Make your contribution now and help Gothamist thrive in 2023.In addition to tentative agreements on pay and job security, Rutgers University faculty union leaders secured an unusual safeguard in new contract negotiations: protections against caste discrimination, faculty negotiators told Gothamist.
“I think it’s going to be really important and transformative internally at Rutgers,” said Audrey Truschke, a historian at Rutgers who teaches courses on South Asia and Hinduism. Truschke said students regularly complain of caste-related comments and behavior from university administrators, faculty, other students and the parents of friends.
The Rutgers American Association of University Professors - American Federation of Teachers, or AAUP-AFT, notes in a unionIn an email, Nusrath Yusuf, a member of the executive council of Rutgers AAUP-AFT, wrote, “Negotiations are being wrapped up on a few open articles for all three unions this week. This framework, along with the tentative agreement on all other articles in our contract will be up for a ratification vote to our union members and then the final contract will be ratified.
“Caste has migrated with the South Asian diaspora to firmly take root in East and South Africa, Mauritius, Fiji, Suriname, the Middle East, Malaysia, the Caribbean, the U.K., North America, and other regions,” reads the report.