Bibliocracy - Thursday, June 18, 2026

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2. The ink is black, the page is white.
3. Together we learn to read and write
4. A child is black, a child is white
5. The whole world looks upon the side
6. A beautiful side
7. Welcome to Bibliocracy, KPFK's weekly literary arts show.
8. I'm your host, Andrew Tonkovich, editor of the Santa Monica Review
9. and founding editor of Citric Acid, Orange County's online literary and cultural arts journal.
10. Both projects welcome your attention. And as I'm proud to announce every week, I'm also a member
11. of the Community of Writers, which produces the podcast version of this show. You can learn more
12. about both the Community of Writers summer workshops and its year-round programming at
13. communityofwriters.org. I'm always happily busy reading books by authors who might appear as
14. guests on future shows, including novelists, poets, and memoirists. But listeners will also
15. know that I follow and support labor justice struggles in education, especially higher
16. education. My special guest this week helps all of us celebrate a huge breakthrough for workers
17. at the University of Southern California.
18. Of course, he's a writing instructor
19. and an accomplished scholar and writer himself.
20. So this week, here's another activist edition of Bibliocracy.
21. My conversation with Professor Ryan Boyd
22. on successful union organizing of academic workers
23. at the University of Southern California.
24. Listen for Boyd's excellent reading recommendations
25. and do check out the website of United Faculty UAW.
26. My guest this week is the second in two weeks whose life and work meet at the intersection of activism, education, and writing.
27. Intersection or crash or perhaps necessary site of struggle and solidarity.
28. Ryan Boyd teaches in the writing program at the University of Southern California.
29. He is, to the point of this episode of Bibliocracy, an organizer with United Faculty UAW, and
30. along with other impressive elements of his CV, his writing has appeared in Public Books,
31. the Los Angeles Review of Books, Protean, and the Chronicle of Higher Education, among
32. other venues.
33. Professor Ryan Boyd is my special guest this week in order to give listeners an update,
34. a status report, and perhaps some cause for celebration by way of the work of academic
35. laborers at the University of Southern California, of all places, where, indeed,
36. organizers have, with the UAW, United Auto Workers, succeeded in establishing a new bargaining unit
37. called United Faculty. Naturally, USC objects. Fight on, I guess. The United Faculty UAW,
38. has a terrific website by the way unitedfaculty Now with all that introduction welcome to Bibliocracy Ryan Boyd Hey Andrew Happy to be here And I bet you are happy Professor Boyd
39. Tell me what your happiness is all about and how the university is trying to frustrate that happiness.
40. Yeah, so like you said, I'm a part of the United Faculty UAW, which represents about 2,500,
41. maybe a little bit more, depending on how it shakes out, and bargaining non-Tegertrack faculty at USC.
42. And so I've been part of this effort for about four years, and it culminated in a mail-in union election that ended last week, in which about 70% of USC non-finger-track faculty turned out and voted, and a resounding 70% voted in United Faculty as our union representative, which is a hugely exciting moment because we're forming the largest private sector, private university faculty union in American history.
43. There are others at schools like NYU and Barnard and Harvard and, of course, like the UC system, which are also very large.
44. But it's very exciting to be doing something like this in the teeth of an institution that for a long time has fought labor, fought graduate student labor, postdoc union, the union of adjuncts in the cinema school, and now us.
45. Because the night before the election count where we won a huge mandate, won the landslide, USC asked the federal NLRB, which is stocked with Donald Trump appointees who are anti-labor, to overturn the election results and to review the regional NLRB's decision to give us an election in the first place.
46. And so we're at this moment where we've won a huge victory.
47. We are now certified as a union.
48. We are preparing to get down to bargaining with USC as soon as possible.
49. But we also are in this moment where we are working to pressure USC to drop their extremely disappointing appeal to the federal board,
50. basically asking Donald Trump's administration to overturn an election and overturn results that the administration did not like,
51. despite having gone all in on encouraging faculty to vote and to participate.
