The Academic Labor Movement Now
Monday, November 4, 6pm EST
On Zoom
Joe
Berry
Union Organizer, Historian,
and Retired Contingent Faculty Member
Diana
Vallera
Union Organizer and Adjunct Professor of Photography,
Columbia College, Chicago
In recent decades campuses have relied more and more on contingent instructors and graduate workers who have little job security and often receive poverty wages. As the percentage of tenure-track faculty has plummeted, the number of highly paid administrators has expanded by leaps and bounds. Who and what has driven these shifts? What are the consequences? And how have instructors, students, and community supporters organized to improve labor and learning conditions? Historian and longtime adjunct Joe Berry will explore these questions alongside adjunct and organizer Diana Vallera, who recently led a successful 49-day adjunct strike at Columbia College in Chicago.
The PresenterS
Joe Berry is the author of Reclaiming the Ivory Tower: Organizing Adjuncts to Change Higher Education and the co-author, with Helena Worthen, of Power Despite Precarity: Strategies for the Contingent Faculty Movement in Higher Education. He taught, mostly as a contingent, in history and labor studies/labor education, in CA, IL, IA, and PA, as well as in Vietnam, and was a member, leader, and/or staffer in unions affiliated with AFT, AAUP, NEA, SEIU, and IWW. In retirement, he remains active with Higher Education Labor United, Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor, and his own local union, AFT 2121 at City College of San Francisco.
Diana Vallera is contingent faculty in the photography department at Columbia College Chicago (CCC). As president of CCC Faculty Union (CFAC) local 6602, IFT-AFT/AFL-CIO, Diana served as chief negotiator and in 2023 led the longest part-time faculty strike in U.S. history (49 days). Vallera serves as IlAAUP conference secretary, has presented on numerous panels concerning collective bargaining, the AAUP, DEI, and women in leadership, and authored the chapter on collective bargaining and organizing in Fighting Academic Repression and Neoliberal Education. Vallera’s union work centers on bridging AAUP and union principles and the values of Diversity, Equity, and Belonging.
The Feinberg Series
The 2024-25 Feinberg Series explores the historical roots of present-day political, economic, and ethical crises in higher education. It is presented by the UMass Amherst Department of History in partnership with numerous co-sponsors. The Feinberg Family Distinguished Lecture Series is made possible thanks to the generosity of UMass Amherst history department alumnus Kenneth R. Feinberg ’67 and associates.
Read the history department statement on the sponsorship of events.
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