Nothing that’s wrong with NFA can’t be fixed by what’s right with NFA.
I started the semester by reading the NFA archives at the UNR Archives and Special Collections. There’s basically no such thing as the AAUP without AAUP members in Nevada. Our first members joined in the first year of the AAUP’s founding. Given how slow mail moved at the time, that might be about as fast as humanly possible.
The organization didn’t come together in the chapter structure we know now until the 1960s, and wasn’t reorganized into the statewide organization until the 1980s, but despite that, there were still AAUP members on my campus nearly 80 years ago. I take comfort in that. Even in an era academic freedom was a nascient and emerging concept, when restrictions on civic participation were high, and when Nevada was far less economic developed than it is today, professors on my campus were standing up to be counted as a voice for professional standards and free speech.
It’s not been the best year for the Nevada Faculty Alliance. We had a misguided (and ultimately failed) effort to remake the organization wholesale into a state federation of the American Federation of Teachers. The effort was marred by misinformation, overreaction, and in its final days, threats of lawsuits. None of it was necessary. Ego trumped solidarity. Ultimately, however, a democratic process won out. And despite some sore losers, everyone accepted the outcome (even if vowing to fight another day). That’s how democracy is supposed to work.
The other side, that we could use some more of, is unity. I’ve spent a lot of time in the last two years working in the broader labor movement in Nevada (and sometimes beyond). This is well-worn territory for me, I’ve spent my life in the labor movement, and I learned how it works from my mother, a shop steward for CWA 13500. One thing I am always amazed by is how much cohesive our organization is comparatively. I see other organizers trying to span massive gaps in job description and category, salary, and class. By comparison, the homogenizing effect of academia (for good and ill) means that our jobs in our union look much more like one anothers than our union colleagues in AFSCME or the UAW. Despite that, we are absolutely shattered by what Freud called der Narzissmus der kleinen Differenzen. The hostility of small differences. Community college and university. Tenure stream and not. North and South. Fortunately more democracy gives us an answer to this. Democracy is the solution to division. As long as the bulwarks of democracy (good, open communication, no prior restraint on sharing ideas, a respectful culture that takes serious the input of all members) are present, we can build unity out of democratic processes. Leave it to the political scientist to say ‘we should be voting more’ but we should be voting more. I’ve been active in this state organization under multiple state boards. None of them had enough feedback and insight from members. None of them leveraged their truly remarkable members (and I do believe that) to make the organization better. Democracy and unity. Reciprocal projects.
