Annual Meeting Scheduled
"Tough Times Ahead: Outlook and Strategies for California's Faculty"
Saturday, October 25, 2003 (11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.)
Hilton-Oakland Airport Hotel

This year's meeting will focus on the state's political and financial crisis. What is the outlook for higher education? How should faculty respond? What role should the CA-AAUP play in Sacramento? Assemblymember Carol Liu (D-44), Chair of the Assembly's Committee on Higher Education, will be our featured speaker. Other guests include Mark Smith, AAUP's Director of Government Relations, and Candace Kant, President of the Nevada Faculty Alliance. Register early to reserve your spot! The event is free to AAUP members.

Assemblymember
Carol Liu (D-44)

Our three guest speakers are well positioned to offer views on what the Conference might accomplish through faculty advocacy and issue-based lobbying in the coming year. Our luncheon speaker, Assemblymember Carol Liu, has solid credentials when it comes to higher education. A graduate of San Jose State College, she chairs the Assembly's Higher Education Standing Committee, serves as a Trustee of the UC Berkeley Foundation, is Vice Chair of the Committee to Develop a Master Plan for Education, and sits on the Assembly Education Committee. Liu is also on the Assembly's Budget Committee and its Education Finance Subcommittee. Those of us who have heard her speak at other faculty meetings in the state are confident that Liu will give us a frank assessment of what is in store for public higher education in the coming years.

Our other speakers--Mark Smith and Candace Kant--have a great deal of AAUP-specific experience with issues advocacy and government relations work. Mark Smith will follow Liu's presentation with a lobbying workshop. Based out of the AAUP's Washington office, Smith has been overseeing AAUP issues-based lobbying for a number of years; he knows a great deal about faculty successes--and failures--in statehouses across the country.

A professor of history at the Community College of Southern Nevada, Candace Kant is president of the AAUP's Nevada Conference (the Nevada Faculty Association) and has served the national AAUP in a variety of capacities. She has sat on the National Council, on our Committee on Community Colleges, and is presently a member of "Committee A On Academic Freedom and Tenure." We invited Kant to our meeting so that she could provide our members with some context that might be helpful as we chart a course for our own state conference. We thought it would be valuable to hear how a western Conference with a successful record of government relations developed their lobbying program.

Although the AAUP's California Conference has existed for some time, the past few years have witnessed a surge in activity. The business portion of our meeting will provide our members with an opportunity to review and ratify a number of structural improvements to the Conference. Along with a new Constitution that is awaiting approval, the membership will need to consider Conference finances and dues, and the implementation of election procedures. Our members will also determine what--if any--standing committees ought to be approved, and will set the Conference's organizational agenda for the coming year. There is much to be done on the 25th, and we hope that you will join us for this important meeting.

Message from the President
Professor David Rubiales on politics and higher education

It seems that not so long ago many of us were speculating on how good things could get. The state had a flush treasury, institutions were preparing for "Tidal Wave II" with new construction projects, UC was poised to add an entire campus at Merced, the CSU administration and faculty had agreed to hire hundreds more full-time faculty than the system was losing. Additionally, the inequities facing California's part-time faculty were being systematically addressed by a legislature willing to allocate parity funds for this purpose. Luckily for us, the state's financial health gave out well before its faculty had a chance to become complacent.

The moment is propitious for a resurgent AAUP in the state, and that is precisely what we have. Our meeting on the 25th of October marks the culmination of nearly two years of work to bring the California Conference up to the mark set by AAUP state organizations elsewhere in the country. Along with the usual trappings--chapter and member service programs, a burgeoning website, etc.--of a well developed AAUP state conference, we are exceedingly fortunate to have strong ties to every sector of higher education in the state.

Those broad ties, coupled with the Association's extraordinary policy work on behalf of the profession, uniquely position us to represent the concerns of the faculty AS A WHOLE. Without interfering with the work already being done for specific constituencies by various lobbying associations and unions, we can sound a deeper and subtler note in support of such issues as adequate funding for higher education, access, diversity, professorial authority, academic freedom, and sound governance practices.

Substantively, it seems to me that our lobbying and educational agenda for the coming year needs to have two prongs. We must ensure that higher education in California receives the funding that it needs to thrive. This means, in part, that we must help legislators find the will to seriously address the state's revenue shortfall. Much of the state's fiscal crisis can be attributed to the loss of projected revenues from taxes on capital gains, a fiscal vulnerability that was exacerbated by the reduction of various other taxes and fees in the flush 1990s. If the public discourse on taxation has become irrational, it seems appropriate for us as educators to weigh in on the matter and point out the real costs of insufficient state revenues.

