Campus Faculty Association

Campus Labor Coalition Statement on the Forced Clearance of the April 26 Encampment

April 26, 2024

For Immediate release,

The Campus Labor Coalition at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign wholeheartedly condemns the University administrations willful neglect of the Building Service Workers (BSWs) today in sending them, without instruction nor information of their rights of protection and safety, to engage in a potentially illegal disruption of a free speech protest. This attempt to force our amazing BSWs to participate in the suppression of a political action is woefully irresponsible and unacceptable in trampling on the human, civil, and labor rights of any individual on this campus. The actions of university administration today not only jeopardize our BSWs’ agency to express their political right to refuse such a potentially dangerous order, but it is also an intentional act of disrupting the solidarity of workers, students, and all individuals at UIUC fighting for a more just and equitable world for all.

The university administration lacks such respect for workers at UIUC that they sent BSWs to destroy people’s materials in a space they have typically not worked, without any information, without real orders, and without the legal right to refuse. This follows a number of previous incidents in the past where the university administration demanded that BSWs directly disrupt the protest of workers, students, and others on campus. Why must our BSWs continue to be put in the line of fire when the university continues to exploit them as expendable? As one SEIU member stated, BSWs have been asked to work in deadly conditions during the COVID pandemic, wash windows with long aluminum poles with lightning visible, climb ladders with only one foot and at dangerous angles, work out of defective trucks with holes in the floor, clean feces and blood smeared on walls, find dead bodies in rooms, find fetuses in toilets, and are constantly susceptible to attack at night with some being knocked unconscious. Our BSWs have to work through these stressful situations and now they are told to join in on a police action in attacking the rights and properties of other groups on campus. Whether it be inside or outside the bargaining room, we as campus Labor must unite together to demand these abuses against our lives and labor to STOP NOW!

The Campus Labor Coalition calls on the UIUC administration to end all attempts to disrupt protests for free speech, including the potentially illegal use of BSWs in this political action. Campus Labor must be the foundation for solidarity and transformative change at UIUC. Therefore, campus workers, including those engaged in free speech protest for the end of violence in Gaza, must be respected by the very institution that uses our labor. The university only works because we do.

La Lucha Continua,

The Campus Labor Coalition UIUC

CFA Statement on Peaceful Protests involving students, faculty, and staff in support of Palestine

The Campus Faculty Association firmly condemns the repressive actions of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign police and administration against the peaceful protests involving students, faculty, and staff in support of Palestine. We denounce the suppression of the university community’s rights to protest and free speech and the silencing of academic freedom around the question of Palestine. We stand against the violations of systems of shared governance.

CFA also condemns the University administration’s decision to force building and service workers to participate in the suppression of these protests by removing structures and other protestors’ property. These actions were potentially dangerous, illegal and/or violated workers’ rights to political opinions. They were a taken in explicit violation of union contracts and the workers’ own wishes.

University workers’ rights and bargained contracts must be honored. Academic freedom and freedom of speech for students, staff, and faculty must be respected. The Campus Faculty Association calls for the University to uphold these fundamental rights and take concrete steps to ensure justice and accountability for these transgressions.

Announcing the 2023-2024 Social Justice Scholarship Winners

CFA congratulate the five winners of our 2022-2023 Kathryn Oberdeck Memorial Social Justice Scholarship. The awards committee was impressed by the work of all of this year’s applicants. You can learn more about each of this year’s winner’s and their work below:

Sinan is a Junior studying molecular and cellular biology and psychology. On campus, he has concentrated his interests in cultural advocacy, clinical volunteering, and community health research to lessen obstacles to healthcare in his community. This past year, Sinan has led the development of the Salaam Middle East North Africa Cultural Center, working with administration to improve university recognition and statistical representation of Middle Eastern ethnicities. With significant support from UIUC’s Vice Chancellor for DEI, the center was established and fully funded within one semester of his legislation. He is also the president of the Avicenna Community Health Center RSO, which handles funding and outreach for the nearby student-run free clinic, which he has volunteered at and conducted research with. This past summer, Sinan concluded an internship with Cook County Health, where he assisted research on patient education devices for reproductive life planning and cervical dysplasia. In his free time, Sinan enjoys folding origami and making playlists.

Emily Morrissette is a recently graduated senior from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign studying psychology and gender and women’s studies. Because of her dedication to social activism, she plans to continue her education by pursuing a Master’s degree in social work in the future. Emily works as a FYCARE (First Year Campus Rape Education) facilitator, educating incoming students about sexual violence, healthy consent practices, and bystander intervention strategies. She also helped organize the very first Stalking Prevention Educational Summit at the University of Illinois in April 2023. This large-scale event hosted students, faculty, and campus practitioners from around the state of Illinois and created a larger community discussion about the negative stigma surrounding stalking issues. Emily is currently working as an educational consultant for the UIUC Women’s Resources Center to update the workshop curriculum surrounding romanticized expectations of relationships and partner abuse. Through this social activism work, Emily hopes to erase harmful stigmas surrounding issues like sexual violence, domestic abuse, stalking, reproductive justice, and hate crimes.

Mohammad Ahmadi is a 20-year-old Iranian climate justice activist based in the United States. He is the Co-founder and Global Youth Leadership Director of Earth Uprising International and Co-founder and Communications Director of the MENA Youth Network. His work focuses on climate education, youth mobilization and inclusion in decision-making spaces, and the intersection of the climate crisis and other issues in MENA. He was selected by the UN to represent Iran at Youth4Climate Pre-COP26, and was a delegate at the UN Youth Climate Summit and LCOY USA, where he was designated as a US Climate Champion. He also organized and spoke at side events on the water-food-energy-ecosystem nexus in MENA at COP27 and the UN Water Conference. Mohammad is an environmental sustainability student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he has advocated for the complete fossil fuel divestment by the university. In the Chicago area, he has worked to educate and mobilize students and organize strikes, campaigns, and other events to push for local and statewide action on climate and racial justice. He was recently selected as a COP28 International Youth Climate Delegate and 2023 GYCN MTE Climate Ambassador, has worked on collaborations with the FAO, World Food Forum, Ecosia, Earth Day Network, Islamic Development Bank, and MoveOn, and has been featured by BBC, VICE, and the Chicago Tribune.

Alyssa Schramm (they/them) is a psychology student concentrating in diversity science at the University of Illinois. On campus, through the Women’s Resource Center’s FYCARE program, Alyssa teaches sexual assault prevention workshops to incoming students. As a prevention educator, Alyssa aims to challenge harmful attitudes and beliefs that contribute to a culture of violence on campus. Their FYCARE workshops provide a safe space for students to share perspectives and foster a common understanding of the importance of consent within healthy relationships. Alongside this, Alyssa teaches sexual health and stress management workshops through the McKinley peer education program. By providing students with information and resources, they hope to empower students into cultivating a healthy lifestyle. This semester, Alyssa is excited to be assisting in a research study about the daily life experiences of gender nonconforming individuals. Also, Alyssa will be pursuing their passion for social justice as a program assistant at the Women’s Resource Center!

Solidarity Statement for EIU Faculty

We, the Executive Committee of the Campus Faculty Association, representing faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, write to express strong support for our UPI colleagues at Eastern Illinois University in their quest for a contract that reflects the interests of faculty, staff, and students at Eastern. The budget priorities they propose reflect an investment in the people that will allow Eastern to fulfill its responsibilities to its own community and to the State of Illinois. There has been plenty of time to avoid this strike through good faith bargaining. Instead, it seems the university administration has chosen to threaten its own faculty in an effort to discourage them from engaging in their rights. We ask that you sit down with your faculty and devise a settlement that will serve the entire university community and the people of Charleston.

Donate to EIU Strike Fund

In Memoriam – Bruce Rosenstock

Our colleague Bruce Rosenstock, professor of Religion and president of CFA from 2014-2017,
died at the beginning of January. He was a man and scholar of commitment, verve, and
compassion who worked tirelessly at the university in the Senate, AAUP chapter, and CFA to
speak up for those whose voices and causes most needed support.

