Feb 20, 2023
Dear DFA members, UC Davis friends and colleagues:
I hope your quarter is going well and perhaps returning to some semblance of “normal” in the good sense of the word. While there are many open issues we faculty need to address—the decline of state funding, problems with UC Path, the erosion of faculty governance, the lingering impact of COVID—I wanted to address a more general issue we face as faculty that was driven home to me during the recent student worker strike. I know many of you did what you could to support economic justice for our student workers, and those efforts helped tremendously in getting a better deal for our students. Overall though, most faculty on campus were on their own to figure out how to respond to the strike: where to get information, what to do? Helpful information was not coming from the administration, which was to be expected, so for many faculty there was an enormous information gap and subsequent widespread confusion. The DFA, together with the CUCFA (the systemwide Council of UC Faculty Associations), did what we could to get good information out, and I hope it helped many of you determine what the best course of action would be. The DFA received much gratitude from faculty for helping them to make informed choices about what actions faculty could take. But it was obvious to me that, overall, our campus community of faculty is woefully unorganized and unprepared.
To our credit, many departments issued letters of support, department by department. These letter-writing efforts took a painful amount of time and effort, re-writing, arguing, and bargaining to complete, get approved, and get sent out. I’ll have to be honest with you, while I was glad to see these letters, to me it was a sign of our tremendous weakness, not a strength. A unified faculty voice would put us in a far more powerful position to get our demands across, rather than statements issued from a widely scattered patchwork of individual departments, each taking various and sundry positions. For that to happen, faculty must get themselves organized. It’s not enough to sign a letter once in a while. It requires that faculty put in the effort to come together collectively to ensure our interests are defended. We, the faculty of the University of California, one of the most powerful educational institutions in the world, are in a unique position to make substantial changes—on campus, in California, in the world. But only if we are organized.
In recent years, faculty have witnessed the deterioration of faculty rights at universities across the US, as funding is cut, faculty governance is eroded, and tenure is threatened and dismantled. Recent political developments have accelerated this crisis dramatically, particularly in states under the control of right-wing politicians. These attacks often lead faculty into despondency, depression, apathy, or resignation; understandable responses to assaults from powerful foes of higher education and intellectual freedom. There is no reason, however, to stand alone against attacks on our freedom of expression, standard of living, shared governance or other rights of faculty. It is this reason why faculty are organizing nation-wide, and why the Davis Faculty Association exists. That is why you should join us if you haven’t already.
I want to emphasize that there are times the DFA is not in a position to act quickly to respond to current events, due to our nature as a bottom-up, democratically controlled organization. Sometimes positions taken by the DFA must be discussed by the membership, and not be issued by executive fiat. That kind of agility is better offered by single issue organizations or sometimes by spontaneously formed movements. That said, the DFA can offer something other organizations cannot—connection with faculty members across all colleges and departments, and an organizational structure that remains constant during the inevitable ebbs and flows of political crisis. The DFA, through the CUCFA, provides continuity as well as connection to faculty within the other campuses of the UC system. Through the DFA’s partnership with the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), we are connected nationally to universities and colleges, both private and public, in all 50 states. The AAUP is now in alliance with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), which brings us into close contact with the national labor movement. This national connection makes us stronger and puts us in a better position to help professors in more precarious situations than our own.
The Davis Faculty Association is the only independent organization that exists solely to represent and fight for faculty here at UC Davis. Together, we pool our resources and talents to ensure that our views are heard, loud and clear. We faculty are very busy, which is why it is even more imperative you join with us, because while we are in the classroom, in the lab or in the field, the Davis Faculty Association is looking out for our collective interests— analyzing administrative proposals and documents, protecting our salaries and benefits, developing a community of faculty, meeting with our political representatives in Sacramento and Washington, DC, and many other tasks beneficial to all faculty.
Some of the advocacy the DFA is involved in includes:
* Championing faculty interests with UCOP and the Regents, including salary and benefits such as health, childcare, and retirement
* Advocating for faculty at the State Capitol, including fighting for increased state funding of UC, and supporting or opposing specific legislation that impacts faculty interest, such as this year’s ACA-8 and AB-504
* Coordinating with unions around University and campus issues, including the development of a new UC Davis Labor Center, and joining the Sacramento Labor Council
* Defending core faculty privileges such as Academic Freedom and Tenure
* Working with Academic Senates and Faculty Association chapters across the system, and the system-wide Academic Council and the Council of UC Faculty Associations
* Communicating with faculty on matters of their interest through email, social media, meetings, and our website
* Working to maintain our commitments to our graduate student workers while maintaining our levels of research and teaching
To continue and expand this work I want to ask all of you to help out in these ways:
* Build our strength on campus. If each member reached out to just one other colleague and convinced them to join, we could double our membership quickly. Please consider taking this step to grow our strength.
* Please reach out to us to join our executive board or run as an officer of DFA! Take this extra step to make a greater contribution to the success of our faculty and our university.
* If you’re not a member yet, don’t put this off! You can click here to join: https://ucdfa.org/join/
* Pass this note on to others in your department or to other colleagues!
If you want to speak with a DFA member, we would all be glad to speak with you. Here are some of the current board members who would be happy to answer any of your questions.
Sincerely,
Jesse Drew
Chair, Davis Faculty Association
Richard Scalettar, Physics
Susette Min, Asian American Studies
Valeria La Saponara, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Joe Kiskis, Physics
Jesse Drew, Cinema and Digital Media
Donald Palmer, Graduate School of Management
Glenda Drew, Design
Seth Sanders, Religious Studies
Stacy Fahrenthold, History