Academia
Whither academia? The university of today might well be unrecognizable to previous generations of professors. As the chair of faculty at a large public R1 flagship, I see the effects of the defunding of public higher education everywhere. As the highly fetishized and misunderstood market forces that dominate American capitalism are marshaled to replace the public funding, we see corporatization, privatization, predatory inclusion, diversity window dressing, and the hollowing out of institutions as the brightest prospects flee.
This space contains my personal views, not those of my institution. These observations are not peer reviewed. As the university fails to support its faculty, even with website design and maintenance, this space will serve as a holder for what I am reading, thinking, teaching and sometimes even writing for processional review.
Faculty Chair Role
In 2022, I was elected chair of the faculty at my large, R1 flagship land grant public university. After two decades as a working faculty member who hit the "glass ceiling" in the service/administrative role I sought, I broke out of my academic routine and began to organize with others across the institution who also sought to address the trends which were degrading our professional lives. The Coalition for Academic Justice, a move towards unionization of the campus in a "right to work" state, but especially the corporate style manipulations of an administration that was designed to corporate specifications, energized me along a path I hadn't known existed.
The Coalition for Academic Justice movement was a brief inspirational moment of educational leadership and activism that grew out of local border activism on behalf of the undocumented and against law enforcement presence in campus safe spaces. This evolved into a union on the one hand and a renewed interest in shared governance on the other hand. What is shared governance you might ask? Here's what the Association of American University Professors says about it.
Here's what the law says about it.
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Publications
As a traditional academic, I did a lot of publications. They range in topics from the Ottoman Empire to the contemporary Arab world, to media studies, to the study of conflict, to critical power studies. The publish or perish mentality, I must confess, was not deeply motivating to me, but exploring a wide variety of topics with loose themes and disparate literatures continues to be highly engaging for me. Click below for a list of publications.
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