Date & time
Thursday, October 22, 2026
4:30 p.m. – 6 p.m.
4:30 p.m. – 6 p.m.
Workshops & seminars
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Barry Eidlin, Solidarity is the New Collegiality
Faculty Confront the Corporate University
Format
Hybrid
Cost
This event is free.
Website
Where
4TH SPACE
J.W. McConnell Building
1400 De Maisonneuve Blvd. W.
Accessible location
Yes - See details
Across Canada, university faculty and teaching staff are facing similar challenges: budget cuts, hiring freezes, declining administrative and teaching support, increasing precarity and service obligations, eroding salaries and benefits, attacks on academic freedom, and more. Meanwhile, the ranks of administrators continue to grow, along with their salaries and the number of strategic initiatives promising to “modernize” or “realign” the university’s mission for the 21st century—often by remodeling the university along corporate lines. In response, faculty and teaching staff have been fighting back, often through collective action. But recent attacks on unions and collective bargaining at the provincial and federal levels are threatening to limit our ability to push for our vision of what the modern university can and should be.
In this talk, professor and longtime labour activist Barry Eidlin will assess the challenges currently facing faculty and teaching staff in Quebec and across Canada, and discuss concrete steps being taken to confront those challenges.
How can you participate? Join us in person or online by registering for the Zoom Meeting or watching live on YouTube.
Have questions or if we can make this event more accessible for you: Contact us at info.4@concordia.ca
Speaker
Barry Eidlin
Barry Eidlin is an Associate Professor of Sociology at McGill University, and a founding member and Second Vice-President of the Association of McGill Professors of the Faculty of Arts (AMPFA). He is a labour expert whose research focuses on dynamics of working-class power and politics, particularly in a comparative Canada-United States framework. He has published award-winning research in top academic journals, and writing for broader audiences has appeared in the Washington Post, The Globe and Mail, La Presse, Le Devoir, The Montreal Gazette, and Jacobin, among other venues. He also comments regularly in TV, radio, and other media outlets on labor politics and policy issues. This work earned him the McGill University Changemaker Prize in 2024. Prior to embarking on his academic career, he spent several years as a union organizer, mainly with Teamsters for a Democratic Union.
Description: A talk by Barry Eidlin about challenges facing faculty and staff in Quebec Universities, and what steps can be taken to confront these challenges.
Organized by: Christiane Bailey
Participants:
Barry Eidlin
With: Social Justice Centre
Spectrum ID:
