Meet the Faculty: Lee Adler

Professor Lee Howard Adler teaches courses on critical labor, employment law, and union leadership issues in academic, extension, and community settings.

What do you enjoy about working with ILR students?

My favorite part of being a teacher is at office hours when I am able to better learn of my students’ lives, their difficulties, and their sense of hope and promise. Another pedagogic interest I have is to explain why thinking critically, and deconstructing (tearing apart and then putting back together based upon one’s own understandings) the law and social norms is essential to learning how to mature as a thinking person. Sometimes, our students are not aware of processes that can be helpful in learning how to think and I believe that is my job.

What piece of advice would you like to offer your students?

Imagine who you are and wish to be beyond what grade you receive in a course or class. Sure, you can be in the short run “successful” by amassing a high GPA but in the long run what does your heart whisper to you about who you really are. Never fail to pay attention to it as it is the repository of the closest thing to “The Truth”, as we will ever know it in this complex world.

When do you recommend students to reach out to you?

I want to have my students visit with me at all times. They set my office hours. I wish to see them when they wish to see or visit me. It need not be a crisis- it could be just to goof around.