A Labor Day Message from Ileen Devault

Dear Worker Institute friends and supporters,

It has been my distinct pleasure and honor to serve as the Academic Director of The Worker Institute at Cornell’s ILR School over the past five years. Over this time, my colleagues in The Worker Institute, both past, and present, continually have inspired me. Now that my term has come to an end, I am proud of the many ways in which the Worker Institute has contributed to some of the most inspiring movements and moments of the U.S. working class over these years.  

Our labor leadership programs (both the NYS AFL-CIO/Cornell Union Leadership Institute and the National Labor Leadership Initiative) have grown and supported many of the current crop of innovative and energetic leaders of worker organizations. The Labor Leading on Climate initiative has grown to take on new national prominence, even during COVID. Equity at Work has continued to be at the forefront of issues of the impact of gendered violence on workers and workplaces. Our Precarious Work initiative has worked with a wide array of workers centers on training and vital research. The legacy left to us by our late colleague, Lois Gray, has spurred the creation of the Lois Gray Innovation Initiative, which will enable us in the future to recognize and encourage both activists and scholars embodying innovative movements in the world of workers.  

Over the past years, the Worker Institute has continued to do two things of which I am particularly proud: despite the exigencies of the pandemic, we have continued to link our programs with greater fiscal stewardship AND we have begun to rethink, under our new Executive Director, Patricia Campos-Medina, how our dynamic programs can work together more smoothly and enable all of them to grow further.  I assure you all that I will continue to support the Worker Institute in any way I can after I step down from the position of Academic Director.  The Worker Institute is simply too important for me to do anything else.

I am pleased to inform you that Prof. Risa Lieberwitz will take over the position of Academic Director of The Worker Institute on September 15th, 2021. Risa teaches labor and employment law at the ILR School and has a long-standing reputation as a defender of academic freedom and an Ithaca activist. She began her career as a lawyer for the Atlanta region of the NLRB, has served as the General Counsel for the American Association of University Professors and currently serves as President of the Cornell chapter of AAUP. I know that Risa will bring to the Worker Institute her passion, lawyerly care and attention. With Risa Lieberwitz as Academic Director and Patricia Campos-Medina as Executive Director, I truly believe that there is nowhere for the Worker Institute to go but up.

Thanks to all for your support over these past five years.  Please join me in welcoming Risa Lieberwitz to the Academic Directorship of the Worker Institute.  

Yours in continuing solidarity,
Ileen A. Devault, Academic Director, The Worker Institute