52. They endorsed and legitimated the election.
53. They said it's very important that everyone votes.
54. They said that we shouldn't allow a small number of people to decide.
55. So 70% of the faculty turned out and we won.
56. And so now the task is to move ahead and to continue building labor power at USC
57. because this is part of a national movement where we've seen trade union activism
58. among professors and postdocs and graduate students across the United States over the past
59. 10, 15 years. And so it's really exciting to be doing something powerful at USC, you know,
60. locally, one of the biggest employers in the city of LA, a huge, well-capitalized institution,
61. but also being part of a national and really international movement if you look at
62. threats to higher education across the world and how faculty are kind of pushing back against that
63. through organizing. Now, you and I are quite familiar with the politics, the dynamics, and the
64. population of employees, generally speaking, what we like to call workers at both higher ed
65. public institutions and private higher ed institutions. But not to burden you with a
66. little bit more of a primer for listeners, could you describe the types of labor being done by
67. people who are now part of your bargaining unit?
68. Yeah.
69. So at the University of Southern California the professoriate at the faculty is about 75 to 80 people working off the tenure track And so the way we officially categorized at the institution is through an acronym called RTPC
70. which stands for different tracks, research, teaching, practical, and clinical.
71. So it covers people from a wide range of disciplines.
72. People like me, you know, I'm a teaching professor.
73. That's primarily my role is I teach writing.
74. I do research and writing on my own on the side, but my main role is teaching.
75. We have faculty who are primarily researchers. We have faculty who are sort of hybrid research and teaching. We have faculty who are, you know, clinical workers in, for example, the occupational school, the Chan School of Occupational Therapy, which is part of our unit.
76. And one of the really cool things about this is, you know, the size and diversity of our
77. union includes, you know, full-time off the tenure track, part-time workers off the tenure
78. track.
79. It includes adjuncts who maybe teach a class here and there, you know, anyone who doesn't
80. have access to the protections and status of tenure.
81. And, you know, I now have colleagues that I'm organized alongside who come from all
82. kinds of disciplines, you know, people who are therapists, people who are video game
83. engineers, people who are computer scientists and filmmakers and poets and classical composers and
84. business professors, even people from all across the university, because the thing we can't emphasize
85. enough is that this was high turnout and it was a landslide win for the union, right? We had mass
86. support. This was not a small group of people pushing this. Just to be clear, does this include
87. what are sometimes called graduate students or academic workers who are doing graduate work?
88. Yeah, good question. So the graduate students at USC are also organized into a UAW local 872,
89. which represents several thousand graduate student workers. They were indeed the first
90. body of workers at USC to unionize a few years before our campaign kicked off.
91. They won a transformative contract for private university graduate instructors and researchers, and in a lot of ways were an inspiration for us because they were the first person to kind of run across the bridge and show that it could be done.
92. And that was followed by the postdoctoral researchers at USC who had their own union.
93. The adjunct professors in the film school had their own UAW local.
94. These are all UAW unions.
95. And so one of the exciting things about this is it's not just non-Tanger Track faculty.
96. It's the graduate students.
97. It's the postdocs.
98. It's the cinema arts adjuncts.
99. It's other unions that are present on campus like United Here Local 11, for example, or SEIU, which represents some of the bus drivers.
100. USC has a union footprint and it's growing.
101. And that's not just because of us.
102. We're a big part of that.
103. But, you know, it's really a mosaic of workers deciding that the status quo just isn't tolerable anymore and that we have to do something to push back against that and create better conditions for people who work in higher ed.
104. My guest this week on Bibliocracy in a sort of news break edition of what is normally and ostensibly a show committed to the literary arts, doing what I was hoping you would, which was that magnificent shout out to a phenomenon which we've witnessed and celebrated and learned from.
105. That is to say the UAW and postdocs and graduate students who have indeed set the stage in the past decade for these remarkable further advances.