Similarly, there is a real cost to insufficient access. Given California's demographics, "adequate" funding for higher education cannot stop at restoring the funds that have been "lost" by the various systems. As a gigantic college-age cohort swells outside our institutions' walls, it would be short-sighted and unjust for us to simply tell them, "Sorry, but the promise of education and social advancement that we had been holding out to you was actually a lie." Given the socio-cultural expectations of this generation, it seems unlikely that politicians will have the stomach to cut them off from higher education for too long (though in the short term, Sacramento stomachs seem cast in iron: Community College estimates suggest that budget cuts have left some 90,000 prospective students out in the cold).

What I see as being up for grabs is the "quality" of the education that will be offered and, concomitantly, the quality of faculty members' working lives. Certainly, the easy fix will be to continue the trend of substituting contingent for tenured faculty. The AAUP's views on the problems of contingency--for academic freedom, shared governance, educational quality, and equitable employment--are discussed at length on our Contingent Faculty Issues page. Suffice it to say, we must fight against any further erosion of California's commitment to a full-time professional faculty, secure in its enjoyment of academic freedom and of healthy shared governance.

Given California's historic commitment to public higher education, reflected, since 1960, in the justly famous "Master Plan," I'm optimistic that our efforts to preserve educational quality and defend core AAUP principles can be successful. That said, I would anticipate that there will be much work for us to do in higher education's enormous private sector. Here, the range of institutional practices is remarkable and lobbying is of less utility (though certainly not irrelevant). We must pursue an aggressive organizational strategy to help faculty in this sector advocate effectively for themselves locally. Organizing, of course, must always be at the heart of what the CA-AAUP does. We cannot function without engaged faculty members taking responsibility for their profession. Towards that end, I look forward to seeing you on the 25th. All the best for a healthy and productive year.

Campus Equity Week and Contingent Faculty Issues
CA-AAUP contributes to CEW and to COCAL-CA

This year's Campus Equity Week (CEW) activities will be held between October 27th and 31st on campuses in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Designed to educate our campus communities, the public, and policymakers, CEW also promotes local organizing and encourages contingent faculty activism. In California, events are being planned on UC, CSU, and Community College campuses, with AAUP members and staff participating directly in many of them.

Chris Storer--a member of the national AAUP's "Committee A On Academic Freedom and Tenure," and a part-time faculty member at DeAnza College--is CEW's Central Coordinator for 2003. In an open letter to the international academic community (pdf download), Storer explains how the focus of CEW has shifted in recent years "from narrow labor issues to broader questions of institutional integrity and educational quality." This shift, Storer argues, reflects an understanding that faculty employment conditions are student learning conditions.

Those interested in CEW activities should visit our Contingent Faculty Issues page,as well as the CEW Action page. In addition to supporting CEW activities in California, the AAUP's west coast office is assisting a national fundraising campaign to bolster a new fund dedicated to contingent faculty issues. Established by the Association's governing Council, the fund was prompted by an announcement that coeditors Benjamin Johnson, Patrick Kavanaugh, and Kevin Mattson would donate all royalties from their book Steal This University: The Rise of the Corporate University and the Academic Labor Movement to the AAUP for work on behalf of contingent faculty.

According to the fund guidelines, expenditures may be made from the fund for:
*Financial assistance to faculty at an institution where a significant threat to contingent faculty arises,
* Fellowships to individual faculty members who are involved in contingent faculty issues that implicate AAUP policy,
* Support of research projects relating to contingent faculty, and publication of their results,
* Assistance for contingent faculty activists to attend training programs or conferences on issues relating to contingent appointments, and
* Support of efforts to increase public understanding of contingent faculty appointments.

Contributions may be mailed to: Contingent Faculty Fund; c/o AAUP, West Coast; 15 Shattuck Sq., Ste. 200; Berkeley, CA 94704-1151.

Putting our money where our mouth is, the CA-AAUP is a dues-paying member of California's arm of the Coalition for Contingent Academic Labor (COCAL-CA), and provides direct financial support to CEW activities in California.

Organizing California
CA-AAUP launches new website and chapter service program

The Conference's new website has been up and running for several months with new material being added almost daily. We have also established a new chapter service program to help the AAUP maintain a strong presence on campuses throughout the state. The website holds a tremendous amount of information of relevance to higher education faculty (legal decision, research papers, legislative updates, links to newspaper articles, etc., etc.) As one of our new services, AAUP chapters may post their own websites, free of charge, to the CA-AAUP site, and a number of chapters have already opted to do so. The following article briefly reviews our website, providing a simplified schematic of what we have posted online and how you can find it.

