Part Time and ULA Affiliated Faculty

Elaine Bernard

Labor 746 — Comparative Labor Movements

Elaine Bernard has been the Executive Director of the Harvard University Trade Union program since 1989. In 2003, she was also appointed Executive Director of the Harvard Law School Labor and Worklife Program. Elaine earned her M.A. from the University of British Columbia in 1979 and her Ph.D. from Simon Fraser University in 1988. She teaches university credit courses in International Comparative Labor Movements (including at the UMass Amherst Labor Center), Women’s studies, and Canadian studies, as well as non-credit labor education courses. She is the author of three books and numerous articles.
 

Liana Foxvog

Labor 204 — Labor and the Global Economy

Liana Foxvog holds a Master’s in Labor Studies from University of Massachusetts Amherst and a B.A. in Political Science from Reed College. In addition to teaching part-time in the Labor Center, she is the Director of Supply Chain Strategies at the Worker Rights Consortium, an independent labor rights monitoring organization. Previously, she worked for several other non-profit advocacy organizations, including serving as National Organizer of SweatFree Communities and Director of Campaigns at the International Labor Rights Forum, where she co-published reports researching labor conditions in apparel, fresh fruit, and electronics supply chains, and investigated companies’ implementation of their commitments under the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh. She is a frequent media commentator and public speaker on garment workers’ rights in the global economy, quoted in outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and International Business Times. She also supports immigrant rights organizations, unions, and worker centers as a Spanish interpreter.

 

Harris Freeman

Labor 697R — Advanced Labor and Employment Law
Labor 742 — Labor Law

Harris Freeman is Assistant Professor of Legal Research and Writing at Western New England University School of Law. He was an Associate in a Northampton, Massachusetts, law firm focusing on litigation of employment, civil rights and personal injury claims and also served as a Judicial Law Clerk to the Honorable Michael A. Ponsor of the Massachusetts Federal District Court. Harris, a former machinist and toolmaker, was an active member of the United Auto Workers and the International Association of Machinists while employed at Chrysler Motors, General Dynamics, Pratt and Whitney, and McDonnell Douglas. He is an Adjunct Faculty member at the Labor Center at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he teaches graduate courses in labor and employment law, and is a Cooperating Attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Western Massachusetts.
 

 

 

 

Rebecca Givan

Labor 677 — Public Sector Labor Relations
Labor 697J — Collective Bargaining

Rebecca Givan is Associate Professor at Rutgers University. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Northwestern University and a B.A. from Oberlin College. Before coming to Rutgers, she worked at the London School of Economics, Cardiff Business School and Cornell University. Professor Givan’s research addresses public sector restructuring and its impact on employment relations. She has written on the privatization of public services and on restructuring in the British National Health Service. Her work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Public Administration, British Journal of Industrial Relations, Employee Relations and International Labor and Working Class History, as well as several edited volumes.
 

Patricia Greenfield

Labor 742 — Labor Law

Patricia Greenfield earned her J.D. at Washington University in St. Louis and a Ph.D. in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University. She is the former Director of the University of Massachusetts Labor Center in Amherst, MA, and the former Provost for the National Labor College in Silver Spring, MD.
 

Armando Ibarra

Labor 697T — Labor, Race and Immigration
Labor 597W — Organizing

Armando Ibarra is an Associate Professor in the School for Workers at University of Wisconsin Madison. He earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Irvine, and joined the School for Workers faculty in January 2011. Ibarra holds a Master’s in Public Administration, and a B.A. Sociology and Spanish. His research and fields of specialization are Chicano/a Latino/a working communities, adult education on issues of diversity in the workplace, international labor migration, leadership development, organizing workplaces, and applied research.
 

Gordon Lafer

Labor 697U — Labor and Public Policy
Labor 597W — Organizing

Gordon Lafer is Associate Professor at the University of Oregon’s Labor Education and Research Center. He has been studying economic policy for more than twenty years, including serving as an Economic Analyst for the New York City Mayor’s Office and serving as a fellow at the Institute for Social and Policy Studies while earning his Ph.D. in Political Science at Yale University. He has written broadly about economic policy, including authoring a book titled The Job Training Charade, which was published by Cornell University Press in 2002 and was awarded the C. Wright Mills Award for 2003. Professor Lafer has also served as an organizer and strategist for a wide range of labor unions, including employee unions at Yale University, construction workers in Las Vegas, hotel workers in Hawaii, supermarket workers in California, and healthcare, wood products, and farm workers in Oregon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jerry Levinsky

Labor 297S — Sports, Labor & Social Justice
Labor 697R — Advanced Labor and Employment Law

Jerry Levinsky received an M.S. in Labor Studies and a Certificate in Advanced Graduate Studies in Social Justice Education from the University of Massachusetts, and a B.A. in Philosophy and Labor Studies from Livingston College,  Rutgers University. In addition, he holds a J.D. degree from the Western New England University.
 