Bruce’s father escaped Germany in 1938. His work as a rabbi took the family to several states
before ending up on the south side of Chicago, to which Bruce felt an attachment throughout
his life. An early spur to labor activism might have come when his father worked for a time at
Chicago Circle (now UIC), until getting fired for participating in a labor action.
After undergraduate study at Columbia and graduate school at Princeton, Bruce moved in 1978
to Stanford as an ABD in Classics, where the PhD caught up to him a year later. Harriet Murav
recalls studying Plato’s “Republic” in a class Bruce taught that same year, her first as a graduate
student. Their lives went various ways until that initial acquaintance evolved a decade later into
a lasting partnership and marriage.

Professional life brought ups and downs. The exploitative side of academic labor became Bruce’s reality after tenure was denied at Stanford and he maintained a toehold in academia by
teaching adjunct per course at community colleges. A lecturer position at UC-Davis then
provided some stability as he transitioned to research in Jewish Studies, after which he moved
to Illinois with Harriet in 2002, joining the Department of Religion.

Bruce got into digital humanities before that was a thing, and the output of his NSF-funded
multi-media digital library “Folk Literature of the Sephardic Jews” is archived online at
http://sephardifolklit.illinois.edu. He assembled a team of graduate assistants to help and
taught himself to script in Perl to manage the data. Harriet recalls this period of life as being full
of fun group dinners with the students.

His inquisitive mind continued to quest in new directions. After settling in at Illinois, Bruce
pursued research on German Jewish philosophy, which led to two published books and the
collaborative translation project on which he continued to work last year even as his health
declined.

Strong threads of justice and fairness, and empathy for the underdog, wove through Bruce’s
life. He did not flinch from the criticism that would follow as he spoke up in support of those
who needed it, such as the Students for Justice in Palestine. He could be counted on to raise
uncomfortable truths to colleagues and to the university administration. As he said to one
campus group last year: “If we’re not going to take a position then what’s the point of the
organization?”

The three years Bruce served as president of CFA, from 2017-2017, came in tumultuous times.
The union organizing drive faced stiff headwinds on the tenure track side, with three union partners to manage and opponents on campus who did not hesitate to smear our integrity.
Then the Salaita controversy erupted. The administration’s malfeasance and interference by
the Board of Trustees demanded resistance, despite the enormous energy that this effort
sucked out of union organizing. Throughout it all, Bruce kept his good humor and continued to
step up as CFA president in years when it was difficult to find willing candidates. The union
drive ended with partial success (three cheers for NTFC!), after which Bruce helped begin
reframing CFA’s goals to make an impact as a campus advocacy group.

To close on a personal note: Bruce sold encyclopedias door to door for a time earlier in his life,
which proved to be good training for the hard knocks of union organizing. I gained confidence
just by watching him engage on office visits, approaching the tough nuts with as much
enthusiasm as the low-hanging fruit. On campus and off, Bruce never used two words when
three would do, which made him a good friend to enjoy a beer with. I only wish we’d had time
for one more.

Richard Laugesen

Spring 2023 Social Justice Scholarship – Call for Applications

Submit Your Application Here

The Campus Faculty Association is proud to announce that we are awarding up to eight $1000 scholarships for undergraduate students who have demonstrated outstanding commitment to social justice in the community. This year we will award scholarships in both the fall and spring semesters.

These scholarships will be awarded in memorial of longtime CFA member and fighter for social justice Kathryn J. Oberdeck who served until her death as a professor of History at the University of Illinois.

To be considered, an undergraduate must be currently enrolled as a student in good standing at the UIUC with at least one more semester of study before graduation. Preference will be given to students who will be involved in social justice activity during the period of the award.

Applications must include a curriculum vitae, a short (250 word) essay describing the student’s involvement in social justice work, and the name and contact information for one reference who can speak to the student’s record in this regard. We are currently accepting applications. Awards will be announced at the end of the Fall semester. The deadline for applications is April 21.

