Introduction: Reports & Analysis of Resistance to Attacks on U.S. Public Higher Education

This is a blog about the intersections between academic labor and public higher education in the U.S.. It is written and edited in my capacity as Vice President of Legislation for the University Council-American Federation of Teachers (UC-AFT), AFT Local 1474. 

All opinions expressed here are my own, and not necessarily those of my union's leadership or its membership. I take seriously the fact that teachers' and librarians' dues have supported my advocacy on their behalf, and helped me contribute to academic labor activism for a more equitable, accessible and democratic education system at the University of California. I would not be able to share the information or analysis that I present here about labor and public higher education without the support of rank-and-file K-12 teachers, librarians, and non-Senate faculty.

Though Substack has, as of 2025, increasingly become the medium of choice for sharing and debating contemporary US politics, I'm concerned about its paywalls, its financial reliance on alt-right accounts, and whether its robust debates will be publicly preserved as the internet evolves. So I've chosen to use UC-AFT's Google Apps/ Blogger account to publish my writing, so that Google's bots can help people find my work and that Archive.org may be able to preserve it via its wayback machine.

I hope this work can carry forward the tradition of critical online writing on higher education institutions and politics from the Great Recession-- including former UC-AFT President Bob Samuels's Changing Universities blog, and former UCSB Professor Christopher Newfield's Remaking the University blog.

All material here is copyrighted CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

If you have any questions, concerns, requests for correction, or thoughts to share with me about what is written here, please email me at vplegislation@ucaft.org.