Unionizing the Ivory Tower - A Special Book Event with the author, Al Davidoff

This in-person event will include a brief reading and spirited discussion about Unionizing the Ivory Tower with the book’s author, Al Davidoff.

Davidoff is the Director of Organizational and Leadership Development at The Solidarity Center, the AFL-CIO’s global labor institute. He served as the president of Cornell’s UAW local union, the president of the Tompkins County Labor Council, NYS director of the AFL-CIO, a Vice President of SEIU Local 1199, AFT chief of staff, and Director of the national AFL-CIO GOLD team.  Davidoff is co-founder of the Cornell-NYS AFL-CIO Union Leadership Institute (ULI) and co-founder of the Cornell-AFL-CIO National Labor Leadership Initiative (NLLI).  He has been a labor leader and organizer for over 30 years.

Al is an ILR graduate and was a student leader who became a custodian, labor organizer, and leader of the Cornell union. With passion, sensitivity, and wit, he tells the extraordinary story of how these Cornell workers unionized the university.

His memoir reveals how they took on Cornell – the dominant power in Ithaca – and built a strong organization that waged multiple strikes and campaigns for livable wages and worker dignity. Their strategies and tactics were creative and feisty, founded on worker participation and ownership.

The union's commitment to fairness, equity, and economic justice also engaged these workers – primarily rural, white, and conservative – at the intersections of racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia. Davidoff's story demonstrates how a fighting union can activate today's working class to oppose anti-democratic and white supremacist forces.

Breakfast available at 8:30 a.m.
Program begins promptly at 9 a.m.