AAUP President: organize & scrutinize the budget

Kriti Brown over at the Unions United blog notes that the Chronicle has a story on a speech by AAUP President Cary Nelson in which Nelson (who works at UIUC) calls for faculty to organize (forming unions if they can, AAUP chapters if they can't) and scrutinize university budgets as a way of meeting the wave of cuts to academic programs around the country. This is a pretty direct endorsement of what the FA has been trying to do—though perhaps more in the way of a membership drive would seem to be called for.  Again, the issues we are dealing with here are part of a national context. In some ways (already having a unionized campus, for example) we are better off than many of our colleagues elsewhere.  But we will only manage to flourish despite the current crisis if more faculty get involved.