The Campus Crisis Toolkit: Strategies and Solidarity for the Rest of Us

The first book to address campus crises that’s by and for faculty, staff, and students-the true heart of higher ed and the people who make it work.

Higher education is in crisis-and there’s no shortage of books by campus leaders about how to fix it. This volume is by and for the rest of us-the faculty, staff, and students who comprise the lion’s share of campus populations. It is our values, livelihoods, and prospects for success that are most threatened by these crises-and, often, by top-level administrators’ responses to them. The volume brings together more than forty contributors from colleges and universities across the United States and beyond. Essays address a range of aspects of the current polycrisis, including declarations of financial exigency, program closures and faculty layoffs, campus closures, political interference, and outbreaks of violence. Authors draw on their own experiences-and those of their colleagues and students-to share what worked, what didn’t, and what they learned along the way. If crisis hasn’t come to your campus yet, don’t worry, it will. When it does, this book will help.

Lisa M. Di Bartolomeo is Singer-Hill Professor Emerita of Humanities at West Virginia University, where she ran the Russian program until the Department of World Languages was eliminated. She now works for a national environmental organization. She lives in Morgantown, West Virginia. Kevin M. Gannon is Director for the Center for the Advancement of Faculty Excellence and Professor of History at Queens University of Charlotte. He is the author of Radical Hope: A Teaching Manifesto. He lives in Charlotte, North Carolina.