Day: June 17, 2021

UConn-AAUP Update: June 17, 2021

In this Article:

  • Membership Meeting via Zoom: June 24, 2021, 3:00 pm
  • Negotiations Update – Current Contract Expiring, No New Contract 
  • AAUP Releases Statement on CRT
  • Provost Office – Update on In-person Teaching
  • Membership Development

Membership Meeting via Zoom: June 24, 2021, 3:00 pm

Open to members of UConn-AAUP only. Zoom link will be provided on Wednesday, June 23, 2021.

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85104687149?pwd=c1M3YnBuNllwVjVpcGRIdDl3YThvdz09

Negotiations Update – Current Contract Expiring, No New Contract 

Over the past year, your negotiating Team has met with representatives of the Board of Trustees in negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement (contract). For a number of reasons negotiations unfortunately have not led to a new contract; therefore, the current contract will expire July 1, 2021. (There are 31 other state employee bargaining units who will have their contracts expire on July 1st, including UCPEA, UCHC-AAUP and UHP).

When a similar situation occurred in 2017, the negotiating team was able to secure a “Contract Extension Agreement” (CEA) fairly easily with the administration that extended the contract for one year or until a new contract was agreed to by the parties and approved by the legislature. This year, the administration has withheld agreement unless we facilitate an opportunity for the administration to petition the Labor Board to remove coaches and performance personnel from the bargaining unit. In exchange for our facilitating this opportunity, we have secured the Professional Development Fund, Child Care Reimbursement, Tuition Reimbursement, and Provost Fund in the CEA. We also are confident of our chances of prevailing at the Labor Board to retain our coaches and performance personnel in UConn-AAUP. Please attend the Membership Meeting on Thursday, June 24, 2021 at 3:00 pm for more information.

AAUP Releases Statement on Critical Race Theory (CRT)

Irene Mulvey, National AAUP President, along with a wide coalition of organizations, released a statement yesterday voicing their strong opposition to legislation that has been proposed across the country “that target academic lessons, presentations, and discussion of racism and related issues in American history in schools, colleges and universities.” The legislation aims to prohibit or impede the teaching and education of students about the role of racism in history of the United States.

Update on In-person Teaching Modality

On Monday, June 14, 2021, Provost Lejuez sent out an email indicating he will not be establishing a new process to review potential exemptions for individuals to switch teaching modality from in-person to fully virtual instruction for medical reasons. Instead, all requests to transition one’s teaching will be handled through the existing ADA process. As many of you know, it is difficult to secure an ADA accommodation and thus more difficult to receive approval for a change in modality. UConn-AAUP will assist you in this process as we have an MOA with the Provost Office allowing for this type of accommodation. Please contact UConn-AAUP if you are refused an accommodation for a medical reason.

Membership Development

UConn has been hiring employees throughout the summer who are potential members of UConn-AAUP. Representatives of UConn-AAUP have been meeting with these new employees to impress upon them the importance of becoming a member and supporting the efforts of the negotiating team to reach a new contract. It is very important that these new employees hear from their colleagues that support UConn-AAUP. If you would like to review a list of the new members, please contact Terri Reed (terrir@uconnaaup.org)

If you are interested in joining other state employees is encouraging the Governor to provide a decent wage increase for the new contracts, join the SEBAC Organizing 2022 group. Louise Simmons, (louise.simmons@cocast.net) UConn-AAUP Vice President for Membership Development and Organizing, is  participating in the organizing of several actions planned across the state and she would like your help in representing UConn-AAUP. Please email her to get involved!!

In Solidarity!

UConn-AAUP Negotiating Team

 

Mary Ellen Junda, President
Jeffrey Ogbar, Executive Vice President

 

Michael Bailey, Executive Director
 http://www.uconnaaup.org/

“Like” Us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/uconnaaup

Joint Statement on Legislative Efforts to Restrict Teaching Race

Joint Statement on Legislative Efforts to Restrict Education about Racism and American History

June 16, 2021

We, the undersigned associations and organizations, state our firm opposition to a spate of legislative proposals being introduced across the country that target academic lessons, presentations, and discussions of racism and related issues in American history in schools, colleges and universities. These efforts have taken varied shape in at least 20 states, but often the legislation aims to prohibit or impede the teaching and education of students concerning what are termed “divisive concepts.” These divisive concepts as defined in numerous bills are a litany of vague and indefinite buzzwords and phrases including, for example, “that any individual should feel or be made to feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological or emotional distress on account of that individual’s race or sex.” These legislative efforts are deeply troubling for numerous reasons.