Social justice efforts may take many forms, including volunteer and paid work. Although usually performed through the auspices of a non-profit organization, it may also involve a less formally structured activity. Whatever form it may take, such activity is not simply charity work but an effort that seeks to improve the living and working conditions for less advantaged members of the community in concrete and sustainable ways. Examples include work associated with: labor organization and strike support; patients’ rights; civil rights; housing assistance programs like Habitat for Humanity; food pantries and food delivery programs; incarcerated people’s rights and education; early childhood development programs; shelters for homeless people and domestic violence survivors; immigrant rights; and so on.

Please submit applications here.

All application materials should be submitted as a single .pdf file.

Statement of Support for Striking UIC Faculty

CFA stands in solidarity with UIC United Faculty in their efforts to secure excellent teaching and learning conditions on our sister campus.

We are outraged that the University of Illinois administration continues to choose conflict over compromise and profits over people.

We call on President Killeen to exercise the leadership required by this crisis and settle a fair contract immediately!

Fall 2022 Kathryn J. Oberdeck Memorial Social Justice Scholarship

The Campus Faculty Association is proud to announce that we are awarding up to five $1000 scholarships for undergraduate students who have demonstrated outstanding commitment to social justice in the community. This year we will award scholarships in both the fall and spring semesters.

Please submit applications to campusfacultyassoc@gmail.com. All application materials should be submitted as a single .pdf file.

Download Flyer to Share

Read About Past Winners

Image of Scholarship flyer with text reprinted from the page

People’s COVID-19 Briefing

On October 5, 2021 from 12:30pm to 1:30pm, the CFA, GEO, and NTFC hosted a panel discussion with instructors teaching on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Below you will find a recording of the event, links to the email template you can use to share your frustration with the UIUC administration, articles published by media in attendance, and text transcripts of both the meeting audio and the accompanying Zoom chat.

Media Response

One of the most common sentiments shared at Tuesday’s meeting: hoping the university avoids a “victory lap” mentality.
Ethan Simmons, “Coronavirus response | UI instructor unions say their classrooms should be safer,” News Gazette

With a higher risk of breakthrough infection, the rise of the Delta variant has heightened concern and confusion among faculty over what they should do when a student tests positive for COVID-19 or comes in close contact with someone who has.
Willie Cui, “Faculty express concern about classroom COVID-19 transmission despite UI assurances,” The Daily Illini

Chat Transcript Download

Zoom Call Transcript Download

Email Template https://tinyurl.com/PCB-Email

Any media inquires about this event should be directed to campusfacultyassoc@gmail.com.

Announcing the 2020-2021 Social Justice Scholarship Winners

CFA congratulate the five winners of our 2020-2021 Social Justice Scholarship. The awards committee was impressed by the work of all of this year’s applicants. You can learn more about each of this year’s winner’s and their work below:

Image of Nataly Esparza looking at the camera over her left shoulder. She is wearing a black short-sleeved top and jeans.

Nataly Esparza is currently a Senior Double Majoring in Political Science and Spanish on a Pre-Law track. Nataly serves as the Undocu/DACA Mentor through the office of OIIR, which allows her to assist undocumented/DACAmented students through workshops, weekly office hours, scholarship applications, resource guiding, etc. Secondly, Nataly serves as the Development and Grants intern at the New American Welcome Center as well as a Senator in LAS-B through the Illinois Student Government which allows her to create resolutions and projects to help out different communities and voice various concerns of the student body. Nataly’s other extracurriculars include being an active member of I-CAUSE, ISG student committees, and Spanish Tutor. After graduation Nataly plans to attend law school and practice immigration law, as she has witnessed how the system often neglects members of disadvantaged communities like herself who lack opportunities to seek and receive fair representation in legal procedures, which affects not only the outcome of one case, but communities as a whole.