The Conference website has been designed to sit "between" the AAUP's national site and the websites of our chapters in California. The CA-AAUP's site is easy to navigate, with icons in the top left corner of every page moving you "up" a level in the site's architecture, while the red link-bar on the left lets you move quickly, by topic, to secondary pages. On some secondary, and even tertiary pages, an additional links column on the right side of the screen directs the user to relevant non-AAUP websites. For example, the Government Relations page has a right-side column with links to other campaigns of potential interest to our members. Pages with a lot of data on them are typically top linked by sub topic to facilitate quick navigation to particular items or information.

Our homepage links users to information on various services that are available to all AAUP chapters in the state. Additional programs, designed specifically for our collective bargaining chapters, are also listed. Links to time-sensitive events and campaigns are usually highlighted in yellow on the homepage. Of particular importance this month is our upcoming Annual Meeting and the link from the homepage takes you to registration and scheduling information for the event.

From any of the CA-AAUP's web pages, our left-side navigation bar takes users to the CA-AAUP's secondary pages. Several of these, "About the CA-AAUP" and "Contact Us,"are straightforward and don't require much explanation. The "News and Issues" link takes users to updates on issues of general interest or concern, and will also become the repository for links to previous Conference publications (this newsletter, for example). From the "News and Issues" page, a right-side link to "Related Articles" takes you to a chronological archive of links to free newspaper articles--directly pertinent to higher education--that have been culled from a variety of newspapers. This page is updated frequently and checked for broken links; consequently, it is useful to "refresh" your browser when visiting this page. This archive of articles is intended to help members stay up-to-date on higher education issues and we welcome suggestions on additional links that should be posted (as well as dead links that should be removed).

In a similar vein, the "Resource Links" page provides the user with an annotated bibliography of online sources for information on higher education. For convenience, the page is top linked by subject (such as: higher education data and analysis, state government, academic and intellectual freedom, private universities and colleges, etc.). In development is an online "Higher Ed. Bibliography" of published works. This bibliography is currently accessible from a right-side link on the Conference's homepage.

Our "Join AAUP" page allows California faculty members to more easily download state (or, where appropriate, institution-specific) membership forms. Faculty members up for the challenge are welcome to use the national AAUP's online membership application process, but downloading a form from us usually proves to be the easiest way to join.

The "Join AAUP" page is updated in tandem with the "Chapter Links" page, in part, because a number of our chapters charge local dues, and--in some cases--other organizational relationships can come into play. Along with listing organized chapters in the state, the "Chapter Links" page provides (through a right-side set of links) information about reciprocal arrangements that the national AAUP has negotiated with faculty organizations in other countries.

The CA-AAUP's rolling "Calendar" page (left-linked) is designed to keep visitors informed of upcoming AAUP events at both the state and national level. Events listed on the calendar are generally linked to more substantive information (schedules, logistical details, registration forms, etc.). The Calendar provides a chronology of events on a rolling 12-month cycle.

Comments about the webpage are welcome and should be directed to the CA-AAUP's webmistress, Fernanda Bustamante.

National Online Petition for International-Student Visa Reform and International Scholars' Rights
AAUP addresses post 9-11 pressures on the Academy

International scholars seeking to work or study in America have had to contend with new--and higher--hurdles than existed before September 11, 2001. It is becoming clear that the implementation of tighter visa restrictions, background checks, and various other security initiatives is having a deleterious effect on higher education. In response, a petition campaign has been launched by a coalition of organizations.

As the petition notes, "a fair and welcoming environment for the increasing number of international students, post-doctoral scholars, and other academics in the United States is vital to the protection of academic freedom for all teachers and researchers at U.S. universities and of this nation's status as the center of academic research and teaching internationally." According to a report published by the Graduate Student Employee Organization (GESO-Yale), the State Department issued some 50,000 fewer student visas in 2002/03, than were issued in 1999/2000.

By the end of September, the sponsors of this petition had collected more than 4,000 signatures from around the country. If you have not already done so, please review the petition online and give serious thought to adding your name to our growing list of academic supporters. Further information about the petition campaign--including the full text of the petition and the list of signatories--is available online. The broader questions posed by post 9-11 restrictions are being taken up by the national AAUP and its new Special Committee on "Academic Freedom and National Security in Time of Crisis." The AAUP has posted a great deal of additional information--including advice to faculty members facing law enforcement inquiries under the USA PATRIOT Act--on a webpage devoted to Homeland Security and Higher Education.