The Rich Life: Joy, Asceticism, Solidarity—and a Rejection of GDP Thinking

In a society obsessed with growth, speed, and accumulation, the phrase “the rich life” is most often used to describe an existence of luxury and exclusivity—curated vacations, designer goods, elite diplomas, and six-figure job offers. Elite universities in the United States, with their billion-dollar endowments and glossy marketing, have long sold students on this vision. Success is measured in metrics: earnings, endowment size, prestige rankings, and placement in the upper tiers of a system that quietly rewards exploitation.

But beneath the glittering surfaces lies a deeper poverty—a poverty of meaning, connection, and collective well-being. The GDP may rise, but so do depression, ecological collapse, burnout, and social fragmentation. In this context, the rich life must be reimagined. It cannot mean more consumption and more isolation. It must mean deeper joy, chosen simplicity, and solidarity with others. It must reject GDP as a measure of progress, and instead embrace a fuller, more humane vision of what it means to thrive.

Since World War II, Gross Domestic Product has been the dominant measure of national health and success. But GDP counts weapons manufacturing, fossil fuel extraction, and fast food sales as positives. It says nothing about equity, sustainability, or whether people have their basic needs met. It is a deeply distorted metric that treats all economic activity as inherently good—even when that activity is war, incarceration, deforestation, or cancer treatment. When universities follow this logic, they end up celebrating job placement in exploitative industries, increased student consumption, and rising tuition as signs of vitality. Entire institutions become addicted to a model of growth that quietly undermines the very conditions of human and planetary survival.

To understand what a truly rich life looks like, we might turn not to economic models but to psychological and philosophical ones. Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, often misunderstood and oversimplified, offers a more nuanced framework. At the base are physiological needs: food, water, shelter, rest. Above that are safety needs—security, health, freedom from violence. Next come love and belonging, followed by esteem and the need to be respected. At the top is self-actualization: the ability to live with purpose, creativity, and integrity.

In a society driven by GDP and status competition, many people are stuck in the lower tiers of Maslow’s hierarchy—working long hours just to meet their physiological needs, or trapped in precarity with no sense of safety. Even among the affluent, the higher needs—belonging, self-worth, purpose—are often unmet. Elite universities contribute to this problem when they promise that self-actualization will follow prestige, when in fact they often deepen student anxiety and isolation through competition and debt.

The modern economy creates the illusion of abundance while delivering profound scarcity—scarcity of time, attention, care, and community. That’s where asceticism comes in, not as a form of self-denial, but as a conscious disengagement from toxic excess. True asceticism is not about suffering. It is about choosing a life that centers intention over impulse, relationships over acquisition. It allows us to reclaim our attention, our agency, and our sense of enoughness. When you no longer define your worth by your salary or possessions, space opens up—for joy, for learning, for resistance.

The joy that emerges from this way of living is not found in consumption, but in connection. It’s the joy of a shared meal, a collective project, a moment of awe in nature. It is not fleeting or hollow. It’s grounded in the rhythms of real life. In resisting the culture of more, we make room for what actually nourishes us.

Solidarity is what makes this kind of joy sustainable. Without solidarity, simplicity becomes privatized and performative. With solidarity, it becomes transformative. Solidarity means recognizing that none of us can be truly free while others are suffering. It means organizing not only for ourselves, but with and for others—workers, debtors, the unhoused, the planet itself. It is in solidarity that we find the courage to say no to extractive systems and yes to mutual care.

Maslow’s model, when viewed through a collective lens, demands that we create conditions where everyone—not just the privileged few—can ascend the ladder toward self-actualization. That means addressing structural violence, not just personal healing. It means challenging the dominance of GDP and the institutions that promote it. And it means building systems that nourish every layer of our shared humanity.

The richest life is not the most expensive or exclusive. It is the most grounded, the most connected, the most free. It is a life where basic needs are met without destroying others’ ability to meet theirs. It is a life where safety comes from community, not surveillance. Where belonging is unconditional. Where esteem is earned not through domination, but through care. Where self-actualization is not an individual escape, but a collective unfolding.

Elite universities, with their resources and visibility, have a responsibility to shift the narrative. They must abandon GDP-driven metrics and begin teaching students how to live and act for collective well-being. That means investing in degrowth, sustainability, and solidarity—not in fossil fuels, consulting firms, and Silicon Valley pipedreams. It means embracing joy, not just success. It means returning to education as a path toward wisdom, not just wealth.

The rich life is here. It is in the soil, the story circle, the union hall, the community fridge, the silent meetinghouse, the protest march, the long walk at dusk. It is in every act that centers sufficiency over supremacy, care over conquest.

Let us stop measuring the wrong things. Let us live lives that matter. Let us be rich in what counts.