Ciara Johnson is a student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, pursuing a Bachelor’s of Science in Integrative Biology. A native to the Southside of Chicago, Ciara has been introduced to the vast, diverging opportunities and disadvantages Chicago has to offer to its residents. At a young age, Ciara was exposed to the socioeconomic disparities within the Chicago area, creating an internal desire for her to connect underserved areas in the city to the world-class experiences of Chicago. With an unwavering commitment to STEM advancements, she plans to become an entrepreneur and leader in the science and technology fields, specifically focusing on using her platform to address socioeconomic disparities that limit minorities from gaining access to the STEM field. Ciara is an active part of her community through being an active member of programs including The Few Initiative for Children, The Illini Medical Screening Society, and the Technology Entrepreneur Center Student Advisory Board. She has utilized the platforms she has been part of to be a resource for others through her service and commitment.

Hiba Ahmed is a Junior at the U of I studying business and environmental sustainability. She is passionate about using her resources to uplift her community and has done so through social entrepreneurship and student organizing. She has created social entrepreneurship projects in Champaign to facilitate economic opportunities for low-income residents. She is also a part of Believers Bail Out, a bail fund that supports Muslims in pre-trial incarceration. Additionally, she is active in the movement to get cops off campus by organizing with a working group of students and faculty at U of I.

Keyana Diaz is from Waukegan, Illinois, and a sophomore at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Keyana is currently majoring in human development and family studies, with a concentration in child and adolescent development. Keyana plans to obtain my PhD and help people with mental illnesses and become a professor. Keyana created a five-part webinar series Anti-Racism: Awareness and Allyship with two of my allies, because she wanted to amplify the voices of the Black community and educate others on to help them. The topics include what the Black community has done in making their voices heard, how people contribute to racism unconsciously and individually, how society has put the Black community at a disadvantage, the relationship between policing and race, and how people can practice anti-racism and be allies in our daily lives. Keyana believes that education is a powerful tool that we can use to spread valuable information that could make a difference in other people’s lives and inspire others to create change.

Tyeese Braslavsky is studying Political Science and Social Psychology with a minor in Communications at the University of Illinois and will be beginning her senior year in the Fall of 2021! With a keen interest in civil and human rights education and advocacy, Tyeese leads the Student Advocacy Coalition on campus, serves as an intern and tutor for the YMCA’s New American Welcome Center, a volunteer with the Education Justice Project and has served for 3 years in the Illinois Student Government as Senator and Outreach Coordinator! Post-graduation, Tyeese hopes to attend law school and pursue a career as a civil rights lawyer. In her free time, you can always find her with an iced coffee in hand, listening to a Broadway cast recording, taking photos of anything and everything on campus, and, of course, talking about her many, many plants!

More information about the Social Justice Scholarship can be found here.

CFA Statement on SHEILD COVID-19 Saliva Testing for Local Community

The CFA calls on the University of Illinois to fulfill its public mission by providing its saliva-based COVID testing to the local community.

Endorsements:
Graduate Employees’ Organization (GEO)
Non-Tenure Track Faculty Coalition (NTFC)

For Immediate Release:

April 4, 2021

The Campus Faculty Association (CFA) calls on the University of Illinois to live up to its status as a preeminent public university and a land-grant research institution by sharing its innovative saliva-based covidSHIELD test with the surrounding community free of cost.

CFA applauds the decision to provide the test to schools, universities, and communities following its approval by the Food and Drug Administration. We were thrilled to read the headlines about SHIELD CU’s involvement in the K-12 initiative funded by the Rockefeller Foundation—thanks, we understand, to the support of Governor Pritzker. However, we strongly oppose the decision to sell the SHIELD test, especially to vulnerable/underserved community members and to family. The U of I is not simply a vendor. It is a public institution supported by and responsible to the Urbana-Champaign and surrounding community.

We insist that our campus is not an isolated bubble, but part of the larger Champaign County community. Students, faculty, and staff may work and study on campus, but they live, move, shop, and, yes, socialize, in Champaign, Urbana, and surrounding communities. We understand that the tests are costly. But we strongly believe the university must remember its position as a community member, and join the collective pursuit to protect neighbors and friends.

