Please join AAUP–Penn and HEARD-GSE via zoom on Thursday, March 3rd at 5:30pm Eastern for a teach-in on Penn’s impact on West Philly and the city, featuring residents, youth leaders, and members of the Coalition to Save the University City Townhomes and of Penn for PILOTs. All are welcome! You can register for this event for free here.
We warmly invite AAUP–Penn members to attend the Higher Ed Labor United Winter Summit on February 23–27. You can register here (and see details on HELU and on the Summit agenda below).
Higher Ed Labor United is a nationwide coalition of 116 (and counting!) academic unions, AAUP chapters, and allied organizations representing more than half a million members working together to transform higher education in the interests of students, faculty, grad workers, staff, and the communities we serve. AAUP–Penn joined HELU when it came together last summer by endorsing the inspiring Vision Platform.
The upcoming Winter Summit will feature a mix of online panel sessions, plenaries, and group discussions. You can see the agenda here, and the fantastic lineup of speakers includes Naomi Klein, Stacy Davis Gates, Sara Nelson, and Jane McAlevey. Goals include coordinating the surge of higher ed organizing, centering racial and community justice, building alliances, developing federal policy proposals to reverse the trends that have damaged higher education, and educating politicians and candidates on these issues and working to support those who will advance a program of democratizing higher education. It’s sure to be a stimulating and productive gathering, and an opportunity to build solidarity across campuses and to think creatively and collectively about how to move forward.
Since our chapter is a contributing organization, all members in good standing (i.e. with annual national dues paid to AAUP this year) are invited to attend as many or as few sessions as your schedules allow. If you are an AAUP–Penn member, we encourage you to participate! You can register for free here.
Watch the video recording of AAUP–Penn’s 4/23 event, “Community Justice and the Ivory Tower,” featuring Davarian L. Baldwin (author of In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities are Plundering our Cities, Bold Type Books, 2021), in conversation with Krystal Strong, Abdul-Aliy Muhammad, and Jolyon Baraka Thomas. This panel discussion with faculty and community activists addressed the university’s role in gentrifying and policing neighborhoods in cities across the country, with a focus on Penn and West Philly.
Davarian L. Baldwin is the Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of American Studies and founding director of the Smart Cities Lab at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut
Abdul-Aliy A. Muhammad is a Philadelphia-born organizer, writer, and co-founder of the Black and Brown Workers Co-op
Jolyon Baraka Thomas is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Penn and an organizer with Penn for PILOTs
Krystal Strong is Assistant Professor of Education at UPenn and an organizer with BLM Philly
Organized by AAUP-Penn, the University of Pennsylvania chapter of the American Association of University Professors
Sponsors: Civic House, Wolf Humanities Center, SNF Paideia
Penn Co-sponsors: Penn for PILOTS; Police Free Penn; Fossil Free Penn; Latinx Coalition; Asian Pacific Student Coalition; Penn Association for Gender Equity; Lambda Alliance; United Minorities Council; UMOJA Coalition; Penn Community for Justice; GET-UP; University of Pennsylvania YDSA
Community Co-sponsors: The Paul Robeson House; Scribe Video Center; Al-Bustan Seeds of Culture; People’s Emergency Center
NYU’s Graduate Student Organizing Committee (GSOC) is going on strike starting today, 4/26/21. AAUP–Penn supports the rights of grad student employees at NYU and everywhere to organize, collectively bargain for a living wage and a fair contract, and strike when the university refuses to bargain. You can join their virtual picket line here, and materially support those on strike by contributing to the hardship fund here.
