"Everything Was Cut Immediately": LIU Faculty and Students Protest Lockout & Class Cancellations

This was supposed to be the second week of classes at Long Island University’s campus in Brooklyn, but the administration barred all 400 members of the faculty union from its Brooklyn campus after their contract expired on August 31. The new proposed contract would slash pay for adjunct professors and also pay faculty lower salaries compared to those earned by colleagues at a satellite campus. As part of the lockout, LIU cut off professors’ email accounts and health insurance, and told them they would be replaced. LIU President Kimberly Cline has assured students the lockout would not affect the beginning of the school year. But since the semester began, classes have been taught by replacement teachers, and many are assigned to teach subjects for which they have no experience. We speak with locked-out professor Srividhya Swaminathan, chair of the English Department at Long Island University Brooklyn. We are also joined by Kiyonda Hester, an LIU social work graduate student who is president of the campus group Activists for Social Justice and joined hundreds of students in walking out of classes on Monday.