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Sources and Influences:
Abraham Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being
Jason Hickel, Less Is More
bell hooks, All About Love
Juliet Schor, Plenitude
David Graeber and David Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything

Support Higher Education Labor United this Giving Tuesday

Giving Tuesday While HELU is primarily funded by solidarity pledges from our member organizations, individual contributions allow us to expand our programming and capacity to react in the moment. Higher education will be a site of struggle in 2025 and beyond. We must build our power and that requires increasing the funding available to our movement. Please consider making a contribution to HELU today. You can read more about HELU's 2024 work in our previous newsletters and monthly Chair's Messages from Mia McIver. Contributions will support HELU's programming in 2025, including national and statewide coalition-building, in-person events, policy development, organizing trainings and political education events, and much more. For longer-term impact, you can make your donation monthly. Donate to HELU Stand in Solidarity with Higher Ed WorkersCommunity Petition: Reverse Course Cancellations and Faculty Layoffs That Hurt Students at UM-Dearborn UArts Union faculty & staff still need support- Donate to the Solidarity Fund! Contribute to the MUWU Solidarity Fund Community Letter for United Academics of University of Oregon Donate to the CGE-OSU Strike Fund Stop the Layoffs. Support Students and Workers at Portland State HELU Member Union UCW Arizona Seeks Organizing Coordinator HELU Solidarity Asks come from higher education labor organizations looking to build solidarity with workers on a national or regional basis, to drive participation in a particular action or campaign that supports higher ed workers. This can include (but is not limited to) contributing to strike funds, writing letters to policy-makers, signing petitions, participation in actions, and more. To submit a solidarity ask, please complete the form here.

Nonviolent Resistance in the Trump Era: Why Satire, Journalism, and Marches Are Not Enough

In moments of democratic crisis, societies often turn to familiar tools: satire, journalism, and public demonstrations. Today—amid intensifying authoritarian rhetoric, rising political violence, and fraying institutions—forms of dissent like South Park, The New York Times, and the No Kings marches reflect a country struggling to assert democratic values.

These efforts matter. But they are not enough.

If democracy is to endure, millions—not just artists, reporters, or marchers—must engage in coordinated, creative, nonviolent resistance. And they must do so in solidarity.

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Satire as Resistance: When South Park Breaks the Spell

For decades, South Park has peeled back the layers of American political absurdity. In the Trump era, its depictions of autocratic posturing and the cult of personality have helped audiences see through the spectacle.

But satire remains commentary, not coordination. It can spark awareness, but it cannot restrain authoritarian power on its own.

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Journalistic Resistance: The New York Times and the Weight of Truth

The New York Times has played a crucial role in exposing corruption, extremism, disinformation networks, and democratic backsliding. Its reporters have often faced harassment and threats simply for revealing the truth.

Yet journalism cannot mobilize the public by itself. Facts require action—and action requires organization.

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Street Resistance: The No Kings Marches and Public Defiance

The No Kings marches—an umbrella for decentralized, anti-authoritarian street demonstrations—represent a powerful expression of nonviolent public resistance. Emerging across cities and campuses, these marches assert a simple moral principle: no leader, party, or faction is entitled to unchecked power.

Their message is clear:

• Democracy requires constraints.

• Political leaders are not royalty.

• The people, not a single figure, hold ultimate sovereignty.

The No Kings marches reclaim public space from fear and resignation. They remind communities that resistance does not require weapons—only bodies, voices, and courage.

But marches alone cannot build the long-term structures needed to protect democracy. They ignite momentum; they do not sustain it without broader collective support.

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Universities Have Failed to Defend Democratic Dissent

Historically, universities were vital sites of moral courage and mass mobilization. Today, however, university presidents have aggressively squelched campus protests—through police intervention, restrictive rules, suspensions, and pressure from wealthy donors.

This chilling effect has not recovered. Student activism remains suppressed at the very moment when democratic engagement is most essential.

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The Growing Possibility of a General Strike

As institutional stability deteriorates, Americans increasingly discuss the possibility of a General Strike—a nationwide, multi-sector refusal to work until political abuses are addressed. General strikes have played decisive roles in democratic movements around the world.

A U.S. General Strike could:

• Halt the economic machinery that enables authoritarian governance

• Force political leaders to negotiate rather than intimidate

• Demonstrate the nonviolent power of ordinary workers

The concept is no longer fringe. It is a rational response to a political system in crisis.

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Another Government Shutdown: A Flashpoint for Resistance

The threat of another federal government shutdown exposes a political class willing to damage the public in pursuit of ideological power. Shutdowns harm millions of workers, families, and communities.

But they also clarify a crucial truth:
the government depends entirely on ordinary people showing up.

If a shutdown occurs, it could accelerate conversations about coordinated nonviolent resistance—boycotts, demonstrations, strikes—and push more Americans to see the system’s fragility and their own collective power.

