2024
On April 9, Scholars for a New Deal for Higher Education and 427 historians sent a letter to the American Historical Association Council requesting that its members carefully consider AHA Council regarding the hiring of a new executive director for the American Historical Association. Part of SFNDHE’s Professional Organization Campaign, the letter asks AHA Council to carefully consider the need to hire someone with “a profound understanding of the multiple crises that face American higher education – and within it the American historical profession – and to suggest a radically transformative vision of how to address them.”
SFNDHE launched its Professional Organizations Resolution Initiative, asking the organizations representing the academic disciplines to address the crisis in higher education and join the battle to make higher education a true public good for everyone.
SFNDHE online Spring Forum “The Big Con in Higher Education” on March 28, 2024 featured Rachel Ida Buff (University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee) and S. Ani Mukherji (Hobart and William Smith Colleges) discussing how private consulting firms are transforming the university and how to fight back.
2023
SFNDHE online Fall Forum “Dispatches from the Crisis — West Virginia University” on November 1, 2023 featured WVU faculty Dr. Lisa DiBartolomeo and Dr. Jessica Wilkerson sharing their experiences fighting the cuts at WVU and offering takeaways for people on other campuses.
Eileen Boris, Karma Chávez, Lisa Levenstein, and Annelise Orleck planned a SFNDHE roundtable on the crisis in higher education for the Big Berks in Santa Clara, California, June 2023
SFNDHE coordinated the opening plenary “Building a Higher Ed Labor Movement” and the panel “Global Precarity and Academic Freedom” for the LAWCHA conference at Rutgers University – New Brunswick, May 2023
David Stein, with Claire Goldstene of the LAWCHA Contingent Faculty Committee, facilitated a Chat Seminar on the challenges of contingent labor in higher education at the Organization of American Historians (OAH) Los Angeles, March 2023
SFNDHE launched Toolkits for use by our Ambassadors, February 2023
2022
Lisa Levenstein and Jennifer Mittelstadt on “The Real Fight for Academic Freedom” in the Chronicle of Higher Education, October 7, 2022.
Jennifer Miller and Aimee Loiselle guest edited the fall 2022 issue of AAUP’s ACADEME, on Revolutionizing Higher Education Budget and Finance.
New in Labor in Working Class History, Aimee Loiselle on the origins, purpose, and collaborations of Scholars for a New Deal for Higher Education.
Member Aimee Loiselle joined the roundtable “Scholarly Work and the Work of Scholarship in an Era of Contingency” at OAH Boston with Beth English, Will Jones, Lauren Braun-Strumfels, and Benjamin Irvin, April 2022
The Racial Justice Working Group has partnered with the #TruthBeTold campaign to protect and advocate for intellectual freedom, which is coordinated by the African American Policy Forum (AAPF) and Historians for Peace and Democracy (HPAD); it includes a special effort to share templates that facilitate faculty senate resolutions, March 2022
Lisa Levenstein and Aimee Loiselle made a collaborative solidarity video for the chapter meeting of the DePaul University AAUP to share inspiration and their experiences organizing events and actions for SFNDHE, HELU, and their AAUP chapters, March 2022
At the HELU Winter 2022 Summit, our Racial Justice Working Group helped coordinate the panel “Organizing for Racial Justice,” with contributing member Karma R. Chávez as chair and Adom Getachew presenting her experience establishing a new Department of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity at the University of Chicago, February 2022.
2021
Members Ian Gavigan and Jennifer Mittelstadt on higher ed organizing and the possibility for national reform in Dissent Magazine, “A New Deal for Eds and Meds?” Fall 2021.
Scholars co-facilitated the largest summit of local labor unions in higher education on July 7 and 9, 2021, to blaze a new path for the formation of Higher Education Labor United (HELU), which champions coalition organizing and a federal agenda for higher education.
Member Jennie Miller in the New Hampshire Union Leader, “New Hampshire Needs College for All,” July 2021
AAUP webinar “Tackling Austerity Budgets” presented tactics for engaging in budget activism to address: the finance logistics of austerity, elimination of departments, wall-to-wall worker organizing on budget issues, institutional debt, and more.
Plenary Session of the annual meeting of the Labor and Working Class History Association, May 27, 2021. Introduction and panel.
AAUP webinar on Racial and Social justice, hosted by members Annelise Orleck and Beverly Sheftall May 19.
New York Times, Guest Essay, “Should Two and Four Year Degrees Be Free?” by member Colena Sesanker and Stephen Adair, May 13, 2021
Scholars edited the May 2021 edition of AAUP’s ACADEME. Check out the authors making the case for a New Deal for Higher Education.
Watch the national launch of the AFT-AAUP Campaign with Rep. Ayanna Pressley and Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Campaign coverage: “Campaign Pushes for Reauthorization of Higher Education Act,” Diverse Education, February 10, 2021
Collegeland: A podcast on higher education that takes you on campus for the real stories: hosts Lisa Levenstein and Nan Enstad
2020
Jennifer Mittelstadt, Lisa Levenstein, Suzanne Kahn, “A True New Deal for Higher Education: How a Stimulus for Higher Ed Can Advance Progressive Policy Goals,” Roosevelt Institute, December 16, 2020
Eleni Schirmer, “It’s Not Just Students Drowning in Debt!. Colleges Are Too!” The Nation, November 20, 2020
Adom Getachew, “What’s at Stake for Higher Education in the Election?” The Chronicle of Higher Education, Oct. 14, 2020
Nan Enstad, “Why Revenue Generation Can’t Solve the Crisis in Higher Education, Or, What’s That Smell?” AAUP Journal of Academic Freedom Vol 11 (2020).
Annelise Orleck, “Rebuilding Higher Education as a Common Good,” AAUP Closing Plenary, Summer Institute, Aug. 4, 2020
