laleph

Hello all, Wondering what sorts of responses to the COVID crisis you've been seeing out there. In the Northeast, wealthy universities continue to treat their workers and students like trash. Below you'll find some of the petitions circulating to try to remedy this. Lmk if you'd like to get involved in any of these campaigns and I'll happily connect you. Compilation: Coronavirus and Campus Activism NB: This is an ongoing resource for compiling links and resources related to university policies and organizer responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Anyone is free to add to, re-organize, and share this document. Table of Contents Petitions by Campus Petitions by Topic Summary of Key Demands News Coverage Mutual Aid and Collective Action Petitions by Campus Harvard Petition Resources Mutual aid Columbia Coronavirus Demands from Columbia AffiliatesOr http://tiny.cc/columbiapetition Housing Mutual Aid Extend PhD funding by one year NYU We Demand a Just Response to the COVID-19 Crisis Full version The New School Petition to Pause Student Billing & Fees UPenn Petition to Protect Students and Workers at Penn Throughout the COVID-19 Pandemic Princeton PGSU response petition to administration regarding COVID-1 University of Chicago Labor Council UCLC SARS-CoV-2 Demand Letter Full letter Yale Yale GSAS Open letter to Dean Cooley - Extend our funding Johns Hopkins Hopkins Community Demands University Pay Workers During COVID-19 Shutdown WashU WashU COVID-19 Resource Provide Form EVC HENRY WEBBER EMAIL (3/24/20)’s response to ^^ Petitions by Topic Refund Tuition Please give us a partial refund for classes (SVA) MICA, Refund Students! NYU Tisch Partial Tuition Refund Effort Yale MFA (letter - no link) RISD Petition for the Partial Refund of Tuition and Fees Penn State: Give Students a Partial Tuition and Housing Refund Partial Tuition Reimbursement (Columbia University) New School Petition https://www.change.org/p/george-washington-university-gw-needs-to-refund-half-of-the-tuition-for-all-gw-students Andrew M. Cuomo: Reimburse a discount for SUNY and CUNY Tuition Stipend/Hiring related NYU Letter: Stop the Clock (Additional Year of Graduate Funding) Schools Announcing a Hiring Freeze (Blog Post, not all sources confirmed) Housing Petitions NYU Students' Response to COVID-19 Housing Closure (Change.org) Keep Vassar Open Wesleyan Petition Columbia University Rent Survey Workers Rights We demand an immediate shift in RISD's priorities. (Esp. for staff to work from home) Hopkins Community Demands University Pay Workers During COVID-19 Shutdown Under Worker and Student Pressure, Harvard Reverses Course and Agrees to Pay Dining, Custodial, and Other Workers During the COVID-19 Crisis Brown: pay student workers https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeuog578brzx2Oh7r9HXxelqTUNdjbQDq4i9C2iKmRavtEOCQ/viewform?fbclid=IwAR3unXfg4FSHtXD_rRsS-m6VokbBqRJbMhZGedeQRsKALuO1zxtgc7pdywM Northeastern: http://chng.it/RXbgZzdRYw?fbclid=IwAR3txqd31HtUZuEjLhDqVrD8pgVwT8FkQtY1ccNk41l5DF0-JfXHrxbPAos General Petition to Protect Students and Workers at Penn Throughout the COVID-19 Pandemic SENS. Important: Information, Resources, and Petitions for Student Workers During COVID-19 pandemic A Just Response to the COVID-19 Crisis (NYU Covid Coalition) Columbia Covid Petition: http://tiny.cc/columbiacovidpetition Princeton PGSU Petition (updated regularly) Teaching Resources for online instruction for art schools Surveys BU International Students affected by summer funding survey Summary of Key Demands health & safety on-demand testing and treatment essential staff provided with protective equipment sick pay / economic justice Non-essential staff receives unlimited full pay; sick leave guarantees the same. Indefinite family leave housing Guarantee housing for all affected: extend housing contracts without rent, guarantee housing in fall 2020, reimbursement for on-campus room and board tuition & funding full tuition remission for spring 2020 (ug) doctoral students receive summer funding consistent with fall and spring semesters Extension of funding for one year(?) academics option to make classes pass/fail while counting towards requirements withdraw from classes without impact to academic standing International Student-workers support and protect international students Extension of end of program date through summer NYU: NYU must ensure that all international students are allowed to stay in campus housing if they so choose, or guarantee access to alternate housing and cover any costs of housing over the costs of their present accommodations. (See the student petition here.) This is not enough. NYU must ensure that, if international students end up staying outside of the country for more than 5 months and need to renew visas, visa renewal fees will be reimbursed. NYU must ensure that international students know how their immigration status and OPT applications may be affected if they choose to leave the country. NYU must actively lobby the Department of Homeland Security to ensure that international students are protected in all respects in these exceptional times and that no one is subject to deportation. Petition from International and Immigrant Student Workers Alliance News Coverage Articles (Art Schools) AS CURRICULA MOVE ONLINE, YALE ART STUDENTS DEMAND TUITION REFUND (Artforum, March 23) Art Students at Yale and Other Universities Are Demanding Tuition Refunds After Their Classes Were Moved Online (Artnet, March 24, 2020) Art Students Demand University Accountability and Reimbursements During Pandemic (Hyperallergic, March 27, 2020) Closure of San Francisco Art Institute (March 23, 2020) Articles (General) Coronavirus Closures Pose Refund Quandary (March 13, Inside Higher Ed) To Fight Coronavirus, Colleges Sent Students Home. Now Will They Refund Tuition? (March 19, Wall Street Journal (Paywall)) Nearly 20,000 students at five San Diego universities move out of campus housing due to coronavirus (San Diego Union Tribune, March 23) Yale changes its mind on beds for police and firefighters https://www.nhregister.com/news/article/Yale-changes-its-mind-Beds-for-public-safety-15164015.php Resource for info/stats about Columbia spending: http://tiny.cc/takethemoneyfrom Articles (NYC) An International House resident has died from COVID-19. Columbia evacuated hundreds of students days prior. (March 22, Columbia Spectator) CUNY STUDENTS PUSHED OUT OF DORMS FOR MEDICAL SPACE (March 24, The City) CUNY boots students from dorms to make space for coronavirus hospitals (March 25, New York Post) CUNY moves booted dorm kids to Queens College (Queens Daily Eagle, March 27) With College Dorms Closing Over Coronavirus Worries, Students Scramble to Move Out (Gothamist, March 26) Mutual Aid and Collective Action Emergency Funds (Crowdsourced) Wesleyan FGLI (First Generation Low Income) Fund RISD Shutdown Funds for Low Income Students Mutual Aid Peoples Coronavirus Response (Facebook Group, USA) Mutual Aid Resources (NYC, compiled by Urban Demos) Chinese volunteer experience takeaways Collective Actions/Strike Rent Strike Toolkit

