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Higher Ed Heads For Texas

2002 conference focuses on patterns of change that will set the course of higher education for the next 50 years.

Radio personality and best-selling author Jim Hightower and Chairperson of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Mary Frances Berry will be the featured speakers at this year's NEA Higher Education Conference. The conference, The Academy in Transition: Patterns of Change in Higher Education is slated for March 1-3 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Austin, Texas.

Hightower, a populist humorist in the tradition of Mark Twain and Will Rogers, is author of If the Gods Had Meant Us to Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates. He uses his daily radio broadcasts and weekly newspaper column "to battle the Powers That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be."

Mary Frances Berry, Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Thought at the University of Pennsylvania, was first appointed to the Civil Rights Commission by President Carter in 1980. She was later fired by Ronald Reagan for criticizing his civil rights policies but sued him in federal court and won reinstatement. Currently, she's back in court again in a dispute with President Bush over his termination of a Commission member.

Berry was appointed chairperson of the Civil Rights Commission by President Clinton in 1993. She was reappointed to the position in 1999.

A longtime civil rights activist, Berry was one of the founders of the Free South Africa Movement. The most recent of her seven books is entitled: The Pig Farmer's Daughter and Other Tales of American Justice: Episodes of Racism and Sexism in the Courts from 1865 to the Present.

It's not to late to sign up. Visit the conference Web site www.nea.org/he or E-mail HigherEd@nea.org for registration information and materials.

NEA and the American Federation of Teachers have joined forces in support of the higher education members of their merged state education association in Florida.

Florida faculty, who for years worked under the collective bargaining protection of the United Faculty of Florida and its statewide union contract, now find that they must negotiate separate contracts on each of the system's 11 campuses. The new bargaining arrangement resulted when Florida governor Jeb Bush dismantled the state university system.

The national organizations are providing staff and resources to the UFF as it wages a campaign to shore up membership and explain to faculty across the state what the new bargaining arrangements mean and what they must do to preserve their contractual rights.