President:
Todd Wolfson
Rutgers University

Our colleges and universities are under attack.

Right-wing forces are organizing to take control of our campuses, hollowing out democracy and telling us what we can research, teach and learn. This onslaught is exacerbated by long term federal and state divestment from higher education across the last sixty years. We have watched tuition skyrocket as students and colleges accumulate trillions in debt, while, a growing army of higher ed bureaucrats take over our universities and run them like corporations. The impacts of this assault include the weakening and abolition of tenure, academic freedom and shared governance; the shuttering of colleges and programs across the country;and an over-reliance on contingent contracts that devalue both our adjunct faculty and our staff. Fifty years ago, higher education was one of the most respected sectors in the country. We now have a target on our back.

In this context, it is incumbent on us to counter the likes of Ron DeSantis and higher edu consultants like the rpk Group, the firm that developed the plan to eviscerate West Virginia University. To date, however, we have not seen a unified response. We must work across dozens of parent unions to build a strong coalition of workers on our campuses and a national voice and campaign that details how higher ed is the bedrock of democracy, and the engine of social mobility, innovation and progress.

If elected, this will be the focus of my time at the AAUP. With the leaders of AAUP across this country I want to develop a strategy to fight back. Building on the important organizing we have seen in the sector over the last few years–from new organizing and labor militancy to national days of action and student organizing–I want AAUP to lead the charge in forging a national vision for the future of higher ed, and to build a campaign to bring that vision to life. To do this we need to attend to our partnership with AFT, and then work to establish partnerships with other higher ed unions as well as our students and our communities.

Before we can build with others we need to attend to ourselves. We need an organization and staff that understand the problems our chapters face and can offer real material support. We need to fight to build alignment across AAUP and then across the broader sector. And, we have to understand how the affiliation agreement has impacted AAUP, from the national organization to state conferences and local chapters. We must work with AFT to make sure that this critical agreement helps us take a bold step forward.

As a scholar, community organizer and leader of Rutgers AAUP-AFT, I have built organizations from the ground up, managed staff and forged coalitions and campaigns that win.

With these experiences, I believe I am best suited to lead the organization through this pivotal moment and I ask for your vote for me and the United Faculty for the Common Good slate.

Biographical Information

I am running for President of AAUP with the United Faculty for the Common Good slate that includes Rotua Lumbantobing, Danielle Aubert and Chenjerai Kumanyika as well as previously elected board members Davarian Baldwin, Ernesto Longa, Donna Murch and Karin Rosenblatt.

I am an anthropologist by training and an associate professor in Media Studies at Rutgers University. Since 2017, I have held a leadership role in Rutgers AAUP-AFT and have served as President and Vice President of my local and helped to build our department rep infrastructure, which is the backbone of our organizing work at Rutgers. As president during the pandemic, I helped reignite the Coalition of Rutgers Unions (CRU), which represents about 20,000 workers across three campuses including staff, adjunct faculty, grad workers, healthcare workers and full-time faculty. When management pushed an austerity response to the pandemic that included laying off low-wage workers that were disproportionately women and people of color. the CRU unions launched a year of organizing that won critical job protections for staff and adjuncts, forced management to return our stolen contractual raises and established a COVID extension program for doctoral students that granted an extra year of funding.

Following that, I worked with higher ed leaders across the country in AAUP, UAW, CWA, AFT, NEA, AFSCME and many other unions to establish Higher Ed Labor United (HELU). HELU’s goal is to work with AAUP and other unions to unite higher ed workers wall-to-wall and coast-to-coast. I was elected as the first interim chair of HELU, which held its founding convention in May of 2024 with over 50 higher ed organizations in attendance. Most recently, I helped lead Rutgers 2023 historic strike of 9000 workers across three unions. Our strike brought together faculty, grads workers, postdocs, librarians, health care workers and counselors. We won more control over our work; contractual rights around academic freedom; job security for full-time non-tenure-track faculty, adjunct faculty, postdocs and grad workers; and raises between 14-44% over four years as well as a $600,000 fund to support housing for people living near the University.

As a scholar, I have published and edited numerous books and dozens of articles focused on social movements, technology, labor and the future of workers. Prior to my work as a union leader, I was a community organizer in Philadelphia and helped build numerous community-based organizations including Movement Alliance Project and 215 People’s Alliance. In 2016, I was one of the leaders of a successful campaign to win back local control of the Philadelphia public schools, which had been taken over by the state a decade earlier. These experiences organizing and winning where I live and work have prepared me to lead AAUP in this pivotal moment.