Dear colleague,
We are deeply saddened to share with you that an important leader of our union has passed away. Last week, we lost Ann Gordon, a Research Professor Emerita of History, the chairperson of the AAUP-AFT Retiree Assembly, and an inspiration to our members over her many years at Rutgers.
Ann was a renowned historian of women’s suffrage. She came to Rutgers in 1982 to work on the Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony Papers project, helping to catalog some 14,000 documents from these two giants of the 19th century US women’s movement and serving as editor of six volumes of their selected writings.
Ann displayed her commitment to peace and justice early on. At Smith College in Massachusetts, she joined Students for a Democratic Society and helped organize the very first protest against the war in Vietnam there. As a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she remained an antiwar organizer and contributed to movement publications such as the influential journal Radical America.
As a leader of our union, we knew her as strong, fiery, persistent, fully committed, and always ready to fight the good and necessary fight. She was a trailblazer for the rights of non-tenure track faculty and helped lead our recent contract campaigns that won transformative gains for NTTs, from more than doubling the minimum salary to presumptively renewable contracts for veteran NTTs. As chairperson of the Retiree Assembly, she was dedicated to winning health insurance for the surviving spouses of retirees—a fight we promise to continue in her name.
Ann was a great colleague and comrade to so many people. She had a great sense of humor and a great laugh. We are a stronger, better union and university for her leadership, scholarship, service, and union activism. We stand on the shoulders of giants like Ann, and we hope to do their legacy justice.
Hugs to Ann’s family, friends, colleagues, and comrades!
In solidarity,
Rutgers AAUP-AFT, Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union, and AAUP-BHSNJ