#netzwerk_für_gute_arbeit_in_der

CDB_77 @cdb_77 4/04/2020

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Mobilisation contre la #continuité_pédagogique en #Allemagne
Le réseau des initiatives des précaires dans l’#ESR allemand, le #Netzwerk_für_Gute_Arbeit_in_der_Wissenschaft (#NgAWiss), mobilise en ce moment contre la #rentrée du deuxième semestre (qui se fait à la mi-avril outre-Rhin). Les arguments pour la soi-disant „continuité pédagogique" avancés par les président.e.s des #facs sont aussi hallucinants qu’en France - avec la différence notable que 11.000 travailleur.e.s de l’ESR allemand, dont une grande partie de titulaires (et notamment de PU), ont signé une lettre ouverte demandant l’#annulation du prochain semestre : ▻https://www.nichtsemester.de/cbxpetition/offener-brief
Les arguments sont les mêmes que celles qu’on mobilise en France : la #précarité_étudiante, notamment des étranger.e.s, la précarité des #non-titulaires, les responsabilités du #care que les unes et les autres assurent à la maison, etc.
Dans son communiqué, le NgAWiss souligne également l’#absurdité de maintenir les #financements_par_projet pour la #recherche urgente sur le coronavirus (l’agence qui correspond à l’ANR outre-Rhin, la DFG, joue le même jeu) : ▻https://www.mittelbau.net/stellungnahme-solidarisch-durch-die-krise-prekaere-wissenschaft-in-der-pa
Le syndicat unter_bau de l’université de Francfort sur le Main appelle de son côté à résister à la transformation néolibérale de l’#université allemande qui risque de s’accélérer avec la crise (#digitalisation, suppression d’instances de décision démocratique, etc.) et a développé un catalogue de revendications très ciblées : ▻https://unterbau.org/2020/03/30/gegen-unsicherheit-in-der-corona-krise
Je suis frappé par la similitude des revendications avec les nôtres. C’est à garder en mémoire quand on ressortira pour reconstruire notre mouvement, approfondir son internationalisation et en finir avec „les connards qui nous gouvernent“ (Lordon) des deux côtés du Rhin et au delà.
Message reçu via la mailing list Facs et labos en lutte, le 03.04.2020
#université #enseignement_supérieur

CDB_77 @cdb_77
- CDB_77 @cdb_77 5/04/2020
  
  German academics revolt over ‘business as usual’ plans
  More than 10,000 signatories want summer exams made optional and teaching loads cut, raising the question: how productive can academics really be during a pandemic?
  German university leaders are at loggerheads with more than 10,000 academics and students over whether to press ahead with mandatory exams in the upcoming summer semester – and over the wider question of how productive academics are expected to be in the middle of a pandemic.
  Delaying exams would mean overloaded courses and student housing in the winter semester later this year, university leaders fear.
  “It has to continue; this is our general conviction. It’s important to have a semester that is mandatory for all,” said Peter-André Alt, president of the German Rectors’ Conference.
  This debate, which is playing out in the pages of Germany’s national newspapers, has exposed inequalities between the country’s tenured professors and younger scholars stuck on fixed-term contracts.
  More than 10,000 academics and students have signed a petition calling for the summer term, which normally starts in mid-April, to not be “business as usual”. They want students not to be penalised if they cannot work or take exams as normal, fixed-term contracts extended and teaching loads cut as lecturers struggle to shift teaching online.
  “There are the students who have to generate an income, have visa issues, have care duties now. We all are home schooling now,” said Paula-Irene Villa, professor of sociology and gender studies at LMU Munich, and one of the authors of the petition.
  Institutional responses need to be based on the “real, actual, factual, empirical situation that universities find themselves in” and “not as if universities were all run by people like me” − that is, senior, financially secure, tenured professors, she said.
  Switching to online teaching “takes more than just saying: let’s all go to Slack or Zoom”, she said.
  But Professor Alt believes that while moving teaching online will be a “high burden” for academics, less time will be spent on activities such as class discussion. “In the end, I don’t think it’s more [work]” for academics, he said.
  In reality, university leaders and petitioners do agree on some things, such as the need for a blanket extension of temporary contracts. Additionally, subjects such as lab-based disciplines and engineering that require physical teaching might have their semesters extended to June or July, Professor Alt said.
  But the clash is as much about tone as about practical policies. During the pandemic, can academics be expected to be as productive as ever?
  Professor Alt, an expert on German literature, recalled a period early in his career when the university library unexpectedly had to close – just as he was writing his second book.
  “But I was very productive in those two months,” he said. “This was one of the most productive periods of my whole life.” He did acknowledge, however, many scholars are now working amid the “turmoil of children” at home. “There are problems,” he said. But “if scientists can’t be creative [in response], who can be?”
  “Sure, for some this is going to be a very creative period,” responded Professor Villa. “I should be honest, for me, it’s amazing. I have months without conference travel...I can read much more than I could otherwise.”
  But for many academics and students in more precarious situations, the pandemic has sent their lives into a tailspin, she said. One colleague’s father-in-law was dying of coronavirus in Madrid, she revealed, while some of her students do not know how they will pay their rent. “That’s also the normal,” she said.
  ▻https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/german-academics-revolt-over-business-usual-plans
  