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Nonviolent Resistance Must Be Mass-Based and Rooted in Solidarity

Satire, journalism, and street marches each contribute to political consciousness. But democratic survival requires:

• Coordinated labor action, including sector-wide strikes

• Mass protests, sit-ins, and civil disobedience

• Boycotts and divestment aimed at authoritarian enablers

• Digital resistance against disinformation

• Local mutual aid networks and coalition-building

• Cross-racial, cross-class, and interfaith solidarity

Democracy is not self-sustaining. It requires collective, creative noncooperation with authoritarian drift.

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Solidarity Is the Strategy

Authoritarianism thrives on isolation and fear.
Nonviolent movements thrive on courage and connection.

Satire can puncture illusions.
Journalism can expose wrongdoing.
The No Kings marches can reclaim public space.
Students can still spark moral clarity—if administrators allow it.
Workers can stop the machine entirely.

But only mass, sustained, nonviolent solidarity can protect democracy now.

And the moment to act is now.

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Sources on Nonviolent Movements and Civil Resistance

Books & Academic Works

• Gene Sharp, The Politics of Nonviolent Action

• Erica Chenoweth & Maria J. Stephan, Why Civil Resistance Works

• Jonathan Pinckney, From Dissent to Democracy

• Jamila Raqib & Gene Sharp, Self-Liberation

• Srdja Popović, Blueprint for Revolution

• Peter Ackerman & Jack DuVall, A Force More Powerful

Research Centers & Reports

• International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC)

• Albert Einstein Institution

• U.S. Institute of Peace publications on civil resistance

• Freedom House reports on democratic erosion

Historical Case Studies

• U.S. Civil Rights Movement

• Solidarity Movement (Poland)

• People Power Revolution (Philippines)

• Anti-Apartheid Struggle (South Africa)

• Selected Arab Spring movements

Moral Capital and Locus of Control

Moral capital has become a contested currency in American public life. It is deployed by political elites to justify austerity, by campus executives to rationalize managerial authority, and by think tanks to discipline the working class. Yet moral capital also rises from below—from students building mutual-aid networks, from adjuncts organizing for fair wages, from communities confronting the harms universities have helped produce. In an era defined by climate peril, surveillance capitalism, and proliferating wars, the stakes of who controls moral capital—and who gets to exercise real agency—have never been higher.

At the center of this struggle lies a fraught psychological and sociological concept: locus of control. Higher education constantly toggles between narratives of internal control (grit, resilience, personal responsibility) and external control (the market, political pressures, funding cycles). Powerful actors encourage an internal locus of control when it shifts blame downward, and an external locus of control when it shields institutional failure. Students, staff, and faculty live suspended in this contradiction, expected to absorb the consequences of decisions made far above them.

Quality of Life as Moral Imperative

Quality of Life—once peripheral to higher education policy—is now a defining moral issue. Students and workers contend with unstable housing, food insecurity, unsafe campuses, inaccessible mental health care, and relentless economic pressures. For many, these burdens are compounded by existential crises: climate anxiety, global conflicts, democratic backsliding, and precarity amplified by technological surveillance.

Institutions often portray these crises as personal challenges requiring self-management. But Quality of Life is not an individual moral failure; it is a metric of collective conditions. When a university community’s quality of life declines, it signals a profound imbalance between agency and structure—a distorted locus of control.

The Industry’s Manufactured Moral Capital

Universities have long crafted narratives that elevate their own moral standing while displacing responsibility onto individuals. The “grateful striver” student, the “self-sacrificing” adjunct, the “visionary” president—these tropes protect managerial systems from scrutiny and allow elites to accumulate moral capital even as Quality of Life deteriorates for everyone else.

This manufactured moral authority collapses under existential pressures. As campuses confront heatwaves, flooding, militarized policing, housing crises, widening wars, and state-sanctioned surveillance, it becomes impossible to sustain the fiction that individuals can simply “grit” their way to stability.

Reclaiming Moral Capital 

Moral capital is not owned by institutions. It can be reimagined, reclaimed, and reoriented. Four longstanding modes of internal discipline—temperance, celibacy, critical thinking, and solidarity—take on new urgency when placed in the context of planetary and political crisis.

Temperance

Temperance, stripped of its historical misuse, becomes a strategy of mindful refusal in the face of consumption-based exploitation. It includes rejecting burnout culture, resisting technological tools that monitor student behavior, and refusing to internalize blame for systemic failures. In an era of climate breakdown, temperance also signifies ecological responsibility—a modest but meaningful form of internal control aligned with global survival rather than institutional convenience.