Levinsky has worked in the labor movement for many years and is currently an Organizer with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 509. Prior to joining SEIU as staff, Levinsky was a long-time SEIU member and shop-steward. In the 25 years he worked for the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination as Deputy General Counsel,  Levinsky was responsible for investigating and prosecuting a broad array of civil rights violations, including complaints of employment discrimination before the administrative agency as well as in the state and federal courts, 
 
In 1994, Levinsky began teaching part-time at UMASS Amherst in the Legal Studies Program, where he coordinated a civil rights clinical program providing undergraduates direct field experience in the work of civil rights enforcement. The program was recognized both at the university and nationally as a model of undergraduate clinical education. Levinsky currently serves as the Chair of the Education Committee and as a Member of the Executive Board of the Western Mass Area Labor Federation (AFL-CIO).
 

Priscilla Murolo

Labor 697C — Labor History

Priscilla Murolo is Professor of History at Sarah Lawrence College, where she also directs the graduate program in women’s history. She is the author of The Common Ground of Womanhood: Class, Gender, and Working Girls’ Clubs; co-author of From the Folks Who Brought You the Weekend: A Short, Illustrated History of Labor in the United States; and a contributor to various historical encyclopedias and journals. She has taught courses and led workshops for a number of labor education projects over the past twenty years.
 

Alejandro Reuss

Labor 697FF — Economics for Union Leadership and Staff
Labor 697V — Labor and Migration

Alejandro Reuss is a historian and economist, having studied Latin American history and immigration history at Tufts (MA, 1993) and economics at UMass Amherst (Ph.D., 2013). He teaches in both the on-campus and ULA programs. He is a co-editor of Dollars & Sense magazine and the author of the book Labor and the Global Economy. His activism has included work on labor, war and militarism, immigrants’ rights, the environment, the global economy, and other issues.
 

Dean Robinson

Labor 697X — Health Policy and Inequality in the U.S.

Dean Robinson is Associate Professor in the Political Science Department at the University of Massachusetts, as well as being an affiliated faculty member of the Labor Center. He received his B.A. from Stanford, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Yale. His research interests focus on Afro-American politics and thought and, more recently, race and health care policy. His first book, published by Cambridge University Press, is titled Black Nationalism in American Politics and Thought. His current research focuses on the racial and class determinants of health. Dean has been an officer in his union, the Massachusetts Society of Professors, and has worked on campaigns for universal health care in the state of Massachusetts.
 

Natalicia Tracy

Labor 597W — Organizing

Natalicia Tracy (PhD, Sociology, Boston University, 2016) has been a Lecturer in Labor Studies and Sociology, and Resident Scholar at the Labor Resource Center, at the University of Massachusetts Boston since 2010.  She has also been Executive Director of Boston’s Brazilian Worker Center since 2010.  She is a co-founder of the Massachusetts Coalition for Domestic Workers and helped lead the campaign to pass the state’s 2014 Domestic Worker Bill of Rights, and in 2015 won rights for domestic workers in the state of Connecticut. She sits on the Mayor’s Living Wage Advisory Committee and the Advisory Board for the Office of Immigrant Advancement in Boston, as well as on the Community Advisory Board of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, and the Greater Boston Labor Council, AFLCIO. Among her publications are “Immigrants, Undocumented” and “Immigrants, Illegal,” in the Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Nationalism (2016), and Worker-Led Research Makes the Case for New Labor Rights for Massachusetts Domestic Workers,” in Greenbaum et al., Stepping Out of Academia: Collaborative Research and Community Action (2020). In 2014 and 2019 she received leadership awards from the Greater Boston Labor Council, AFL-CIO, and in 2015 was named one of the nation’s 25 most significant Black women labor leaders in the “And Still I Rise Project” of the Institute for Policy Studies.  In 2019, she was named a Barr Foundation Fellow in recognition of her civic leadership in Boston.