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.
Table of Contents:
Editors' Note
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Lisa M. Di Bartolomeo and Kevin M. Gannon
Part 1: West Virginia University as Case Study
1. "Mountaineers Go First": The WVU Mistake
Lisa M. 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(ing) Show: Documenting the Voices of an Academy in Crisis
Sean Davis Lawrence
5. Rednecks and Loud Voices: Building a Students' Union
Christian Adams and Winston Smith
6. It Starts with a Visa: Supporting International Students
Emil Asanov
7. If You Answer, They Will Call: Standing in the Media Spotlight
Lisa M. Di Bartolomeo
Part 2: Fighting Fiscal and Political Interference
8. A Plague of Consultants: Fighting the New Epidemic in Higher Education
Kevin M. Gannon
9. Teaching a University Budget Crisis as Activism
William Caraher
10. The Solutions Project: Liberatory Student-Centered Strategies from a College in Crisis
meaghan davis, Kathleen Gray, and Sara Rzeszutek
11. Understanding Campus Free-Speech Controversies: Law, Power, Solidarity
Andy J. Carr
12. Teaching "Divisive Concepts": The Destructive Impacts of a University Culture of Censorship
Christine Zabala-Eisshofer and Lindsay Stallones Marshall
13. SB 202: Opposing Anti-DEI Legislation at an R2 in Indiana
Camille Engle, Sheron Fraser-Burgess, Jennifer Grouling, and Matthew R. Hotham
Part 3: Building Communities of Care
14. Starting Good Things: Generative Pedagogy and the Art of Creating Community on Campus
Luke Waltzer
15. Radical Empathy and Radical Hope: A Guide to Teaching, Learning, and Caring in Times of Crisis
Brian Smentkowski
16. Times Like These: Supporting First-Year Students and Contingent Faculty Through a Campus Polycrisis
Joseph Nardinelli, Joel E. R. Smith, and Matthew Austin
17. Care as Strategy: Lessons from a Center for Teaching and Learning
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. Collective Lessons from a College Closure: A Conversation Among Colleague
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. The Being Human in STEM Initiative: Campus Transformation Through Crisis
Sarah L. Bunnell, Sheila Jaswal, Mona Wu Orr, Shu-Min Liao, and Zachary Watson
22. Recruiting and Retaining a Diverse Faculty
Mari Elise Ewing and Andrea Overbay
23. Mentoring Squares: Establishing a Peer-Mentoring Program to Support Non–Tenure Track Faculty
Ryan Rideau and Dana Grossman Leeman
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
Index