Celibacy

Broadly interpreted, celibacy represents intentional self-limitation that protects one’s emotional and cognitive bandwidth. Amid surveillance-driven social media, algorithmic manipulation, and institutions that increasingly commodify student identity, celibacy can be a form of psychological sovereignty. It creates space for reflection in a world designed to keep people reactive, distracted, and easily governed.

Critical Thinking

Critical thinking remains the academy’s most subversive tradition—especially when deployed against the university itself. It helps students analyze the interplay between personal agency and systemic constraint. It equips them to understand climate injustice, militarism, and the geopolitics of knowledge production. And it exposes the ways mass surveillance—from learning analytics to campus police technologies—erodes autonomy and shifts the locus of control away from individuals and communities toward powerful institutions.

Solidarity

Solidarity transforms private moral commitments into collective action. It breaks the isolation manufactured by surveillance systems, precarity, and competitive academic cultures. Solidarity has historically been the source of the most effective nonviolent strategies—from civil rights sit-ins to anti-war mobilizations to student debt strikes. Today, as geopolitical conflicts escalate and authoritarian tendencies rise, the power of organized nonviolence becomes an existential necessity. It is one of the few tools capable of confronting militarized policing, resisting state repression, and challenging the corporate infrastructures that profit from crisis.

Nonviolent Strategies in an Era of Global Threat

Nonviolent action remains a potent form of moral capital—and one of the most effective forms of collective agency. Research across conflicts shows that sustained, mass-based nonviolent movements often outperform violent struggles, especially against highly resourced opponents. For universities, which increasingly collaborate with defense contractors, data brokers, and state surveillance agencies, nonviolent resistance has become both a safeguard and a moral compass.

Sit-ins, teach-ins, encampments, divestment campaigns, and labor actions reassert external locus of control as something communities can influence—not by force, but by moral clarity, strategic discipline, and the refusal to comply with harmful systems.

Mass Surveillance as a Threat to Moral Agency

Mass surveillance is now woven into the fabric of academic life. Learning management systems track student behavior down to the minute. Proctoring software uses biometrics to police exams. Campus police drones and public-private security networks feed data into law enforcement databases. Administrative dashboards quantify student “risk” and worker “efficiency” in ways that reshape institutional priorities.

This surveillance apparatus corrodes moral capital by reducing human judgment to automated metrics. It also distorts locus of control: individuals are told to take responsibility while being monitored and managed by opaque systems far beyond their influence.

Reclaiming agency requires dismantling or limiting these systems, demanding transparency, and reasserting human dignity in spaces now governed by algorithms.

Toward a More Honest Locus of Control

Moral capital and locus of control are not academic abstractions. They are lived realities shaped by climate disruption, war, inequality, and surveillance. Higher education must stop using moral narratives to deflect responsibility and instead cultivate practices that reinforce real agency: temperance, celibacy, critical thinking, solidarity, and the disciplined power of nonviolent resistance.

In a world marked by existential threats, reclaiming moral capital from below is not simply an intellectual exercise—it is a condition for survival, and a pathway to collective liberation.

Sources
Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth
Erica Chenoweth & Maria Stephan, Why Civil Resistance Works
Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything
Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Astra Taylor, Democracy May Not Exist, but We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone

United Steel Workers Goes All in on Solidarity at Convention

 

More than 2,000 members from across the United States, Canada and the Caribbean spent four days charting the future of our union and recommitting themselves to the solidarity that powers the union at the USW’s triennial constitutional convention earlier this month. International President David McCall opened the convention by calling on union members to fight back against wealthy elites who want to silence workers across North America. “To turn back the tide of economic injustice and corporate greed, we need to truly be all in,” McCall said. “We can hold nothing back, and we need every member to join in the fight – for as long as it takes.” In debating resolutions ranging from fair trade to civil and human rights, delegates shared their struggles and victories in the fight against corporate greed. They also heard from trade unionists from other countries and a panel of federal workers who warned of broad attacks on workers’ rights coming out of Washington, D.C. While billionaires like Elon Musk may be emboldened under the current administration, AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler declared that with 71% of Americans supportive of unions, union members are in a “generational moment” to build the labor movement. AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Fred Redmond reminded delegates that “we know the way forward.” The way forward is going all in on solidarity. Delegates demonstrated what that looks like by taking action right from the convention floor by calling their members of Congress to demand passage of the bipartisan Protect America’s Workforce Act. Delegates left Las Vegas fired up and ready to carry that energy forward into their workplaces and communities.   “Being all in isn’t a one-time action – and it isn’t a bet,” McCall said. “It’s our way of operating, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.” You can find full coverage of our convention, including photos, videos, resolutions, and more, on the USW website.

