Randi Weingarten Denies Mercy to PSC Membership

Randi Weingarten, president of the United Federation of Teachers, the union representing New York City's schoolteachers and the nation's largest teachers' union, has denied my plea for a mercy takeover of the Professional Staff Congress.

I had written a letter to Weingarten suggesting that the UFT take over the representation of the faculty of the City University of New York, which is presently represented by the failed Professional Staff Congress. Due to both lack of bargaining power and poor leadership the faculty of CUNY has seen its salaries decline from among the highest in the country thirty years ago to among the lowest today.

Sadly Ms. Weingarten refuses to attempt a friendly or hostile takeover of the PSC unit. In her snail mail letter, she states that the PSC is a sister union and that I should consider becoming active in the PSC.

Nah. I've got enough lost causes on my hands.

Judge Judy's Producer Sends out Feelers Re O'Malley v. Karkhanis

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Free Speech For Sharad

Phil Orenstein has written an excellent blog about the O'Malley v. Karkhanis case. Phil argues that the PSC aims to silence Sharad and so has encouraged Sue O'Malley to sue. Indeed, the PSC has refused my repeated efforts to arrange for a Judge Judy hearing of the case.

The PSC's attempt to suppress speech and academic freedom is met with indifference by the American Association of University Professors, whom I have contacted about the case (they haven't responded). Phil notes:

(Sharad's newsletter The Patriot Returns) has carefully documented the PSC leadership’s pursuit of revolution instead of their jobs, elaborating on their campaigns to devote more time and resources to future global crusades. This includes such activities as mobilizing the membership to protest the Republican Party at the Republican National Convention in New York. Additionally, the PSC has passed a resolution sympathizing with Hugo Chavez, sponsored a conference called Educators to Stop the War, calling for teachers to develop an anti-war curriculum. The PSC leadership has organized and funded New York City Labor Against the War and Labor for Palestine, donated $5000 to support the legal defense of Lori Berenson, in prison for helping Peruvian Marxist terrorists, and donated...(on behalf of) Sami Al-Arian convicted of conspiracy to aid terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad. According to TPR, the PSC even hosts an “International Committee” replete with a foreign policy spokesperson, who has issued public statements against economic and military aid to Israel and a statement condemning the war in Afghanistan, “joining in solidarity with the victims of U.S. military power,” namely the Taliban. The New York Sun, reported that while the leaders of the PSC have been running amok in politics, their union failed to deliver a new contract and in the past five years the member’s health and welfare fund reserves fell by 97% “with only a trickle of money remaining for faculty members' prescription drug, dental, and medical insurance plans.”

As Phil outlines, the leadership of the Professional Staff Congress are left wing extremists who oppose academic freedom and aim to suppress all who disagree with their reactionary and incompetent left wing views. I have heard that although O'Malley has publicly described her case as silly or frivolous in a New York Sun article, the courts will be willing to waste the taxpayers' money in this transparent attempt at suppression of a union member by a union leadership.

O'Malley v. Karkhanis in the New York Post

Dareh Gregorian has written an article in the New York Post about Susan O'Malley's lawsuit against Sharad Karkhanis (also see earthtimes.org coverage here). While the article is a good one (see below), Gregorian fails to ask a few critical questions:

(1) Why haven't O'Malley and her attorney contacted the producers of Judge Judy, which is a more appropriate venue for a case that O'Malley herself describes as "silly" than is the New York State Supreme Court?

(2) Why are the people of the state of New York being asked to subsidize a case that the plaintiff describes as "silly"? Here are the synonyms of "frivolous" from dictonary.com :

barmy*, childish, dizzy*, empty-headed*, facetious, featherbrained*, flighty, flip, flippant, foolish, fribble, frothy, gay, giddy*, harebrained*, idiotic, idle, ill-considered, impractical, juvenile, light, light-minded, minor, niggling*, nonserious, not serious, paltry, peripheral, petty, playful, pointless, puerile, scatterbrained*, senseless, shallow, silly, sportive, superficial, tongue-in-cheek*, trivial, unimportant, unprofound, volatile, whimsical

(3) Why is the Professional Staff Congress unable to provide a dispute resolution mechanism that will spare the public the cost of resolving this "silly" dispute through the courts?

(4) One of the chief justifications of unionism is the provision of low-cost dispute resolution mechanisms. If unions like the Professional Staff Congress utilize the court system as a dispute resolution method of first resort, can such unions be justified from the standpoint of public policy?

(5) Has the Professional Staff Congress ever established guidelines for competent hiring?



CUNY PROF WAR
LIBEL SUIT OVER 'TERROR'
By DAREH GREGORIAN
November 5, 2007 -- A CUNY professor has filed a $2 million lawsuit against a fellow Ph.D. who's been lambasting her for allegedly trying to "recruit terrorists" to teach within the City University system.

In papers filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, Susan O'Malley charges that professor emeritus Sharad Karkhanis defamed her by accusing her of having an "obsession with finding jobs for terrorists" in recent issues of a newsletter he's been e-mailing to CUNY faculty members for 15 years.

Citing O'Malley's efforts to land jobs for convicted activist lawyer Lynne Stewart's co-defendant Mohammed Yousry and former Weather Underground member Susan Rosenberg, Karkhanis wrote:

"Has Queen O'Malley ever made a 'Job Wanted' announcement like this for a nonconvicted, nonviolent, peace-loving American educator for a job in CUNY? . . . Why does she prefer convicted terrorists bent on harming our people and our nation over peace-loving Americans?"

The retired Kingsborough Community College political-science professor said O'Malley, an English professor there, "is recruiting naive . . . faculty into her Qaeda-Camp to infiltrate . . . Personnel and Budget Committees in her mission - to recruit terrorists in CUNY. Given the opportunity, she will bring in all her indicted, convicted and freed-on-bail terrorist-friends."

O'Malley believes the terrorist-recruiter claim to be libelous. But an unapologetic Karkhanis, 73, told The Post: "Give me a break. I'm going to fight this vigorously."

He added that he considers what he wrote to be satire but that he was also "raising questions I believe are appropriate."

He said O'Malley crossed the line when she tried to land a job for Yousry, who's out on bail pending appeal of his conviction for helping Stewart disseminate messages from 1993 World Trade Center bomb plotter Omar Abdel-Rahman.

O'Malley, on leave from CUNY, could not be reached for comment.

dareh.gregorian@nypost.com