Fred Kowal

Last December, just before the holidays, my union, United University Professions, lost a great leader, and a great friend. Rowena Blackman-Stroud was a warrior for justice, an inspiration to many, and a mentor to those who were lucky enough to know and learn from such a tireless advocate.

So, we’ve completed another round of elections, and thankfully, democracy was victorious on Election Day. Voters recognized the threat posed to democracy by pro-MAGA election deniers and came out in record numbers to defeat many of them on Nov. 8.

There’s been much hue and cry over the past month from critics of President Joe Biden and his decision last month to cancel student debt for borrowers with federal student loans.

Independence Day just felt different to me this year.

The Haudenosaunee Confederacy has a core principle known as the Seventh Generation, which dictates that any decisions made today must result in a sustainable world seven generations into the future.

As the president of United University Professions, the nation’s largest higher education union, a lot of papers with a lot of statistics land on my desk during a typical work day. But recently, I came across some data that was startling.

Take a look at Governor Kathy Hochul’s proposed 2022-23 Executive Budget and you might come away thinking that SUNY fared pretty well.

What will it take to get the state of New York to make a significant—and long-needed—investment in SUNY’s public teaching hospitals?

Montana has always seemed like home to me. Though I was born and raised in Massachusetts, I spent some of my crucial years out there and discovered aspects of my life journey I could not have realized elsewhere. I met people who became as close as family – even closer, in a couple of cases.

A few weeks ago, I spoke about the summer journey my wife and I took to the Big Sky Country of Montana, Wyoming and the Dakotas. As I indicated then, the sky wasn’t so big. In fact, it was gray, with smoke from huge fires farther west, obscuring many of the mountain vistas we were used to seeing. At the same time, oil, natural gas and coal extraction was everywhere.