THE FACULTY

New Organization Hopes to Forge Ties Between Academe and Labor

A year-old drive to forge an alliance between labor and academe now has an official voice, with the formation of Scholars, Artists, and Writers for Social Justice.

The group, made up of about 700 scholars and artists, was unveiled by organizers last week in what they called an act of solidarity with the labor movement to celebrate Labor Day.

Last October, academics organized a national teach-in with labor-movement leaders at Columbia University that attracted more than 1,500 people (The Chronicle, October 18, 1996). The new organization grew out of that meeting and a series of regional teach-ins and conferences that were held on campuses over the past year, said Nelson Lichtenstein, a labor historian at the University of Virginia.

"We want to explain to the American nation the importance of a vigorous trade movement for the health of American democracy -- nothing less," said Dr. Lichtenstein, who helped organize the Columbia teach-in and the new group. "Academics are wordsmiths and idea brokers. We have a role in combating the pernicious and mechanical ideas of the right that use human life as a series of mathematical and economic calculations. The trade-union movement is the institutional embodiment of a different vision."

The group does not aim to harness itself to the agenda of trade unions but does plan to discuss labor issues with them, now that the leadership of many unions seems open to the views of academics, he said. "I still view myself as a critic of the trade-union movement. We're still critical intellectuals, and we write in that vein."

Another leader of the new organization agreed. "It's a broad-based group of people who argue with each other on the interpretation of issues," said Michael Denning, an American-studies professor at Yale University. He said the group was formed not to push "any political line," but to serve "as a vehicle for debate, discussion, and argument over the place of labor and of working people in American society."

Organizers held a news conference in New York on Labor Day to announce the formation of the group. Among its members are the linguist Noam Chomsky, the historian Eric Foner, the feminist Betty Friedan, the actress Lee Grant, and the novelist Benjamin Alire Saenz.

At the news conference, the group praised what it saw as the Teamsters' victory in the recent United Parcel Service strike, and it joined union representatives in supporting the right of workers, including adjunct professors and graduate teaching assistants, to organize.

"We are particularly concerned that universities across the country have embraced a U.P.S.-style, two-tier system, with perhaps a majority of university teaching conducted by part-time, low-wage adjunct teachers," said Jonathan Cutler, a graduate student at the City University of New York who helped to organize the new group.

In a statement of aims, which will also be published as an advertisement in the September 22 issue of The Nation, the group said: "In the academy and publishing, in the arts, sciences and entertainment, we also experience the growth of low-wage, part-time employment which erodes our craft and creativity. We call upon our colleagues and friends this Labor Day to declare their solidarity with the organizing drives of the new labor movement."

It continued: "The time is ripe to restore the mutually empowering relationship that once gave hope and dynamism to the labor movement and its allies in the academic and cultural communities."

In a statement, the president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., John Sweeney, welcomed the new group and said the teach-ins and conferences of the past year had demonstrated the similarity of the aims of the union movement and progressive intellectuals and writers.

Other locally organized teach-ins are scheduled to be held this year on campuses including the State University of New York at Albany, Brown and New York Universities, and the Universities of Pittsburgh, Massachusetts at Amherst, Texas at Austin, Texas at El Paso, and Wisconsin at Green Bay.