American campuses are roiling. At some of the country’s biggest and most prestigious institutions of higher education, from Temple, Duke, and Princeton Universities to the University of California system, academic workers are organizing and going on strike in historic numbers. The UC strike was the largest job action at an American university ever and the biggest strike of 2022 in any sector. Meanwhile, after eight months without a contract, three unions representing nine thousand workers at Rutgers, the state university of New Jersey, just went on strike for the first time in the institution’s 257-year history.

But while big schools have gotten the lion’s share of attention, struggles on a more modest front have been overlooked. Just five miles away from Rutgers’ main campus lies Middlesex College, the flagship two-year college of the New Jersey county for which it is named. At Middlesex, the full-time faculty have been working without a contract for nearly three years.

Because they work for a less richly endowed institution, their demands are necessarily humbler than their counterparts’ at Rutgers. Whereas the latter’s full-time faculty demanded annual raises of 5 percent, Middlesex College faculty are asking for raises of 3.5 percent. And while every one of the college’s full-time faculty, which includes librarians and counselors as well as professors, is a member of Local 1940 AFT (American Federation of Teachers), at 140 strong, their bargaining power is limited relative to that of the thousands organizing at large research universities.