You are certainly more of an authority on these matters than I am! I'm relaying what I heard from one prof at UofC. To be clear: the prof didn't say that an applicant is automatically considered for MAPSS after having been rejected from the PhD program – but in practice it has happened more than once (it happened to me, and I know of a couple others). Your comment about performing well, establishing solid relationships, and finishing a project that fits with the department's interests is almost word-for-word what I heard from the prof. Of course there's no guarantee that you'll get into the PhD program if you do MAPSS, but I get the sense it does markedly improve your chances if you tick the above boxes – AND if you make it clear that you will attend the PhD program if admitted. As I've mentioned in previous posts, I was told that UofC has had some bizarre admit years. Not last year but the year before, too many people accepted the offer. As a result, the incoming year's cohort size was cut dramatically. It seems the committee is choosing to err on the side of caution. Knowing that a student who's performed well in MAPSS will commit to attend must be some kind of a plus for them.

Heh well then Europe seems like it's out! Looks like a partially or fully funded masters is the way to go if you don't get accepted to PhD programs this cycle. Absolutely agree with @Sigaba's suggestion to figure out what history means for you. I wouldn't be overly worried, though, about the (admittedly touchy) subject of interdisciplinarity. Some programs (Cornell's, to take one example) actively encourage working with scholars outside the Department of History. Others are known for their strong departments in other social sciences, and are known for blurring disciplinary boundaries in innovative ways (anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Michigan Ann Arbor; sociology at the University of Chicago). Just be judicious in where you send your applications -- avoiding cranky cranks. As for readings: I'd start with the classics (outdated in some ways, but they'll give you lots to chew on): March Bloch, Apologie pour l'histoire ou métier d'historien, 1941 (trans., The Historian's Craft, 1953) R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History, 1946 E. H. Carr, What is History?, 1961 Then some newer books/articles: Various books and articles by Reinhart Koselleck (many have been translated into English) François Hartog, Le Miroir d'Hérodote. Essai sur la représentation de l'autre, 1980 (trans., The Mirror of Herodotus: The Representation of the Other in the Writing of History, 1988) Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History, 1995 William Cronon, "Why the Past Matters," 2000 François Hartog, Régimes d'historicité. Présentisme et expériences du temps, 2003 (trans., Regimes of Historicity: Presentism and Experiences of Time, 2015) A couple textbook-like resources on historiography: Caroline Hoefferle, The Essential Historiography Reader, 2011 Eileen Ka-May Cheng, Historiography: An Introductory Guide, 2012 My absolute favorite is a book that hasn't been translated into English: Antoine Prost's Douze leçons sur l'histoire (1996, revised 2014). It's a wealth of resources on the practice of history, history's relationship to other disciplines, trends in Western historiography -- and it's written in an accessible, often droll style. If you get less terrible at reading in French, give it a try! I can't recommend it enough.

Regarding MAPSS: it's my understanding that full funding for MAPSS is most often offered to those who don't get into the PhD program the first time round. MAPSS is a well-known stream for entering the University of Chicago's PhD program -- the idea is that you'll apply only to Chicago after finishing MAPSS. U of C doesn't have a waiting list for the PhD, so admissions folks are keen to admit only people they have a pretty sure idea will enroll. As for the steep price of a masters: I second @Tigla's advice. I've mentioned this in posts before, but it is relatively simple to get accepted to French masters programs if you have a decent language level (B2, also known as advanced intermediate, usually suffices). Tuition is 500 or so per year (and you get health insurance!). Of course you gotta pay your living expenses, but that's manageable if you tutor expat kids studying for the SAT/ACT. There's good, easy money in that. Given your interests in psychology, sociology, and history, the EHESS sounds like a good fit. The school was founded to support interdisciplinary projects and is known for its high percentage of foreign students. Perhaps those with expertise of other European countries or of programs in English could weigh in as well? I'm familiar only with the French system.

Depending on how good your French is, you can apply directly to the French university system. It is not that difficult to get accepted if your French is good enough. Here are the medieval and modern Europe masters programs on offer at Paris 1, for example. The EHESS is also a good option, especially for foreign students. It costs about 500 euros per year for your "inscription," which includes healthcare. Of course you'll have to pay for living expenses. On a student visa you are allowed to work 60% of the legal hour limit per week. If you get involved in the well-paid tutoring racket (SAT, ACT, TOEFL, IELTS, etc.), you can get away with tutoring 10ish hours a week. You can make ends meet that way. Don't do it if you don't have the language level, though.

While I'm sure this varies a bit by program, I was wondering if the more experienced folks could chime in about whether it's possible to (somewhat seriously) pursue other interests while in graduate school – in my case, music. I've spent most of my life wavering between academia and the professional music world. For more than 5 years, I've worked as a full-time teacher, and haven't had much time for performing music, but I still compose regularly, and currently have a project that might lead to a series of short tours sometime in the next couple years (the project is a collaboration with a professional musician). I don't expect to launch a career as a full-time professional musician while in graduate school, buuuttt… I'm wondering if I'll have to put my project completely on hold. I've heard varying opinions from grad students at the school I'll be attending. One person told me explicitly: you will not have time for any outside activity for at least the first two years. Others have said that's an exaggeration. Would love to hear your thoughts.

@VAZ Perhaps my examples (France and Ireland) confused things. I picked the first example that came to mind of a field with few historians in the States working on it. But I could have chosen a much wider geographical territory -- let's say Europe -- but a more specific topic, such as folklore in the early Renaissance. In both cases, your options for advisors are going to be limited. As others have said, 6-8 schools is already a good list. That seems to be the average number of schools people apply to.