Higher Education Without Illusions

In 2025, the landscape of higher education is dominated by contradictions, crises, and the relentless churn of what might be called “collegemania.” Underneath the polished veneer of university marketing—the glossy brochures, viral TikToks, and celebrity endorsements—lurks a network of systemic pressures that students, faculty, and society at large must navigate. The hashtags trending below the masthead of Higher Education Without Illusions capture the full spectrum of these pressures: #accountability, #adjunct, #AI, #AImeltdown, #algo, #alienation, #anomie, #anxiety, #austerity, #BDR, #bot, #boycott, #BRICS, #climate, #collegemania, #collegemeltdown, #crypto, #divest, #doomloop, #edugrift, #enshittification, #FAFSA, #greed, #incel, #jobless, #kleptocracy, #medugrift, #moralcapital, #nokings, #nonviolence, #PSLF, #QOL, #rehumanization, #resistance, #robocollege, #robostudent, #roboworker, #solidarity, #strikedebt, #surveillance, #temperance, #TPUSA, #transparency, #Trump, #veritas.

Taken together, these words map the terrain of higher education as it exists today: a fragile ecosystem strained by debt, automation, political polarization, and climate urgency. Students are increasingly treated as commodities (#robostudent, #strikedebt), faculty are underpaid and precarious (#adjunct, #medugrift), and universities themselves are subjected to the whims of markets and algorithms (#algo, #AImeltdown, #robocollege).

Financial pressures are unrelenting. The FAFSA system, once intended as a bridge to opportunity, now functions as a tool of surveillance and debt management (#FAFSA, #BDR). Public service loan forgiveness (#PSLF) continues to be delayed or denied, leaving graduates to navigate the twin anxieties of indebtedness and joblessness (#jobless, #doomloop). Meanwhile, austerity measures squeeze institutional budgets, often at the expense of research, mental health support, and academic freedom (#austerity, #anomie, #anxiety).

Automation and artificial intelligence are now central to the higher education ecosystem. AI grading tools, predictive enrollment algorithms, and administrative bots promise efficiency but often produce alienation and ethical dilemmas (#AI, #AImeltdown, #roboworker, #bot). In this context, “robocollege” is not a metaphor but a lived reality for many students navigating hyper-digitized classrooms where human mentorship is increasingly rare.

Political and cultural currents further complicate the picture. From the influence of conservative campus organizations (#TPUSA, #Trump) to global shifts in power (#BRICS), universities are battlegrounds for ideological and material stakes. Moral capital—the credibility and legitimacy of an institution—is increasingly intertwined with corporate sponsorships, divestment movements, and climate commitments (#moralcapital, #divest, #climate). At the same time, greed and kleptocracy (#greed, #kleptocracy) permeate administration and policy decisions, eroding trust in higher education’s social mission.

Yet amid this bleakness, there are threads of resistance and rehumanization. Student debt strikes, faculty solidarity networks, and advocacy for transparency (#strikedebt, #solidarity, #transparency, #rehumanization) reveal a persistent desire to reclaim the university as a space of collective flourishing rather than pure financial extraction. Nonviolence (#nonviolence), temperance (#temperance), and boycotts (#boycott) reflect strategic, principled responses to systemic crises, even as anxiety and alienation persist.

Ultimately, higher education without illusions demands that we confront both the structural and human dimensions of its crises. Universities are not just engines of credentialing and profit—they are social institutions embedded in broader networks of power, ideology, and technology. A recognition of #veritas and #QOL (quality of life) alongside the demands of #collegemania and #enshittification is essential for any hope of reform.

The hashtags are more than social media markers—they are diagnostics. They chart a system in flux, exposing the frictions between automation and humanity, austerity and access, greed and moral responsibility. They call on all of us—students, educators, policymakers, and citizens—to act with accountability, solidarity, and courage.

Higher education without illusions is not pessimism; it is clarity. Only by naming the pressures and contradictions can we begin to imagine institutions that serve human flourishing rather than perpetuate cycles of debt, alienation, and social inequality.

Sources & Further Reading:

• An American Sickness, Elisabeth Rosenthal

• Medical Apartheid, Harriet Washington

• Body and Soul, Alondra Nelson

• HEI coverage of student debt, adjunct labor, and AI in higher education

HELU's Wall-to-Wall and Coast-to-Coast Report – July 2025

July 2025 HELU Chair’s Message From Levin Kim, HELU Chair and member of UAW 4121, student workers, researchers and postdocs at the University of Washington Over the first six months in office, the Trump Administration attempted to gut funding for crucial research, attack immigrant and non-citizen workers, curtail academic freedom and freedom of speech, and more. These attacks on higher ed workers and institutions have been the centerpiece of the right wing's political agenda to expand control and power over public-serving institutions in service of the interests of the ultra-wealthy few.  Read more. Read HELU's July 2025 Chair's Message HELU's July 2025 newsletter contains items about movements in large systems. Some are national (the EWOC conference, the NEA organizing grants, May Day Strong, the DSA Convention). Others are state-level (Michigan and New York). Some are system-level (Arizona and California university systems). Some are about collaborations (the LA Federation of Labor, the SUNY/CUNY MADCs). This movement reflects the reality of where the higher ed labor movement is going.  – Helena Worthen, Co-Chair, HELU Media & Communications Committee   From the HELU Blog: EWOC and Higher Ed: First Conference at Labor@Wayne EWOC, the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, held its first conference at Wayne State University with co-hosts Labor@Wayne on June 28 and 29. Read more.   The University of California System: Labor Actions Loom in 2025-2026 The longer the UC system maintains a hard line against unions at the bargaining table, the more likely it is that a majority of UC’s unionized workforce will be out of contract by the end of the 2025-26 school year. Read more.   NEA Offers Grants to Help Local Affiliates Pay HELU Solidarity Pledges The National Education Association (NEA) has offered grants to local affiliates to enable them to join HELU by paying half of their solidarity pledge for one year. Read more. Contingent Labor at the University of Arizona: One Damn Thing After Another If it weren’t so devastating, it would be comic timing. Every year, contingent faculty, specifically lecturers with academic year appointments, at the University of Arizona are laid off in May. Then, in the fall, some are hired back in even more precarious positions as adjunct instructor. Read more.   Joint Union-Senate Mutual Academic Defense Compacts in SUNY and CUNY Systems Hours before the signing of the federal budget reconciliation megabill, ten current and former leaders of SUNY’s and CUNY’s governance bodies issued a July 4 declaration. Candice Vacin, President of the SUNY Faculty Council of Community Colleges (FCCC), described it as “a solemn call to defend foundational principles of American higher education" ... Read more.   Michigan HELU Coalition: Organizing and Action HELU activists in Michigan have banded together to form a state coalition to take on several existential threats to our students, universities and colleges, and our jobs. So far, the coalition has hosted several online and in-person events, actions, and meetings, each bigger than the previous one. Read more.   What is HELU Doing at the DSA Convention in August? On August 9th, representatives from Higher Education Labor United will be attending the Democratic Socialists of American biennial convention in Chicago to take part in their first ever Cross-Organizational Political Exchange. Read more.   HELU at May Day Strong in Chicago On July 17 and 18, Levin Kim and Executive Director Ian Gavigan traveled to Chicago for the second national May Day Strong convening hosted by the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU). Read more.   Mass Non-Violent Resistance Trainings in Los Angeles: Labor Leads with Power and Discipline On July 10, 2025, 1,443 people gathered at the Los Angeles Convention Center for the largest nonviolence training in the history of the city, and perhaps the country. Read more.   Upcoming Events:  Building Campus Solidarity Across Job Categories: Lessons from Recent Strikes & Adjunct Struggles Weds., July 30 at 6pm ET/5pm CT/4pm MT/3pm PT Join the Contingency Taskforce (CTF) of Higher Ed Labor United (HELU) for an urgent strategy discussion of how we can build campus solidarity among faculty and other higher ed workers, across job ranks, in light of the severe threats we now face. How can we organize broadly to defend the most vulnerable members of our communities? How can we help people overcome isolation and fear, discovering new courage and power by connecting with others? How can we raise up the voices and needs of historically marginalized workers and students within the broader fight to defend higher ed? Register here. International Campus Worker & Student Organizing Meeting Monday, August 4 at 2pm ET/1pm CT/12pm MT/11am PT Attacks from the Trump administration are putting international students and workers in our campuses at risk. Mass SEVIS terminations, cancellations of Visa appointments, targeted attacks against Chinese nationals, ICE detentions and threats of raids in our campuses are making our jobs, our livelihoods, and the mission of our institutions unsafe. These actions follow the same pattern: attacking those who are in the most vulnerable positions to create a chilling effect on the rest of us. We demand action from colleges and universities now! Join us on Zoom August 4th at 2pm ET/1pm CT/12pm MT/11am PT to plan next steps and organizing strategies. Register here.   HELU Open House  Thursday, August 14 at 6 pm ET/5 pm CT/4 pm MT/3 pm PT HELU has been organizing since 2021 and is growing. On Thursday, August 14, at 6pm ET/5pm CT/4pm MT/3pm PT we will be hosting another HELU Open House, designed to welcome folks into the national higher ed organizing space and help everyone find a way to plug in. Join HELU on Thursday, August 14th, at 6pm ET/5pm CT/4pm MT/3pm PT. Register here.    Library Workers Organizing Meeting & Strategy Session Weds., August 20 at 7pm ET/6pm CT/5pm MT/4pm PT On August 20, 2025, HELU is bringing together higher ed library workers across the country to strategize against threats to our livelihoods and profession. We will come together to meet and set our agenda, then we will break into small groups to discuss crises in academic freedom, disparities between library staff categorizations, labor organizing, austerity, and more. Our goal is to develop a platform for library worker protections to advocate for and implement across the country. Register here.  Higher Ed Labor in the News College students and staff at universities across Minnesota are organizing new unions – The Minnesota Star Tribune UMN union workers announce vote to authorize strike – MN Daily Duke Graduate Students Union scores historic tentative contract – Duke Chronicle Faculty Unions & New York City Electeds Say ‘Hands Off Higher Ed! Hands Off CUNY!’ – WNY Labor Today In AAUP Trial, State Dept. Official Says Criticizing Israel Could Be Grounds for Visa Revocation – Harvard Crimson Labor union says California university professor was taken during Camarillo immigration raid protest – KTLA5 News Penn Postdocs and Research Associates Win Their Union – UAW ‘Without us, there is no UMass’: Unions representing staff decry bargaining tactics by administration at campus rally – Athol Daily News The link to Scott Douglas’ presentation on the California community college load cap, included in HELU's June 2025 newsletter, has changed. You can now access it here. Want to support our work? Make a contribution. We invite you to support HELU's work by making a direct financial contribution. While HELU's main source of income is solidarity pledges from member organizations, these funds from individuals help us to grow capacity as we work to align the higher ed labor movement. Contribute to HELU

