The Labor Center at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst is the flagship labor studies graduate program in the United States. Over the past five decades, nearly a thousand trade unionists have earned a master’s degree through the Labor Center, which is both academically rigorous and practically connected to the lives and experiences of the working class.

Perhaps this is why the Labor Center is now under direct assault by UMass administrators.

Labor Center graduate student Chris Brooks spoke with Rebecca Givan, professor in the Department of Labor Studies and Employment Relations at Rutgers University and longtime visiting faculty at the Labor Center, about the importance of labor studies programs to the growth of the labor movement and why such programs have been targeted for assault from the Right.