THE DAVID R. KELLER CHAPTER OF THE AAUP / AFT AT UVU

    In 2023, the Utah Legislature considered but didn’t pass a bill to ban DEI initiatives at all public universities in the state. The 2024 Legislature, led by the senate education committee chair John Johnson, passed a rewritten DEI ban. When asked, sponsors of the bill reported that they had no data to support the ban. It passed nonetheless. Despite the major disruption of DEI work being done at their institutions, none of the Utah college or university presidents or Faculty Senates spoke out publically against the bill.   Building on his success with DEI, John Johnson sponsored a “School of General Education” bill ( S.B. 226 ) in the 2024 session. It failed. Given the DEI precedent, it might well return next year.   What is driving these attempts by legislators to take over university functions that are better left to faculty with professional expertise? A February article in the  National Review  by Stanley Kurtz, co-author of a  General Educ...

This message today from our UVU Provost announcing a new "employee recognition strategy" reveals the ongoing sense that university administrators perceive members of the faculty as employees rather than colleages engaged in shared governance. Would they ever send a mass email to the university president, academic affairs officials, and deans referring to them as Dear Employees? Of course not. There is a clear hierarchy at work, one inimical to shared governance. And then the awards: not a single one for research or creative work. The message: we're a teaching university that brackets off all research and creative work as nice things that faculty insist on doing but that are completely isolated from teaching. To paraphrase a comment about badges from "The Treasure of the Sierra Madres": we don't need no stinking awards!

Nearly 108 years after Joe Hill’s execution, a new historical marker about the famous labor organizer has been dedicated in Sugar House Park. An unveiling ceremony was held Saturday, hosted by the Central Utah Federation of Labor/AFL-CIO. The marker “will stand as a symbol of his enduring spirit and will serve as a reminder of the power of collective action,” its organizers say. Salt Lake Tribune, Nov. 18, 2023, by Kelly Cannon https://www.sltrib.com/news/2023/11/18/sugar-house-park-has-new-memorial/ Head of our AAUP/AFT Union in Utah, Brad Asay spoke at the unveiling: As Joe Hill's song asserts: "There is Power in a Union." Listen to a rendition here: https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&sca_esv=583796676&rls=en&q=Joe+Hill+There+is+Power+in+a+Union&tbm=vid&source=lnms&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiQ2pvTtNCCAxUTLkQIHeVeAGsQ0pQJegQIDRAB&biw=1274&bih=756&dpr=2#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:a57b5b1e,vid:laf4SPKlEVc,st:0 Proud mem...

for more information:   https://www.uvu.edu/ethics/events/2022-23/2023_shared_governance.html and http://uvu-aaup.blogspot.com/p/symposium-on-shared-governance.html