106. I just randomly sometimes go up to a 30 on campus and thank them because it took decades but they really did Ryan Boyd they really did set the stage for us And now it just spreading across both public and private institutions
107. Yeah, absolutely.
108. Because, you know, since the 1970s, we've seen the kind of corporatization and neoliberalization
109. of the academy writ large.
110. And this labor organizing is a response to those conditions, which consistently squeeze
111. workers put heavy pressure on workers who are not paid well, who don't have much job security,
112. who always see their benefits getting cut. A dynamic you see in a lot of sectors of the
113. American economy. It's not just higher ed. But yeah, this is the response to the results of 45,
114. 50 years of neoliberalization of the university. But at USC, of all places, please forgive me if
115. I'm painting in overly broad strokes. USC has a reputation of the last 75 years for breaking up
116. other people's strikes, for all kinds of naughty behavior in the community. Don't get me wrong,
117. amazing scholars, teachers. Most people, I think, in Southern California admire the football team.
118. There is a kind of cultural cachet to this esteemed private institution.
119. But you don't have to scratch too far to find the politics of this place.
120. Tell me if I'm being unfair or otherwise, Ryan Boyd, feel free indeed to help us with a larger historical picture.
121. I know, for instance, that during the citrus strikes in Orange County, the, forgive me, frat boys drove down here and beat hell out of Mexican and Mexican-American laborers.
122. And I know that USC has done quite a bit to address larger community issues, integrate itself into the life of Southern California, address perhaps safety and housing and transportation in that part of town.
123. So, yeah, maybe one of the final gestures is to actually acknowledge and consider labor justice.
124. Yeah, I mean, I often think about a really good work of scholarship, recent scholarship by Devarian Baldwin called In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower, about how large universities are, you know, on the one hand, places of education and knowledge building and research that changes the world.
125. But they're also landlords and, you know, major players in wealth extraction in various communities.
126. They have, you know, major socioeconomic footprints in the cities and communities they're in.
127. And it's not always a positive impact.
128. And we've seen, you know, again, across American higher education, not just at USC, but as universities have become more corporatized and have developed these layers of thick layers of upper management and administration, which is very powerful in making decisions about the direction of universities, that by and large, you know, at any university, administration doesn't like unions and resists them in any way possible.
129. You know, at USC, that's taken the form of things like when we had a majority of faculty sign authorization cards back in December of 2024, rather than recognize the will of the faculty, they took us to a National Labor Relations Board hearing where 15 months later, the decision came out in our favor saying, yes, we can have an election.
130. You know, we had that election. It was hard fought. The administration really did a lot of anti-union messaging, like very intensely to faculty.
131. and the union still won, right?
132. And ultimately, this is about bread and butter issues for faculty.
133. You know, we're not paid well, we don't have much job security,
134. working off the tenure track, our benefits are always underfunded.
135. threat. There's no transparency about how university budgeting or directional decisions
136. are made. But it's also a bigger picture about a different vision of higher education where
137. the people who are the beating heart of these institutions who do the work that allow these
138. universities to exist actually have a position of power at the decision-making table and aren't
139. just told what's what by the provost's office or central administration or pick a high-level
140. management position. It's a vision of a university that's run more like an educational institution
141. that prioritizes knowledge and teaching rather than the growth of the endowment or how much
142. money the football coach makes or, you know, pick a non-academic issue. It's about a vision of a
143. university that works for everybody who works there, that actually like educates students well,
144. creates world-saving knowledge in the sciences and the arts. A university that really has much
145. more of a salutary impact on society than universities sometimes do right now.
146. Thanks for that, Ryan Boyd. I always used to play a little rhetorical game with my students,
147. especially in the first week of class. I would very provocatively introduce myself by my job
148. title, which was not as a professor particularly, but as an adjunct, as a lecturer, and as a proud
149. at the time president of my union local. The other question that I would ask them after they had
150. either dropped my class or decided to put up with their activist instructor was if they knew what an
151. endowment was and if they knew why some of the big important buildings on the campus were named
152. after big, important people, and they sometimes did. But then I asked them if they'd ever heard
153. of a millionaire donating to support the salaries of the instructors of that institution.
154. I mean, that's funny, right? But it's also ironic, provocative. And if people had to answer that
155. question, including the parents who sent their young people to the university, we'd be living
156. in a different world, wouldn't we?
157. Mm-hmm.
158. Yeah, and, you know, you bring up students and families
159. who are, you know, absolutely stakeholders,
160. obviously, in these institutions.
161. And I know it's, you know, it's a truism of educators
162. who are in unions that our working conditions
163. are the students' learning conditions.
164. And we know that professors who are paid a fair wage,
165. have job security that doesn't cause them anxiety all the time,
166. work in a transparently run institution,
167. have opportunities for professional development, the kinds of stuff that's often negotiated into
168. a collective bargaining agreement, are better teachers. They're better supported materially,
169. and they're able to do their jobs, do their research, do their pedagogy much more effectively.
170. And so when universities cheap out on how they pay and support faculty who, again, are by and
171. large off the tenure track in 2026, the vast majority of American universities and colleges,
172. is students suffer, right?
173. Students don't get the best possible experience.
174. And at a private research university like USC, where tuition and room and board run
175. you six figures a year now, students have a right to be upset that their faculty are
176. being treated this way because we're the people they interact with on a daily basis.
177. We're the people who like care about their development as human beings and as intellects
178. and as people.
179. You know, I think there is a spreading awareness among undergraduates that faculty do not have
180. the kind of like cushy status that popular culture might think we have The most of us are workers who are very precarious in our lives you know struggling to pay rent struggling to pay bills despite our
181. fancy degrees and despite the fact that we stand up in front of the class every day.
182. Not to poke too much fun at the cartoon portrayals in popular culture, which I think you maybe would
183. agree contribute to people's misperceptions, but I've made the mistake of trying to watch a couple
184. of the early episodes over the years of these TV sitcom versions. Number one, they always take
185. place at a tiny private liberal arts college, and they always have the same plot about the
186. struggling academics who are usually inept, competitive, silly, trivial, probably all true
187. in some cases, and an eccentric president, a weirdo dean, and a provost who's, you know,
188. having an affair with the custodian, etc., etc. But none of them talk about the struggle to unionize.
189. They don't even acknowledge the labor justice struggles. So I guess my question to you is,
190. in your other life, which is really the same life, you've written about literature, culture,
191. politics. I mean, holy cow, the Chronicle of Higher Education, the Los Angeles Review of Books.
192. Here's my big question, Ryan Boyd. When somebody reads your work, your scholarship,
193. your commentary on popular culture, will they now increasingly apprehend you and other scholars
194. as laborers, workers, and members of trade unions? Yeah, I think like one of the things that I always
195. try to do in my writing is like pull together what it means to teach in the university, how
196. that intersects with our job conditions, labor structures, class structures within the university.
197. And I try to emphasize that most people who are engaged in this business of like teaching and doing research and providing clinical care in higher education settings are firm believers in the mission.
198. Right. This is a mission driven profession. They do not pay us well enough to lie to our students about how much we love this work.
199. Right. And the thing that I always try to keep in mind is that campaigns like the move to unionize non-tanker track faculty at universities across the country.
200. It's not about destroying the university, burning down the university, abolishing the university.
201. It's about building a world where the people who do this incredibly important work of care and knowledge making are at the center of making these decisions.
202. And I think the only way that can ever happen is through unionization.
203. Right. If it were just about having the right arguments, every workplace in America would be unionized.
204. Right. Because unions just make sense for workers across the board.
205. In the real world, you have to fight for this stuff on real political landscapes, on real terrain with real human beings who have mixed political affiliations and commitments to the university and feelings about the world.
