As the chair of the Brandeis Department of Anthropology, I am delighted to report that 100 percent of the anthropology department’s tenured and tenure-track faculty have signed the Brandeis Faculty Forward petition in support of a vote among faculty outside the tenure track for a union.  

We did not discuss this issue as a department; each of us signed the petition on her or his own. In fact, I  do not know the opinions of my departmental colleagues on the tenure track on unionization in general or at Brandeis.  Those opinions are moot, since as tenured and tenure-track faculty, we would not be included in the vote nor would we be part of the union.  

But we are unanimous in our admiration and respect for our colleagues outside the tenure track, in our belief that it is vital to address professional inequities in universities, and in our sense that all faculty (and all workers) need to feel supported and safe to have these conversations.  

—Elizabeth Ferry (ANTH), chair of the department of anthropology