As a graduate teacher in Political Science at Yale, I study how activists, politicians, and philosophers in the world’s two largest democracies—India and the United States—have thought about democratic forms of government. I’m doing a PhD because I think that ideas matter: they move us to question the world we live in and imagine new ways of living together. It’s this spirit that I try to bring to the classrooms where I teach. In the coming days, I will get to participate in a new kind of democracy for me. I’ll get to vote to certify my union Local 33–UNITE HERE, the union of graduate teachers at Yale University.
Yale University
Posted inEducation
NLRB ruling boosts Yale grad-school union drive
Graduate student teaching assistants at Columbia University won a ruling from the National Labor Relations Board Tuesday that may inject new life into the decades-long quest to unionize their contemporaries at Yale.
Posted inCT Viewpoints
New Haven voices support for bill on Yale’s commercial properties
As leaders in the city of New Haven, we are writing to ask you to vote yes on Senate Bill 414 for our community. Our city is the proud home of Yale University. Like other universities, Yale’s academic properties are tax-exempt. That part of the law is clear and simple. And SB 414 does not change that. But the law governing the tax status of Yale’s commercial properties is not clear. And this ambiguity in the law makes our city’s ability to provide basic services dependent upon voluntary payments made by Yale that are subject to change at any time.
Posted inEducation, Money
One bill to tax Yale moves forward, another dies
The legislature’s tax-writing committee Thursday approved a bill that would allow New Haven to begin taxing commercial property owned by Yale, but let die a controversial bill backed by the leader of the state Senate that would have allowed the state to tax the earnings of the Ivy League university’s multi-billion-dollar endowment. Yale has opposed both bills.
Posted inEducation, Money
Taxing Yale: An attack or fair game?
While officials at Yale University call legislation that would implement a new tax on the growth of its endowment an “attack on independent higher education,” legislative heavyweights backing the bill say its just forcing the Ivy League school to be a good neighbor.
Posted inPolitics
CT kicks in nearly $3 million to presidential candidates
WASHINGTON — As a group, Republican candidates have the edge in campaign fundraising over Democrats in Connecticut, but individually Hillary Clinton continues to lead the pack with more than $1 million raised in the state.
Posted inHealth, Politics
Congressional scrutiny of fetal tissue research threatens work at UConn, Yale
WASHINGTON – Justin Cotney uses embryonic tissue for his research as the University of Connecticut health center into why some children develop cleft palate. But the use of fetal tissue from abortions is now coming under attack by conservative Republicans who have been thwarted in their attempt to defund Planned Parenthood.
Posted inEducation
Seven UConn students expelled for sexual assault last year
The University of Connecticut last year expelled seven students on charges of sexual assault, it reported Thursday. A number of other complaints were investigated but dismissed, it says in a report it is required to provide to federal and state officials.
Posted inEnergy & Environment
CT creeps toward electric grid 2.0
Connecticut is starting a process to modernize the state’s electric grid to make it cleaner, leaner and more adaptable to new methods of power generation and distribution. Exploring how to do that will be a major focus for the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, beginning early next year.
Posted inNews
Op-Ed: From revenge to reconciliation with Cuba
Over the years Connecticut people have created many connections to Cuba, both positive and negative. Now the U.S. will relate to the island nation the same way every other country does.
Posted inCT Viewpoints
From revenge to reconciliation with Cuba
Over the years Connecticut people have created many connections to Cuba, both positive and negative. Now the U.S. will relate to the island nation the same way every other country does.
Posted inEnergy & Environment
For Alex Felson, opportunity knocks on Connecticut coast
Alex Felson, a landscape architect and urban ecologist at Yale, has found an opportunity to address climate and community issues on the battered, flooded and otherwise jeopardized Connecticut shoreline.
Posted inNews
Connecticut colleges receive millions from the Pentagon
WASHINGTON – Connecticut colleges have been increasingly benefiting from money from the Pentagon over the last few years, winning millions in contracts from the U.S. armed forces to conduct research on a wide range of products used in national defense — from sensors that track the health of soldiers to instruments that detect matter in outer space.
Posted inMoney, Politics
Connecticut women victims of pay gap
Washington – Despite the state’s progressive bent, women in Connecticut earn only about 78 percent of what men make, a gender-wage gap close to the national disparity. The finance, defense, information technology, medical and scientific research industries that hire many people in Connecticut all have large gender-wage disparities.