  CDB_77 @cdb_77
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CDB_77 @cdb_77 12/02/2020

„Precarious Internationale : solidarity network meeting“ of the Network for Decent Labour in Academia, Berlin, June 5, 2020
Dear all,
many of us have made and continue to make disenchanting experiences, to say the least, in the German academic system. While it markets itself as a world of excellence, liberal egalitarianism, cosmopolitanism, freedom and generosity towards scholars at risk, the reality of its structural labour conditions and culture of ignorance betray this image to be a grotesque misrepresentation. German academia is characterised by an ingrained and almost cultivated lack of consciousness towards multiple forms of discrimination (based on race, class, gender, age, etc.) and by related modalities of exclusion as well as paternalistic and infantilizing norms and practices particularly vis-à-vis international and non-naturalized scholars and students. As a system that has never been as much as confronted with a debate on quotas or human rights, German academia expects everybody to ‘integrate’ into what is essentially a structure normatively built around the ‘white male’ and organised according to steep hierarchies around disciplinary chairs. The consequences are direct dependencies of various kinds and precarious, fixed-term employment structures unparalleled by international comparison.
Many who came here with hopes and expectations have meanwhile withdrawn, tending to pressing political issues in other ways. While very much understandable, this inadvertently strengthens the fragmentation and division among the large class of underprivileged and precarious scholars that the system relies upon. The Network for #Decent_Labour_in_Academia (#Netzwerk_für_Gute_Arbeit_in_der_Wissenschaft, #NGAWiss) has been working for the past three years to publicise and scandalise the miserable employment conditions in German academia and to advocate for structural reforms. Its working group ‘Precarious Internationale’ aims to make intersectional discrimination a central issue of the network’s activism.
As a part of this effort, this workshop wants to bring together scholars, unionists and activists with different histories of mobility and migration to discuss and reflect on the intersection between precarious labour conditions and different forms of discrimination in the German academic system. We want to come together and learn from each other in order to come to a better analysis of the different problems and challenges faced by differently positioned scholars and activists, but also to exchange experiences and knowledges over struggles for academic freedoms and labour conditions in different contexts. The aim is both to position the question of labour in academia within broader societal struggles in Germany and to link it up to related struggles in other countries.
We propose to frame the workshop along two lines of debate and exchange. However, we are very much open to alter and adapt this proposal according to what participants consider urgent and relevant to be discussed!
Critical diversity: As against a neoliberal depoliticised celebration of diversity that follows a calculative logic of added value while blanking out structural inequalities, we want to engage in a critical discussion on the realities of diversity in German academia.Possible questions to be discussed include: what are the effects, limitations and problems of current discourse and practices of diversity? Is it possible – and acceptable – to speak of ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’ in the European and especially German context? When does it make sense to speak of ‘migration backgrounds’ to address the issue of underrepresentation of scholars in high academic positions? What are the concrete problems and challenges faced by people with a variety of different migration/mobility histories? What about forms of discrimination affecting people who do not master the German language? And how do these issues intersect with other vectors of discrimination, such as class, age, gender or disability?
Network of solidarity: We want to learn from each other’s struggles and experiences, think through concrete possibilities for solidarity and envision common political actions.How can we connect the activities of scholars, unionists, and activists struggling against precarious labour and different forms of inequality and discrimination in different academic settings? What are the larger political struggles in which these activities are involved? How and what can we learn from each other? What kinds of concrete steps towards mutual assistance could be developed and what common political actions could be envisioned?
Please let us know (alice.bieberstein@hu-berlin.de) by FEBRUARY, 15 2020 whether (1) you would like to participate in this workshop! In your answer, please indicate (2) whether there is a topic or issue of special INTEREST of URGENCY to you that you would want to see addressed in the workshop. Please also let us know (3) whether you would want to join with a specific contribution of any kind (presentation, film, artistic intervention, etc.). We absolutely want to make sure that lack of personal funds does not stand in the way of your participating. Private accommodation can be provided, and we are looking into options of supporting travel expenses. Please do let us know your needs and we’ll get back to you with possibilities.
Contact:
Dr. Alice von Bieberstein
Institut für Europäische Ethnologie
Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
alice.bieberstein@hu-berlin.de
▻https://www.mittelbau.net/call-for-participation-precarious-internationale-solidarity-network-meeti
#Allemagne #université #universités #résistance #précarisation #précarité #excellence #scholars_at_risk #discriminations #paternalisme #exclusion #travail #conditions_de_travail
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Ajouté à la métaliste sur les résistances dans le monde universitaire, et au-delà de la France :
►https://seenthis.net/messages/824281

CDB_77 @cdb_77

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