The Nation is reporting that faculty at LIU-Brooklyn have been locked out by the administration of that institution, led by President Kim Cline, after the faculty voted to authorize (but did not implement) a strike as contract negotiations turned tense.
In place of faculty, whose email accounts have now been shut down, nonunionized non-faculty university staff employees are being recruited (and pressured) to teach fall classes, which start Wednesday, September 7.
According to LIU-B faculty, the administration has also placed ads for “replacement instructors” (read: scabs) on Monster.com. Students’ fall course schedules are being thrown into chaos as classes are “deactivated,” as longtime faculty member Deborah Mutnick reports in a post on the AAUP Academe blog.
You can support the faculty, staff, and students at LIU-B by participating in their letters campaign, with info about it at this link.
Faculty members have taken to Twitter to get the word out, since higher education press outlets like the Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed and other mainstream media don’t seem particularly interested in telling this story.
To follow this developing (and highly disturbing) story, follow hashtag #LIUlockout on Twitter.
As the president of the collective-bargaining chapter of the American Association of University Professors at Western Michigan University, which represents the 880 members of WMU’s Board-appointed faculty, I stand with my faculty colleagues, their students, and the staff at LIU-B, and I join with those at LIU-B and across the nation calling on President Kim Cline to end this lockout and resume good-faith negotiations with the faculty immediately.
If you care about the future of higher education in this country, please pay attention to this story, support the folks at LIU-B, and help boost their signal and get the word out about this outrageous abuse of power by President Cline.