First, these bills risk infringing on the right of faculty to teach and of students to learn. The clear goal of these efforts is to suppress teaching and learning about the role of racism in the history of the United States. Purportedly, any examination of racism in this country’s classrooms might cause some students “discomfort” because it is an uncomfortable and complicated subject. But the ideal of informed citizenship necessitates an educated public. Educators must provide an accurate view of the past in order to better prepare students for community participation and robust civic engagement. Suppressing or watering down discussion of “divisive concepts” in educational institutions deprives students of opportunities to discuss and foster solutions to social division and injustice. Legislation cannot erase “concepts” or history; it can, however, diminish educators’ ability to help students address facts in an honest and open environment capable of nourishing intellectual exploration. Educators owe students a clear-eyed, nuanced, and frank delivery of history so that they can learn, grow, and confront the issues of the day, not hew to some state-ordered ideology.

Second, these legislative efforts seek to substitute political mandates for the considered judgment of professional educators, hindering students’ ability to learn and engage in critical thinking across differences and disagreements. These regulations constitute an inappropriate attempt to transfer responsibility for the evaluation of a curriculum and subject matter from educators to elected officials.

. Politicians in a democratic society should not manipulate public school curricula to advance partisan or ideological aims. In higher education, under principles of academic freedom that have been widely endorsed, professors are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject. Educators, not politicians, should make decisions about teaching and learning.

Knowledge of the past exists to serve the needs of the living. In the current context, this includes an honest reckoning with all aspects of that past. Americans of all ages deserve nothing less than a free and open exchange about history and the forces that shape our world today, an exchange that should take place inside the classroom as well as in the public realm generally. To ban the tools that enable those discussions is to deprive us all of the tools necessary for citizenship in the 21st century. A white-washed view of history cannot change what happened in the past. A free and open society depends on the unrestricted pursuit and dissemination of knowledge.

Signed,

The purpose of education is to serve the common good by promoting open inquiry and advancing

human knowledge

American Association of University Professors American Historical Association
Association of American Colleges & Universities PEN America

ACPA-College Student Educators International Agricultural History Society
Alcohol and Drugs History Society
American Anthropological Association
American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education American Council of Learned Societies

American Educational Research Association American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO American Folklore Society
American Library Association

American Philosophical Association
American Political Science Association
American Society for Environmental History
American Society for Theatre Research
American Sociological Association
American Studies Association
Anti-Defamation League
Association for Ancient Historians
Association for Asian American Studies
Association for Documentary Editing
Association for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies Association for the Study of Higher Education
Association for Theatre in Higher Education
Association of College and Research Libraries
Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges Association of Research Libraries
Association of University Presses
Association of Writers & Writing Programs
Business History Conference
Center for Research Libraries
Central European History Society
Chinese Historians in the United States
Coalition of Urban & Metropolitan Universities (CUMU) College Art Association
Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, & Transgender History Comparative & International Education Society
Conference on Asian History

Conference on Faith and History
Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes
Czechoslovak Studies Association
Forum on Early-Modern Empires and Global Interactions
French Colonial Historical Society
German Studies Association
Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities
Historical Society of Twentieth Century China
Immigration Ethnic History Society
John N. Gardner Institute for Excellence in Undergraduate Education Labor and Working-Class History Association
Middle East Studies Association
Modern Language Association
NAFSA: Association of International Educators
National Association for College Admission Counseling
National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education National Women’s Studies Association
National Coalition for History
National Council for the Social Studies
National Council of Teachers of English
National Council on Public History
Organization of American Historians
Phi Beta Kappa Society
Radical History Review
Rhetoric Society of America
Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media
Shakespeare Association of America
Society for Austrian and Habsburg History
Society for Classical Studies
Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era
Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender
Society of Architectural Historians
Society of Civil War Historians
Southern Historical Association
The Freedom to Read Foundation
Urban History Association
Western History Association
World History Association