A Sincere Apology to the Good Guys (or, Rock Me, Academics!)
by Gordon Haber
Before Edie Falco, there was the seedy Falco.
In my last post I criticized an oped from The Chronicle of Higher Ed for its condescending attitude toward those on the lowest rungs of the academic ladder. Its author thought it problematic that adjuncts and graduate students are no longer staying quiet about working their asses off for peanuts — like the “venomous bloggers who, outside academic disciplines, can’t be held accountable to academic standards of civility.”
I find this hilarious considering how petty scholars can be to each other inside their disciplines. Not to mention the assumption that folks should mind their manners when they are getting royally screwed over by their employers.
The response to my response, however, was enlightening. I wrote that “tenured faculty do not give a shit about adjuncts,” and it looks like I have to qualify that remark. I’ve heard from dozens of tenured professors (okay, a dozen), alerting me to their efforts on behalf of graduate students and adjuncts: shoutouts to Marc Bousqet, Jim Donahue and Seth Kahn, among others.
So now I publicly admit that I was wrong: there are indeed some people in secure academic positions sticking their necks out. To those people, I sincerely apologize.
I still believe that most tenured professors are indifferent to the struggles of their financially vulnerable colleagues. In fact, lots of tenured professors would never even refer to adjuncts as “colleagues.” America is the republic of indifference, wherein the financially secure tend to have selective amnesia about the insecure, even when they profess progressive values.
But if you want to do something that is (a) useful, (b) easy and (c) will help assuage your leftie guilt, then sign the petition that urges the Department of Labor to investigate labor practices in higher ed.
(And you can buy Adjunctivitis, my best-selling comic novella about an instructor in L.A. on a desperate quest for health insurance. No warehouse workers were harmed in the making of this ebook for Amazon, and if you don’t own a Kindle you can get free reading software for any platform, and it’s only $2.99, so you have no excuse, and if you think I am going to miss an opportunity to plug my work, you clearly have not been following this blog.)
I’m not done. I also wrote this:
If you can show me one example of someone on the tenure-track or with tenure who has put his or her ass on the line to help adjuncts in any substantive way, I will upload a video of me lip-syncing to a song of your choice.
I got some great song suggestions—Dead or Alive’s Brand New Lover and “something by Miley Cyrus.” But I feel I must go with my e-friend Rebecca Schuman’s request. Watch this space for irrefutable proof that a middle-aged New York Jew is the undisputed King of Early 80s Austrian Rap.
“I still believe that most tenured professors are indifferent to the struggles of their financially vulnerable colleagues. In fact, lots of tenured professors would never even refer to adjuncts as “colleagues.” America is the republic of indifference, wherein the financially secure tend to have selective amnesia about the insecure, even when they profess progressive values.”
While I think that indifference plays a part, I believe that many tenured/tenure-track faculty need adjuncts to serve as a symbol of meritocracy. That is, I know many academics who gladly point to adjuncts as examples of those who did not work hard enough, are not good enough, or are otherwise somehow “unworthy” of a tenure-track job. Far too many tenured/tenure-track faculty allow themselves to believe that academia is a meritocracy; as such, those of us who “made it” are proof of the meritocratic principles of academia. And, conversely, those who have not “made it” are proof of the tenured crowd’s superiority. (I can’t even begin to count the number of academics I have met who believe that their success is proof of an unbiased meritocracy. It’s sickening.)
What’s worse is the way such faculty members unload work onto their adjunct colleagues. Often, this work is sold to adjuncts as a “good opportunity,” a way of demonstrating their commitment, loyalty, or even building some skill that is necessary for them to eventually land a tenure-track job. Such heartless faculty have the gall to suggest that such work might even convince universities to take them seriously, to extend them a better contract.
It’s downright despicable how some faculty abuse adjuncts, while patting themselves on the back for allowing those adjuncts to “improve themselves.”
p.s. Thanks for the shout-out, and thanks for continually speaking against horrific labor practices in academia.