Council of Scholars

Ernst Benjamin is a senior consultant to the AAUP and a consultant member of the AAUP Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure. Prior to his retirement he served AAUP twice as General Secretary (2006–08 and 1984– 94) and as Director of Research (1995–2001). Benjamin taught at Wayne State University from 1965 to 1984 where he was AAUP chapter chief negotiator, chapter president 1975–79, and a director and dean (1981–84). He was chair of the national AAUP Collective Bargaining Congress (1976–80) and a member of the AAUP National Council. His publications include ” Academic Freedom: An Everyday Concern” (with Don Wagner), 1994; and Exploring the Role of Contingent Instructional Staff in Undergraduate Learning, 2004; and Academic Collective Bargaining (ed. with Michael Mauer), 2006.

Tim Cain is an associate professor in the University of Georgia’s Institute of Higher Education. He has degrees from Duke University (A.B.), The Ohio State University (M.A.), and the University of Michigan (Ph.D.); from 2005-2013 he was a member of the faculty of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His work explores historic and modern issues involving academic freedom, unionization and professionalization, the changing faculty, student speech rights, and related issues. He is the author of numerous journal articles and book chapters, as well as Establishing Academic Freedom (Palgrave, 2012), Campus Unions: Organized Faculty and Graduate Students in US Higher Education (Jossey-Bass, 2017), and, with colleagues at the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment, Using Evidence of Student Learning to Improve Higher Education (Jossey-Bass, 2015). He is currently writing a book on the history of college faculty unionization.

Valerie Martin Conley is the Dean of the College of Education at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. She is a nationally recognized University administrator, higher education researcher, author, and professor of 27 years. She holds the M.A. and B.A. in Sociology from the University of Virginia, and the Ph.D. in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies from Virginia Tech. She served as Chair for the Department of Counseling and Higher Education at Ohio University where she also taught courses on institutional research, assessment, management of higher education and policy. She has extensive experience in university administration, research, and private industry. Dean Conley has specialized in quantitative applications for educational policy and research, drawing upon her experience as a consultant to the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). A former institutional researcher, she has served on the board of directors for the Association for Institutional Research (AIR) and chaired the association's Higher Education Data Policy Committee. In June 2007, she received the Ohio University Outstanding Graduate Faculty Award.

Samuel Estreicher is the Dwight D. Opperman Professor of Law at NYU School of Law, where he directs the Center for Labor and Employment and co-directs the Opperman Institute of Judicial Administration. He has authored over a dozen books, including casebooks and treatises on labor and employment law, and written 150+ articles in professional and academic journals. Estreicher clerked for Judge Harold Leventhal and Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr., and joined NYU in 1978. A former ABA Labor and Employment Law Section Secretary and reporter for the Restatement of Employment Law, he has received multiple awards, including the LERA's "Susan C. Eaton Outstanding Academic-Practitioner Award." He also practices law in employment and employee benefits, with notable victories in the Supreme Court and Second Circuit.

Ruben J. Garcia is Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Workplace Law Program at UNLV's William S. Boyd School of Law. He served as Associate Dean for Faculty Development from 2017-2019. Prior to UNLV, Garcia was Professor and Director of the Labor and Employment Law Program at California Western School of Law. He has also taught at UC Davis, UW Law, and UC San Diego. Before academia, he practiced labor law at Rothner, Segall and Greenstone. Garcia holds a J.D. from UCLA, an LL.M. from UW, and a B.A. from Stanford. His scholarship has appeared in top law reviews and peer-reviewed journals. He authored Marginal Workers (NYU Press, 2012) and has served in leadership roles at SALT, ACLU Nevada, and the ACS. He was elected a Fellow of the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers in 2019.

Jeffrey Michael Hirsch is a Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina, where he has taught since 2011, after teaching at the University of Tennessee College of Law and Vanderbilt University. Prior to academia, he was a litigator in the NLRB’s Appellate Court Branch and clerked for Judges Haldane Mayer (Federal Circuit) and Robert Beezer (Ninth Circuit). Hirsch writes extensively on labor and employment law and is a contributing editor of the Workplace Prof Blog, editor of Jotwell's Work Law Section, and a Research Fellow at NYU’s Center for Labor and Employment Law. He has received multiple awards for his scholarship and is Chair of the AALS Labor Relations and Employment Law Section.

Daniel J. Julius is the Senior Vice President and Provost at New Jersey City University and an affiliated faculty member at the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute, the University at Albany, and a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Studies in Higher Education at UC Berkeley. He has been actively involved in collective bargaining in higher education since the early 1970’s when he was appointed the first Research Associate at the National Center. His book, with the late Margaret K. Chandler, on Management Rights and Union Interests, published by the National Center in the late 1970’s, provided the first analysis of all higher education collective bargaining agreements then in existence.

Gary D. Rhoades is Professor of Higher Education at the University of Arizona’s Center for the Study of Higher Education. He also is director of the Center for the Future of Higher Education, a virtual think tank of the Campaign for the Future of Higher Education. Rhoades’ research focuses on the restructuring of academic institutions and professions, as reflected in his books Managed Professionals: Unionized Faculty and Restructuring Academic Labor (SUNY Press, 1998) and Academic Capitalism and the New Economy (with Sheila Slaughter, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004).

Susan J. Schurman is Distinguished Professor of Labor Studies and Employment Relations and Dean of Rutgers’ School of Management and Labor Relations. She previously served as founding president of the National Labor College (1997-2007). Schurman holds a B.A. and M.A. from Michigan State University and a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, where she directed the Labor Studies Center. A former president of the United Association for Labor Education, she is currently president of the International Federation of Workers' Education Associations (IFWEA). Her research focuses on union effectiveness, labor-management relations, and workplace safety. Schurman was instrumental in mediating the 2012 SAG-AFTRA merger.

Sara Slinn joined the Osgoode faculty in 2007, after five years at Queen’s Faculty of Law. Professor Slinn’s research interests are in the areas of labour and employment law, focusing on different approaches and impediments to collective employee representation, and the intersection of Charter rights and labour law. Reflecting her interdisciplinary graduate work, including a PhD in Industrial Relations from the University of Toronto, Professor Slinn’s research is interdisciplinary and uses empirical methods of analysis. She has also practised labour and employment law with both the British Columbia Labour Relations Board and a private law firm in Vancouver. Research Interests: Labour Law, Employment Law, Industrial Relations, Constitutional Law, Contracts.