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KFT Voice April 2025 edition

3 - We Told You So

5 Jasmine Jaywant Profile

6 Faculty and Staff Promotions

7 Thank You Vazquez; Welcome Gomez

8 AFT Benefits

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In AFT President Randi Weingarten’s latest New York Times  column, she describes what it is exactly that unions do. Though unions are the most popular they have been in decades, anti-union sentiment still thrives in red states and across the nation. “Several years ago, The Atlantic ran a story whose headline made even me, a labor leader, scratch my head: ‘Union Membership: Very Sexy,’” Weingarten writes in the column. “The gist was that higher wages, health benefits and job security—all associated with union membership—boost one’s chances of getting married. Belonging to a union doesn’t actually guarantee happily ever after, but it does help working people have a better life in the here and now.” Click through to read the full column.

Historic Partnership Will Strengthen Both Organizations and Advance American Higher Education

WASHINGTON—Delegates to the biennial meeting of the American Association of University Professors voted today to affiliate with the American Federation of Teachers, joining forces to build a more powerful and inclusive academic labor movement that will be better able to take on the challenges facing higher education as well as the threats to our democracy.

The vote brings together two organizations representing more than 300,000 higher education faculty members overall, the largest such alliance in the

Donna M. Chiera

Plan to give management control of campus outpost in Wenzhou to the Chinese government has security and ethical risks

New Jersey’s Legislature has many pressing education issues to deal with this session, but few are more urgent than the oversight of a dangerous and ill-conceived deal to hand management of Kean University’s branch campus in China over to the Chinese government.

Since 2012, the Union, New Jersey-based Kean has operated a full campus in China — the only American public university to do so. While the Chinese invested in its construction in the southeastern city of

Students, faculty, and staff calling for the reappointment of skilled lecturers and professional staff were illegally locked out of Monday night’s Kean Board of Trustees meeting, according to Kean Federation of Teachers president James Castiglione. While hundreds of students, faculty and staff were joined by a State Senator and the Assembly Higher Education Committee Chair rallying outside against the firings, Kean managers filled all the seats and security refused to allow students into the meeting. 

“These illegitimate firings eliminated almost all the African-American lecturers in the