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Instruction Mode: Hybrid - Online & In Person
This course will study the changes in U.S. colleges and universities since the 1980s. We will examine the public mission of higher education and the way this has been altered by privatization, corporatization, and commodification trends that encourage colleges and universities to function as private market actors. Topics include reductions of public funding, growing student debt, the use of a corporate labor model resulting in the expansion of the administration, the reduction of tenure-track/tenured faculty lines, and the growth of contingent faculty and graduate student employment in teaching and research. The course will examine the negative impact of such trends and changes on faculty and student rights, including academic freedom, freedom of speech, due process, shared governance, rights to unionize and collectively bargain, and students’ career choices.

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This new course will document how political forces expressed mostly as court decisions have re-shaped the unionized public sector workplace in the last decade. Attacks on teacher seniority, challenges to the viability of decent wages for our health care workers, and manifold restrictions on the financial well-being of all public sector unions comprise this set of strategies. We will use high level state and federal court decisions, public policy papers, and a varied set of guests to explain this phenomena and ask, What will happen now?

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This class examines the role of lawyers in achieving systemic change in a local community, using case studies from Buffalo and Ithaca. How are public policy changes won, and how are neighborhoods or regions transformed for the better? How do lawyers make a systemic impact while working in a wide variety of settings, including private firms, non-profit law centers, government positions, and non-legal careers? What aspects of legal training and experience help or hinder lawyers as they aim to make a difference? What are successful tools for public policy advocacy?

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Instruction Mode: Hybrid - Online & In Person
Analysis of the law governing employee rights and labor relations in the workplace.  Topics include the contested meanings of who is an “employee” and who is an “employer,” the growing connectivity between immigration regulation and labor and employment law as well as the reach of U.S. law into international and local arenas.  Also examines the impact of these legal developments and develops legal research and writing skills.

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