206. And so like the only way you really build power for the faculty, it's not through emails and letter writing campaigns.
207. That's certainly important as part of the work of organizing, but it's about faculty
208. consistently coming together collectively to try to do things, to push universities,
209. to do the right thing by their workers, by their students, by their alumni who care
210. about the university by their communities that surround campus You know cause again the thing I come back to is USC is one of the largest private employers in Los Angeles which as everyone listening to this show probably knows is a pretty big labor market because a lot of people live here And we hoping that you know our victory
211. in this battle to unionize the faculty is part of a larger win for labor across not just LA, but
212. not just higher education, but the whole country. Because whether you work in an auto plant or a
213. university or you're a barista at Starbucks, if you've got a boss, you probably need a union.
214. Nice. Professor Ryan Boyd, I also want to point out, is not getting paid to be a union steward
215. at this point. He's not getting paid to be an activist because all this hard work,
216. unlike on the university side, is unpaid. It's all about mutual aid and it's about solidarity.
217. I'd be a fool not to take this opportunity to also mention your own work. So if you don't mind,
218. could you reference or point people toward an article that you'd like us to read by yourself?
219. And then maybe if you're game for it, Ryan, a book that you either teach or celebrate or enjoy
220. or just want a bunch of people to hear about that has guided you or informed you or which
221. otherwise you would like to celebrate? Yeah, I guess like the most recent thing that I published
222. was a review of a book called Derivative Media that I published in Public Books last year.
223. The essay is called Money for Nothing, Finance and the End of Culture or something like that.
224. But it's all about the capture of the arts and culture industries, music, film, TV by
225. private equity. And there are all sorts of interesting parallels to the way that
226. financialist thinking has taken over the culture industries and how it relates to like
227. that kind of penetration of thinking into university management as well.
228. So that's something you can check out, public books. I write for them a lot.
229. I like to think they're a really great sort of like public humanities magazine.
230. And then in terms of books, a book I love by a writer who often does comment on higher education
231. because she's a professor, is Tressie McMillan Cottom's book, Thick, and other essays. I teach
232. an essay from that book called Dying to be Confident that students love and respond to
233. year after year. That's all about how we can't individually and meritocratically claw our way
234. to a better world. This has to be done politically and collectively, that you're never going to deal
235. with things like class society or racism or misogyny if we don't think collectively and
236. politically. And for me, fundamentally, that's what a union is about, is about working collectively
237. and democratically and not just as little individuals here and there making our noises and
238. doing whatever, but really, really working as a big team to change a status quo that just
239. doesn't seem like it can shamble on much longer. Well, there it is, an analysis, a through line,
240. a thesis. Who better to ask than a professor of writing? It's Ryan Boyd. Do check out the website
241. of the UAW Local Now at USC.
242. It's been such a great conversation
243. and congratulations.
244. Keep up the struggle.
245. I hope I get to shake your hand
246. and meet you in person
247. and especially when you guys
248. get your first contract.
249. That would be wonderful
250. because the work that faculty
251. have done in places like the UC,
252. you know, I started out as an adjunct
253. at UC Santa Barbara
254. and UC AFT had gotten
255. a lot of great stuff for people.
256. And that really what I always wanted was to bring a union to like a private employer And so we take inspiration from UC professors Thanks so much for being my guest this week on Bibliocracy Ryan Boyd
257. Thank you for having me.
258. Great to be here.
259. Thanks to Professor Ryan Boyd of United Faculty UAW.
260. Thanks to KPFK Board Op, Osman Flamenco, and to Mark Maxwell, Bibliocracies Engineer.
261. Tune in next Thursday at 2.30 for another celebration of the literary arts or perhaps, who knows, more activist struggle on bibliocracy.
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279. Oh, the slate is black, the chalk is white, together we learn to read and write, to read and write.
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