Full Description
The first book to address campus crises that's by and for faculty, staff, and students—the true heart of higher ed and the people who make it work.
Higher education is in crisis—and there's no shortage of books by campus leaders about how to fix it. This volume is by and for the rest of us—the faculty, staff, and students who comprise the lion's share of campus populations. It is our values, livelihoods, and prospects for success that are most threatened by these crises—and, often, by top-level administrators' responses to them. The volume brings together more than forty contributors from colleges and universities across the United States and beyond. Essays address a range of aspects of the current polycrisis, including declarations of financial exigency, program closures and faculty layoffs, campus closures, political interference, and outbreaks of violence. Authors draw on their own experiences—and those of their colleagues and students—to share what worked, what didn't, and what they learned along the way. If crisis hasn't come to your campus yet, don't worry, it will. When it does, this book will help.
Contents
Editors' Note
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Lisa Di Bartolomeo and Kevin Gannon
Part 1: West Virginia University as Case Study
1. "Mountaineers Go First": The WVU Mistake
Lisa Di Bartolomeo
2. Speculative Finance/Speculative Fiction: The Financialization of Higher Ed
Lisa M. Corrigan
3. Fighting the Lies: A Brief History of the "WVU Facts" Report
Anonymous, WVU
4. Let the Record Show: Documenting Attacks on Academia from Inside the Ivory Tower
Sean Davis Lawrence
5. Rednecks and Loud Voices: Building the West Virginia University United Students' Union
Christian Adams and Winston Smith
6. Crises beyond Borders: Supporting International Students
Emil Asanov
7. If You Answer, They Will Call: Standing in the Media Spotlight
Lisa Di Bartolomeo
Part 2: Fighting Fiscal and Political Interference
8. A Plague of Consultants: Fighting the New Epidemic in Higher Education
Kevin Gannon
9. Teaching as Activism during a Campus Crisis
William Caraher
10. Fighting for Higher Education's Liberatory Potential: Front Line Solutions from a College in Crisis
Meaghan Davis, Kathleen Gray, and Sara Rzeszutek
11. Campus "Free Speech Crises," Law, and Power
Andy J. Carr
12. Teaching "Divisive Concepts": The Destructive Impacts of a University Culture of Censorship
Lindsay Stallones Marshall and Christine Zabala-Eisshofer
13. SB 202: Opposing Anti-DEI Legislation at an R2 in Indiana
Jennifer Grouling, Matthew R. Hotham, Sheron Fraser-Burgess, and Camille Engle
Part 3: Building Communities of Care
14. Generative Pedagogy and Starting Good Things
Luke Waltzer
15. Radical Empathy and Radical Hope: Teaching, Learning, Caring, and Community in Times of Crisis
Brian Smentkowski
16. Times Like These: Supporting First-Year Students and Contingent Faculty through a Polycrisis
Joel E. R. Smith, Joseph Nardinelli, and Matthew Austin
17. Embracing Care as Strategy in Higher Education Crises
Molly Hatcher and Kaitlyn Rose Farrell Rodriguez
18. Dandelions in the Wind: Planting Resilient Seeds During and After a Campus Closure
Heather Keith and Christina Fabrey
19. Lessons from a College Closure
Kent Andersen, William Tynes Cowan, Louanne Clayton Jacobs, Kevin Shook, and Greta Valenti
Part 4: Shared Governance and Organizing for Solidarity
20. The Politics of Weakness: Faculty Senate and Faculty Governance in Crisis
Evan A. Kutzler and John LeJeune
21. Being Human Through a Campus Crisis
Shu-Min Liao, Sheila Jaswal, Sarah L. Bunnell, Mona Wu Orr, and Zachary Watson
22. Managing the crisis of recruiting and retaining diverse, national faculty members
Mari Elise Ewing and Andrea Overbay
23. Mentoring Squares: Establishing a Peer-Mentoring Program to Support Non-Tenure Track Faculty
Dana Grossman Leeman and Ryan Rideau
24. Where Are the Faculty? Reflections on Higher Education's Labor Movement and the Role of Faculty in Wall-to-Wall Organizing
Dylan M. Harris and Jon Shefner
25. Academics of the World, Unite! On the Importance of Internationalism in Addressing Campus Crises
Anne-Laure Amilhat Szary and Myriam Houssay-Holzschuch
Coda
List of Contributors