20th Anniversary of Reclaiming the Ivory Tower: Organizing Adjuncts to Change Higher Education

First published in November 2005 by Monthly Review Press, Reclaiming the Ivory Tower quickly became a breakthrough organizing handbook for contingent, often adjunct, faculty in U.S. higher education. Authored by Joe Berry, a labor educator with the Chicago Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor, the book combined structural analysis with practical organizing tools and remains widely influential. 

Author’s Ongoing Influence

Joe Berry’s longstanding work—as a historian and labor educator affiliated with institutions like the University of Illinois’s Chicago Labor Education Program and Roosevelt University—has helped shape adjunct organizing both in Chicago and beyond. Berry's most recent focus is with a new project, Higher Ed Labor United (HELU), and with Democratic Socialists of America.

Two Decades On: The Struggle Persists

Though adjunct faculty now make up the majority of instructors at many colleges, the precarious conditions Berry described—marked by low pay, limited benefits, and job insecurity—endure. His organizing models, featuring campus committees and community alliances, have borne fruit in isolated victories. Yet, systemic inequities remain.

Reclaiming the Ivory Tower remains a foundational resource for grassroots organizing in academia. Its emphasis on coalition-building and collective action continues to inspire adjuncts, labor activists, and academic allies.

Power Despite Precarity 

Just at the time of HELU’s birth, and as COVID was still raging, Berry and his colleague, partner and fellow contingent faculty Helena Worthen, published a follow up book, Power Despite Precarity: Strategies for the contingent faculty movement in higher education (2021, Pluto Press). Using one of the most successful local unions in higher education, the CA Faculty Association (SEIU, AAUP) for contingents, the book tells the story of their limited, but very real, successes, and suggests some strategic visions for the movement and our goals for higher education.

A New Wave of National Coordination

In March 2024, Inside Higher Ed reported that Higher Ed Labor United—a developing national coalition—was emerging to bridge divisions between higher education workers, regardless of union affiliation or job title. Joe Berry serves on its interim steering committee, signaling his continued leadership in academic labor unity.

HELU’s vision is threefold: to serve as a political voice, a think tank for higher education labor, and a supporting infrastructure for organizing across campuses. The coalition thus builds on Berry’s grassroots foundations by adding a national dimension to the effort.

Timeline of Adjunct Organizing: 2005–2025

2005–2009: Organizing spreads through AFT and NEA-affiliated adjunct campaigns, adopting Berry’s strategies of solidarity with tenure-track faculty and students.
2010–2014: Digital movements like #AdjunctNation increase visibility. Labor drives gain traction at private and niche institutions.
2015–2019: The SEIU’s Faculty Forward initiative secures pay gains and multi-year contracts in cities like Boston and LA.
2020–2022: COVID-19 exacerbates adjunct precarity. Virtual organizing leads to some wins, but layoffs and instability rise.
2023–2025: Broader solidarity emerges—adjuncts band with student and staff labor movements. Union campaigns increasingly connect to critiques of austerity and corporatization.

Looking Ahead

With its 20th anniversary slated for November 2025, Reclaiming the Ivory Tower stands as much more than a historical landmark—it’s a blueprint for current and future organizing. While awareness of adjunct labor issues has grown, sustainable and structural transformation requires persistent organizing, cross-campus solidarity, and the sort of national coalition-building that HELU represents.

