Via ovicipitum dura es*

^*”The way of the egghead is hard,” a retort by Adlai Stephenson after Richard Nixon referred to him as an “egghead” during the 1952 presidential campaign. No word on who, if anyone, translated the joke for Nixon.

In 2009, p3 was pleased to note that the long-suffering faculty at the University of Oregon were finally showing signs of having had enough, opening talks aimed at gaining union representation and collective bargaining rights, like their colleagues at Portland State, Eastern Oregon, Western Oregon, and Southern Oregon.

Winning union representation is no easy trick in 2012:

More than 1,800 University of Oregon (UO) faculty members now have a voice at work after they chose to join United Academics, an affiliate of AFT Oregon and the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). The Oregon Employment Relations Board Friday certified the professors’ choice after the university dropped its objections.

The new union includes tenure- and non-tenure-track faculty, adjunct instructors, research associates and assistants and post-doctoral scholars. Scott Pratt, professor of philosophy, says the composition of the bargaining unit

paves the way for UO tenure-related and non-tenure-track faculty—working together—to have a more substantive voice in refocusing our university on the core mission of teaching and research.

In March, a majority of faculty members signed union authorization cards and the university initially filed objections.

A tip of the mortarboard to my former colleagues on the U of O faculty.