Summary: Statement on COVID-19 and Academic Labor
March 2020
The MLA Executive Council approved the following statement. It was endorsed by twenty-eight other organizations or their executive committees.
- The COVID-19 pandemic has created extraordinary challenges for faculty members, students, and staff members at colleges and universities around the world, and social distancing mandates have sent many students home and instructors online.
- As institutions make the abrupt shift to remote learning, the MLA calls on colleges and universities to implement practices that will prevent disastrous consequences for graduate students; contingent faculty members, including adjunct, postdoctoral, non-tenure-track, and graduate instructors; untenured faculty members; and international scholars and students.
- We join with other professional organizations in requesting that institutions
- pause the tenure clocks of junior faculty members and time-to-completion measures for graduate students
- extend existing coverage of health insurance, housing, and other benefits and provide health insurance or subsidies for those who are currently not covered by existing policies
- extend graduate student funding or term-limited contracts for those whose employment prospects have been further dimmed by the crisis
- reimburse faculty members who are paid by the course for the time it takes them to adapt their courses to online teaching, as well as for any connectivity and equipment costs incurred in the shift to distance learning platforms now and in the future, should the pandemic continue.
- We urge institutions to eliminate student and peer evaluations from considerations of contract renewal, tenure, and promotion for the current term and for any future terms where remote instruction and related conditions continue.
- We ask that institutions provide legal and other material support to international students and scholars in the United States and Canada, in their countries of origin, or in any other international location.
- We call on institutions to act with ethical imagination and commitment in response to the challenges facing our communities during this unprecedented pandemic.