@VAZ, if you're in a "thin field," then your options for programs to apply to will be thin too. (I'm aware I'm not saying anything mind-blowing here.) My point is that you should apply only to the programs that have at least 2 people willing to "sandwich" you, as you put it -- or 1 person who works specifically on the "thin field" you're referring to. I guess I'm struggling to understand how you are both in a "thin field" AND interested in so many different topics that you feel it might be necessary to tailor your application to each and every prof you're interested in working with. Taking the example of a social/cultural historian of early modern France: if that's the "thin field" you want to work in, then apply only to schools that have someone who works on that. You'll have a lot of options. (I'd even argue that most wouldn't consider the social/cultural history of early modern France to be such a thin field...) Perhaps you'd have to consider folks who are more interested in economic or political history, or who are experts on the French Revolution but not so much on the 17th and early 18th centuries -- but those people could potentially be fine advisors. If, however, your "thin field" is sixteenth-century Ireland, you're going to have a harder time finding experts on this side of the Atlantic.

In my experience, the advisors who push you intellectually are those whose students aren't cookie cutters of themselves. It follows that tailoring your application to fit the exact interests of the advisors you're considering might not be the best idea if your goal is to break new ground in the field. If you applied with any of the topics you listed above, a social/cultural historian of France who studies the period you're interested in (give or take a few decades) will be able to advise you. No one expects that the project you propose in your application will end up being your dissertation topic (though that does happen sometimes). One of the highest compliments I heard a graduate student give about my advisor is that she explicitly seeks out students whose interests "ven diagram" with her own. When I spoke with her, she echoed the sentiment: "I want my students to teach me something. It's boring otherwise." A very high bar to clear, indeed! But personally I'd rather try to get up to that bar than spend my graduate career as a disciple.

As @AP said, follow the instructions. Don't submit more pages than the application asks for. The adcom is going to be reading other applications whose submitters followed the instructions and were able to say what they needed to say in 35 pages. You will stick out, and not in a good way. I condensed a 50-page paper to around 30 pages for the application -- but I also provided a link to the original in case someone was curious. I'm assuming no one was curious, but it made me feel better to know that Enquiring Minds could seek it out if they really wanted to.

Has your friend scoured Worldcat or reached out to current graduate students to ask about what the prof is currently working on? It does, but maybe not in the way that your friend expected. The lack of recent publications could be a warning sign, or it might not be. It depends on the person and the kind of work s.he has been or is doing currently. Field also matters. Some fields just publish more than others. Anecdotes to illustrate: A tenured prof at an Ivy League school with an impressive publication record given his age – 2 monographs before 50, multiple articles in prestigious journals, a couple of edited volumes – but he's not around much for his graduate students, and his placement record is not what it "should be." Graduate students attribute that to the fact that he has taken on too many advisees given his professional responsibilities and personal research goals, and is therefore less available to them when they need someone to pick up the phone and call committees on their behalf. A tenured prof at another Ivy League school with a shorter publication record to above, slightly older (mid-50s), but who has an excellent placement record (the majority of her students have gone on to TT positions or prestigious post-docs followed by TT positions). She is known for being hands-on when it comes to career development. A much older, tenured prof at an Ivy League school who publishes like a house on fire and is somehow also highly engaged in his students' careers. The great majority of his students have gone on to illustrious careers – not just because of his name – but because he is a born pedagogue, and seems to take genuine pleasure in helping his graduate students professionally. A very recently tenured prof at a highly regarded school (not Ivy League, but in the top-15) with a shorter publication record than the three above, but a similar pace of publication. By the time he's their age – he's currently pushing 40 – he'll have a similar record. As a young prof, he's experienced the pain of the current job market and is highly aware of what his students need to do to get themselves into the best possible position by the time they graduate (doesn't mean, of course, that all of them will get jobs at the end of it). He's a 5-year plan kind of guy (in this case it seems to be a good thing). His first student just graduated and got a prestigious post-doc. Another young, recently tenured prof at another highly regarded, non-Ivy League school, has been flirting with the idea of moving to the Ivy League for a couple years now (he's been described as a "hot commodity" that many schools have been courting). Similar publication record to above. By all accounts, he's a great teacher – when he's around. A recent student of his got a prestigious post-doc, but his current students are worried about what the future will hold if he decides to leave the school and dedicate more of his already limited time to his research career. I could go on… In the end, the message is: consistent publication record does count for something – it's an important part of why the folks above teach at top programs – but what matters (even more) when it comes to choosing an advisor is their reputation as teachers and career advisors/advancers. That prof your friend is interested in might have a great placement record, despite a thinner publication record. As I considered different programs, I talked to lots of graduate students. They're the ones with the inside scoop. I also looked at the AHA's Directory of History Dissertations to get a sense of the placement record of advisors I was considering.

