Academe Article

There you go again, Ronald Reagan’s education secretary, William Bennett, scathingly told universities in a 1987 New York Times column, “Our Greedy Colleges.” Students don’t deserve tax support. “On average, college graduates earn $640,000 more over their lifetimes than non-graduates do. It is simply not fair to ask taxpayers, many of whom do not go to college, to pay more than their fair share of the tuition burden.”

Angela Hewett has joined the AAUP staff as director of the Department of Organizing and Services. Over the last nine years Hewett has worked in a variety of roles within the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) at both the national and the local level, most recently as staff coordinator with SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West. She previously served as an assistant professor of English at George Washington University, where she helped organize a bargaining unit of more than 1,600 contingent faculty members.

At its fall meeting in November, Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure approved a new subcommittee report, Accommodating Faculty Members Who Have Disabilities, for publication and wide distribution.

The AAUP chapter at Lebanon Valley College, a small private institution in Pennsylvania, was reestablished in 2009. Twenty-eight of the college’s one hundred faculty members are in the chapter.

Here, chapter president Robert Valgenti speaks with Academe about how his chapter has built membership and addressed key faculty concerns.

What is your chapter’s proudest accomplishment?