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Sources

• Berry, Joe. Reclaiming the Ivory Tower: Organizing Adjuncts to Change Higher Education. Monthly Review Press, 2005. [monthlyreview.org reference; meet the author site]

• “Higher Ed Workers Seek to Coordinate Nationally.” Inside Higher Ed, March 26, 2024. Includes details on HELU and Joe Berry’s role

• National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions data trends

• Inside Higher Ed reporting on adjunct unionization, strikes, and SEIU campaigns 

Reinventing Solidarity (New Labor Forum)

It's been a new day in the United Auto Workers since the election of Shawn Fain as president in 2023, with the union carrying out an aggressive organizing and political program that has established the UAW as a major presence in American life. New Labor Forum's Micah Uetricht spoke to Jonah Furman, a top aide to Fain, about the union's strategy, its various wins and losses among nonunion auto manufacturers in the American South, its relationship to the Democratic Party under President Joe Biden, and the impact of a Donald Trump presidency on the union and labor as a whole.

Reinventing Solidarity is a podcast produced by New Labor Forum (NLF), a national labor journal of the Murphy Institute at CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies. The podcast features scholars, activists, and artists on the front lines of movements for social and economic justice, and asks essential questions about race, class, gender, and the role of organized labor and social justice organizations in creating a radically different world—one with solidarity, equality, and sustainability at its heart. Reinventing Solidary is hosted by NLF Editor-at-Large Micah Uetricht with co-hosts Kafui Attoh, Ruth Milkman, Samir Sonti, and Sean Sweeney.  

A Syllabus of Resistance

Higher education today demands that we strip away illusions. The university is no longer a sanctuary of truth but a contested battleground of austerity, automation, and alienation. Students, adjuncts, and staff are caught in a cycle of debt, precarity, and surveillance. To resist, we need not another glossy strategic plan but a syllabus — a curriculum of solidarity, transparency, and rehumanization.

Debt defines the student experience. Student loan balances now exceed $1.77 trillion, and repayment programs like PSLF and income-driven repayment offer only partial relief. In 2024, as federal student loan payments resumed after a pandemic pause, millions of borrowers simply refused to pay, transforming individual debt into collective action. The Debt Collective has organized strikes and campaigns to cancel student debt, reframing borrowing as a political issue rather than a private burden. This movement challenges whether the entire financing model of higher education can survive.

Faculty labor is equally precarious. More than seventy percent of instructors are contingent, often earning poverty wages without benefits. At Harrisburg Area Community College, over 200 faculty went on strike in November 2025 after years of stalled negotiations, exemplifying a growing national labor movement against stagnant pay and weakened job security. Adjunct faculty unions at Rutgers and elsewhere continue to push back against layoffs and austerity measures. The crisis of contingent labor has moved from quiet exploitation to open confrontation.

Climate crisis compounds the meltdown. Universities expand globally in a frenzy of collegemania, while ignoring ecological collapse. Student activists demand divestment from fossil fuels, but boards often resist. At Princeton, campaigners uncovered that the university owns a controlling stake in PetroTiger, a fossil fuel company, profiting directly from extraction. Edge Hill University in the UK recently committed to divest from both fossil fuels and border security companies after sustained student pressure. The University of Illinois, despite pledging to divest years ago, still faces protests demanding action. These campaigns show that climate justice is inseparable from educational justice.

Surveillance intensifies alienation. Universities increasingly deploy corporate partnerships and AI tools to monitor student dissent. At the University of Houston, administrators contracted with Dataminr to scrape students’ social media activity during Palestine solidarity protests. Amnesty International has warned that tools like Palantir and Babel Street pose surveillance threats to student activists. Truthout reports that campuses have become laboratories for military-grade surveillance technology, punishing dissent and eroding trust. Education becomes transactional and disciplinary, leaving students reporting higher levels of stress and disconnection.

Resistance must also be moral. University governance remains hierarchical and opaque, resembling corporate boards more than democratic institutions. Calls for transparency and veritas are drowned out by branding campaigns and political capture. A pedagogy of resistance must be rooted in temperance, nonviolence, and solidarity. Rehumanization is the antidote to robostudents, roboworkers, and robocolleges. It is the refusal to be bots, debtors, or disposable labor, and the insistence on reclaiming education as a public good.

Developing a Democratic Syllabus of Resistance

This syllabus is not a catalog of courses but a call to action. Debt strikes, adjunct unionization, climate divestment campaigns, and surveillance pushback are fragments of a larger curriculum of resistance. But this syllabus is incomplete without you. Readers are invited to join in creating it — to add new units, case studies, and strategies that reflect the lived realities of students, workers, and communities.

For inspiration, see the Higher Education Inquirer’s earlier piece on Methods of Student Nonviolent Resistance, which documents the long history of campus activism and the evolving tactics of protest, persuasion, and noncooperation. That archive reminds us that resistance is not only possible but essential.

The classroom is everywhere, and the time is now.