#ReinstateProfessorLisaDurden to her position as adjunct professor at Essex County College IMMEDIATELY!

ABOUT THE CASE
Lisa Durden, producer, filmmaker, media commentator and professor, appeared on Fox News with Tucker Carlson on June 6th. 

Carlson insulted her repeatedly (“demented, separatist, Nazi”) for defending the Black Lives Matter movement’s right to have Black only safe space event for Memorial Day. Professor Durden succinctly and cogently defended her principled position and exposed Tucker’s white male fragility for what it was -- a childish tantrum.

Less than 48 hours later, Professor Lisa Durden was summarily suspended by Essex County College (ECC), where she teaches media and effective speech.  Without union representation at the meeting, ECC administrators told her that she was suspended because of her appearance on Fox News. She was told to leave the building and not return.

Instead of defending Professor Durden’s right to free speech and congratulating her on standing up to racism and sexism, the administration at the Predominantly Black Institution chose to effectively fire this accomplished media professional and educator.

Professor Lisa Durden is a lifelong Newark, NJ resident who has given her time and expertise generously to the youth of the city. She has provided highly competitive internships in New York media for Essex County College students for a decade. She was recently honored by the City of Newark for her outstanding work in media with women and young people.

Professor Durden has braved racist death threats from the alt right movement to speak truth to power on national television. Why is Essex County College firing a beloved professor for exercising her First Amendment right? In Trump’s America are Black Women professors not allowed the right to free speech?

We demand that Professor Lisa Durden be reinstated to her position and given her full course load (12 credits per semester teaching Mass Communications and Effective Speech classes) that she was assigned for the full 2017/2018 academic year.

We demand equality for adjunct, contingent and junior faculty in pay and treatment. Nationwide, higher education administrations have created an apartheid system, paying themselves grandiose salaries of $200,000+ while junior, contingent and adjunct faculty are paid peanuts. Adjunct faculty are often forced to sleep in their cars and go on food stamps because they cannot survive the poverty wages and insecure, short term, “at will” employment that colleges force on them. Administrators pit adjunct and full time faculty against each other and use their disgusting treatment of adjunct labor to scare full time faculty into submission. This diminishes the quality of education for students, even as their tuition skyrockets.

We demand full equality in pay and treatment among adjunct, contract and full-time, tenured faculty!