I don't do Chinese history, but I had the chance to chat with Tobie Meyer-Fong at Hopkins when I was considering the school. She's whip-smart and hilarious – great sense of humor, very approachable, frank. Her work is in Late Imperial China – not sure if that'd work for you – but she might have recommendations.

As others have mentioned (page 1 of this thread contains a lot of good info), quant is much less important for history programs than is verbal, especially at private schools. It comes down to whether you want to expend the time/money/effort to retake the exam given that your verbal score is within the range of acceptable for the schools you're considering. You might try perusing the gradcafe results page to see what scores applicants who were accepted to the programs that interest you earned. But srsly, the GRE is WWAAAYYYY down the list of priorities, as @hats recently pointed out. If not retaking it will give you a good chunk of time to work on your SOP or fine-tune your writing sample, don't retake it. Those bits are so much more important to admissions teams than is your quant score.

Following from @RageoftheMonkey's good points, I'd say look out for departments that have at least a couple people working on labor history, working-class history, or the history of capitalism. I dunno what your geographical/temporal range is, but here are a few folks whose work is in conversation – sometimes in critical conversation – with Marxist ideas: Brown (Alex Gourevitch, Seth Rockman, Lukas Rieppel) Columbia (Betsy Blackmar, Barbara Fields, Eric Foner and Bill Leach – although neither are taking students anymore) Cornell (Ray Craib, Larry Glickman, Claudia Verhoeven) Georgetown (Joseph McCartin, Michael Kazin) Harvard (Sven Beckert and others associated with the Program on the Study of Capitalism) University of Illinois at Chicago (Leon Fink – probably not taking students anymore, Susan Levine, Jeffrey Sklansky) University of Chicago (Amy Dru Stanley, Jon Levy) University of Pittsburgh (Niklas Frykman, Michel Gobat, Markus Rediker) (A fair number of these people have written for either Jacobin or Dissent.)

Statements of this sort crop up too frequently on the forum. If a certain milieu has a bad rep -- here, it's the idea that academics are dismissive and prone to quick, unfair judgment -- there's no obligation to confirm the stereotype. Instead, we can emulate the kind of academic (one would hope) we all encountered at one point or another in our careers: the experienced big-shot who took the time to listen to our sloppy, naive questions and gently but firmly point us in the right direction. It's like saying: - Art gallery receptionists have the reputation for being snooty. - I have a job at as at receptionist at an at art gallery. - I shall habituate art newbies to the ways of the art world by being snooty. It is possible to strongly disagree, to critique -- even to criticize -- with indulgence (even if just in the manner of formulation). Finally, it seems to bear stating again that stellar GRE grades neither ensure you a job (which I don't think anyone on here has ever defended), nor do they have zero effect. As historians we know there's never one cause. GRE scores are less important than other factors, but they are not unimportant.

Bump to @nhhistorynut's post, and a response to the quoted bit above: professors who take the time to write back – even a short, generic response – are the kind of people you want to work with. Don't buy the argument that professors get too much email and therefore hate getting emails from lowly prospective students. Everyone gets too much email. Professors who care about pedagogy write you back – maybe not right away, but they write you back. Those are the people you want to learn from.

Bien vu. A reformulation then: exactly no one at private schools cares about quant. I wonder if there's any data on how state schools use GRE scores that way. Like: will a mediocre quant score (around the 50th percentile) get you by if your verbal score is stellar? In the end, though, it depends on how much of your actual life you want to devote to stressing out over quant. I know now that I inflicted unnecessary stress on myself. But I also didn't apply to any state schools, so…

Exactly no one cares about quant! Knowledgable people (both current PhD students and profs) gave me that advice when I was applying and I didn't listen to them and instead agonized and spent useless hours studying for quant (no time spent on verbal) and ended up in the 99th percentile for the verbal section and in the mid-50s for quant – which is probably what I would have gotten without the agonizing. It's the writing sample, statement, and letters of recommendation that count more than silly silly quant. (I was accepted with full funding to three top programs.)

All is shrouded in mystery! It turns out that a POI at one of the schools I was accepted to was a former student (unbeknownst to me) of one of the people I am going to start working with this fall. I know now that they discussed my application, but I'm not sure how that affected the results. I was accepted to both programs – thus the logic, "We know he's going to go elsewhere so we'll reject him" doesn't work here. When I was deciding between the two, both POIs were extremely gracious and laudatory of the other's program – which made deciding even more difficult than it already was. As for waitlists: I have no idea, unfortunately. I had been under the impression that all schools had them. I found out only after the Chicago mishap that Chicago doesn't have one. It seems really silly not to have one, but I suppose there's some esoteric logic at work. I was told one reason Chicago was so competitive in my field this year was that the school accepted "too many" people last year. (Usually Chicago accepts 5-6, but this year they had only 3 spots to fill, with 2 of those spots set aside for people already in the masters program and who had applied only to Chicago for the PhD – so the school was certain they'd come.) This year, then, they had only 1 spot open for an outside-of-Chicago person. I do know that they were able to fill the single spot – but I also know that the person hesitated a great deal before accepting (I happened to meet him at another visiting day event). If he hadn't accepted, then the cohort in my field would have dropped precipitously year to year. Seems strange not to have a backup for that kind of situation.

I know next to zilch about Chinese history, but I do know something about Chicago, having applied there last year. Chicago does not have a waitlist, so if you are unable to convince your POI that you will come if you are admitted, your chances of being admitted drop. When my POI asked me if Chicago was my top choice, I said, "one of my top choices." Later – after I'd been offered a funded masters instead of the PhD – she told me that the admissions committee didn't want to take the risk of admitting me, as they believed I had a good chance of accepting an offer from another program.

Thanks for all your responses. I think I'm going to consult an accountant the first year. It's all over my head. I've been living most of my adult life in France, where, amazingly, the tax service basically does your taxes for you. For basic reporting, you just have to click "oui" on a pre-filled-out form. Deductions take a teeny bit longer -- but even those are easy to find/understand. I completed my taxes this year in a whopping 3 minutes. Also, for all Americans' griping about taxes, I've paid less in taxes overall here than what I understand most of you pay, for roughly the same income as I'll be making as a grad student. And, ya know, I've had amazing health insurance since I got here. Long live the social safety net (and, sigh, gritting teeth re: Macron).

Wow that seems crazy high. I've spoken to a couple current grad students at the school I'll be attending, and they've told me they pay around 1000 in taxes, a far cry from roughly 6000 you've been paying!

Thanks for starting this thread! Very helpful. For those of you who've been through the process, could you give an approximation of what you've had to pay in federal and state taxes relative to your stipend? My stipend is a bit shy of $32k, but I'll be in New York City. I'm trying to figure out how far the stipend will get me after taxes. :-/

Bump to this! Although... If you do have the time/money/energy, you might want to think about retaking the GRE to boost your verbal score. It's the percentile rank that really counts, not the score itself. A 151 on the verbal section, for example, puts you at about the 50th percentile. You'll be competing with fellow humanities folks who will have scored in the 80th percentile or above. I was in the 99th percentile for the verbal section, in the mid-50s for quant, 3.9 GPA. I was accepted to three "top-10" PhD programs (whatever you think about rankings, they do come in handy as a shorthand) and waitlisted (ultimately rejected) at another. If you're coming straight out of undergrad, there's no expectation that you will have done extensive work in the field apart from your coursework.

Yeah, don't pick a topic just to get into a fancy program, or because it's trendy. You'll be dragging your feet to the archives/class/your advisor's office. Find a knot you can't wait to untie, then find a program that will support you in your effort to untie it.