US: Organised against labour

18 October 2009

In the last few years, a conservative legal organisation has filed complaints and extensive information requests to at least 11 colleges and universities with regard to labour centres that conduct research about and offer programmes for unions, writes Scott Jaschik for Inside Higher Ed. The American Association of University Professors, which has tracked the complaints, has issued a statement charging that they are an attempt to violate the academic freedom of the academics who work in these programmes.

The requests have come from the Landmark Legal Foundation, which is a critic of organised labour. Landmark's complaints have sought detailed information about the activities of the labour centres, and suggested that they should be eliminated for not advancing a "public purpose," charging that the centres are simply about promoting a "particular political ideology".

The complaints and information requests have been filed at Evergreen State College; Florida International and Indiana Universities; and the Universities of California at Berkeley, California at Los Angeles, Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts at Amherst, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin.
Full report on the Inside Higher Ed site

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