Perhaps this sounds utopian in the current economic and political climate. But a recent, peer-reviewed engineering study demonstrated that UIUC’s reopening definitively caused COVID-19 to spread beyond university boundaries into the community. Furthermore, a new scientific study bears out the epidemiological value of such an attitude. The authors of “The Case for Altruism in Institutional Diagnostic Testing,” from MIT, Harvard, and Colorado Mesa Institute, suggest that the “self-focused approach” to COVID testing of places like UIUC “not only overlooks surrounding communities but also remains blind to community transmission that could breach the institution.” They conclude, “Our model supports our hypothesis that the altruistic approach––in which institutions test beyond their walls––is the most effective protection strategy.” And as CDC director Rochelle Walensky and President Joseph Biden emphasize, the pandemic is not over yet. While vaccines continue to roll out, cases may be on an upswing. Testing remains crucial.

We call on the University of Illinois to fulfill its public mission, as Dr. Wanda E. Ward, the co-lead of SHIELD-CU herself put it. We want the entire community to stay well and safe, too. We call on the university to provide its covidSHIELD test to the surrounding community free of cost, especially to underserved and vulnerable communities in the area.

Who We Are

The Campus Faculty Association (CFA) is an advocacy organization for faculty and other campus workers committed to shared governance, academic freedom, and a strong faculty voice on campus. The majority of CFA members are tenure-stream faculty. Non-tenure stream faculty in most campus units are represented by their union, the Non-Tenure Faculty Coalition Local #6546.

CFA supports the principles of faculty unionization and represents a clear and organized faculty voice. We provide an independent perspective on the university and higher education.

CFA has been active on the UIUC campus for more than forty years, working on issues of academic freedom, faculty working conditions, and racial and gender equity.

CFA Statement on Proctorio

For Immediate Release:

February 15, 2021

The Campus Faculty Association (CFA) stands in solidarity with and supports the successful efforts of the UIUC Graduate Employees Organization and hundreds of undergraduate students, demanding that the UIUC terminate its use of Proctorio. We celebrate their victory in pressing the university to decline to renew its contract with Proctorio after the summer session. Until Proctorio is fully removed, we strongly encourage all CFA members and tenured faculty to refuse it.

Unfortunately, Proctorio is only one of several classroom technologies that raise serious concerns about faculty and student privacy and pedagogy. Other forms of technology, like Packback and Turnitin, which already have significant footprints on campus, threaten student and worker privacy in ways that are not upfront and clear to users. They also endanger the quality and quantity of academic labor. The University’s increasing approval and contracting of such classroom technologies also signals a troubling, undemocratic trend in administrative approaches to academic labor and pedagogy that damage its relationship with faculty and students.

As teachers and mentors to UIUC students, we understand that effective pedagogy requires trust, open communication, and strong relationships among all members participating in a course. Surveillance technologies like Turnitin openly violate that trust by assuming students will cheat and install preemptive measures to discipline their behavior under the already stressful conditions of an exam or paper deadline. Packback, which purports to be a “Digital TA,” poses additional threats to our community’s shared educational mission, not to mention the livelihoods and careers of many of us.

Without any real consultation with faculty, the university has become increasingly reliant on surveillance technology and automated pedagogy. In some cases, the turn to technology has been an obvious and necessary response to the pandemic. In others, the crisis has clearly created an environment of “disaster capitalism” that serves private interests at the expense of UIUC students, workers, and faculty. We believe that outsourcing education to private corporations is not only an irresponsible use of limited funding and resources, but also exposes UIUC constituents to serious threats to their privacy and well-being. Most important, it undermines the foundations of a strong, resilient campus community–now needed more than ever in this moment of multiple crises.

As the organization representing the most privileged and secure class of workers on campus, the CFA calls on all instructors, especially tenured faculty, to refuse to use these technologies. The CFA further demands that the university administration honor its purported commitment to shared governance by seeking serious consultation and input from faculty and other relevant campus workers before committing to contracts for any future “university-approved” classroom and surveillance technologies.

Who We Are

CFA supports the principles of faculty unionization and represents a clear and organized faculty voice. We provide an independent perspective on the university and higher education. <something like that? Or remove>

CFA has been active on the UIUC campus for more than forty years, working on issues of academic freedom, faculty working conditions, and racial and gender equity.