QUFA, What’s Up?!

University workers and workers at the university are severely experiencing the impacts of manufactured crises and heightened neoliberal austerity as a class attack “from above” in various and entangled ways: through overwork and lack of staff support and resources, work automation and the transformation of intensified labor exploitation based on machine learning, less time for research and meaningful teaching, the invisibilization and undervaluation of care work, intensification of intersectional inequalities, and working in unhealthy, unsafe, and unsanitary spaces. To put it short, we bear the brunt of the crisis.

Our new panel conversation series “QUFA, what’s up?!”, organized by the Political Action and Communications Committee, opens space for discussion, debate, and strategizing around the concerns and interests of QUFA members in a local and conversational format. QUFA members and staff will present on specific topics and engage in discussion with our members, so we can think, discuss, and act better (also in alliance with our sibling unions) towards building resistance and counter-power in and beyond the university. In this session, we will talk about TA cuts, department hubbing as a neoliberal strategy, the student-faculty-librarian ratio, as well as questions around AI and teaching.

Panelists: Norma Möllers, Doug Nesbitt, and Samantha King

Moderators: Pinar Tuzcu and Vanessa E. Thompson

The event will take place on Friday, Nov 20^th from 12 – 1 pm, in the Conference Room at the University Club.