borrowed a phrase made famous by President John F. Kennedy to get his point across:
“Ask not what faculty and staff can do for SUNY and UUP, but rather ask what UUP and SUNY can do for the employee.”
— Donald Feldstein